Cooperative Method Development Research Articles

SoftCoDeR approach: promoting Software Engineering Academia-Industry partnership using CMD, DSR and ESE

The Academia-Industry partnership has been increasingly encouraged in the software development field. The main focus of the initiatives is driven by the collaborative work where the scientific research work meets the real needs of the Industry. Aiming to contribute to this effort we have proposed an approach called SoftCoDeR (Software Cooperative Design Research) that combines CMD (Cooperative Method Development), a method of Action Research, to concepts of DSR (Design Science Research). We have applied the SoftCoDeR approach in a software development company to support a research and development project aiming to integrate User Experience practices into the agile software development process. In this paper, we present new findings about this approach that has been extended with the use of Experimental Software Engineering (ESE) practices to conduct experimental validations of artifacts before putting them in industrial practice.

Investigating and promoting UX practice in industry: An experimental study

The efforts of addressing user experience (UX) in product development keep growing, as demonstrated by the proliferation of workshops and conferences bringing together academics and practitioners, who aim at creating interactive software able to satisfy their users. This special issue focuses on “Interplay between User Experience Evaluation and Software Development”, stating that the gap between human-computer interaction and software engineering with regard to usability has somewhat been narrowed. Unfortunately, our experience shows that software development organizations perform few usability engineering activities or none at all. Several authors acknowledge that, in order to understand the reasons of the limited impact of usability engineering and UX methods, and to try to modify this situation, it is fundamental to thoroughly analyze current software development practices, involving practitioners and possibly working from inside the companies. This article contributes to this research line by reporting an experimental study conducted with software companies. The study has confirmed that still too many companies either neglect usability and UX, or do not properly consider them. Interesting problems emerged. This article gives suggestions on how they may be properly addressed, since their solution is the starting point for reducing the gap between research and practice of usability and UX. It also provides further evidence on the value of the research method, called Cooperative Method Development, based on the collaboration of researchers and practitioners in carrying out empirical research; it has been used in a step of the performed study and has revealed to be instrumental for showing practitioners why to improve their development processes and how to do so.

Cooperative method development

The development of methods tools and process improvements is best to be based on the understanding of the development practice to be supported. Qualitative research has been proposed as a method for understanding the social and cooperative aspects of software development. However, qualitative research is not easily combined with the improvement orientation of an engineering discipline. During the last 6 years, we have applied an approach we call `cooperative method development', which combines qualitative social science fieldwork, with problem-oriented method, technique and process improvement. The action research based approach focusing on shop floor software development practices allows an understanding of how contextual contingencies influence the deployment and applicability of methods, processes and techniques. This article summarizes the experiences and discusses the further development of this approach based on several research projects in cooperation with industrial partners.

Co-Operative Method Development revisited

During the last five years, we applied a research approach we call 'Co-operative Method Development' formulated on first experience with empirical research focusing especially on the social side of software engineering. This position paper summarizes the experiences and discusses the improvement and further development of this research approach based on our experiences in different research projects in co-operation with industrial partners.