Large Software Development Research Articles

Recognizing lines of code violating company-specific coding guidelines using machine learning

Software developers in big and medium-size companies are working with millions of lines of code in their codebases. Assuring the quality of this code has shifted from simple defect management to proactive assurance of internal code quality. Although static code analysis and code reviews have been at the forefront of research and practice in this area, code reviews are still an effort-intensive and interpretation-prone activity. The aim of this research is to support code reviews by automatically recognizing company-specific code guidelines violations in large-scale, industrial source code. In our action research project, we constructed a machine-learning-based tool for code analysis where software developers and architects in big and medium-sized companies can use a few examples of source code lines violating code/design guidelines (up to 700 lines of code) to train decision-tree classifiers to find similar violations in their codebases (up to 3 million lines of code). Our action research project consisted of (i) understanding the challenges of two large software development companies, (ii) applying the machine-learning-based tool to detect violations of Sun’s and Google’s coding conventions in the code of three large open source projects implemented in Java, (iii) evaluating the tool on evolving industrial codebase, and (iv) finding the best learning strategies to reduce the cost of training the classifiers. We were able to achieve the average accuracy of over 99% and the average F-score of 0.80 for open source projects when using ca. 40K lines for training the tool. We obtained a similar average F-score of 0.78 for the industrial code but this time using only up to 700 lines of code as a training dataset. Finally, we observed the tool performed visibly better for the rules requiring to understand a single line of code or the context of a few lines (often allowing to reach the F-score of 0.90 or higher). Based on these results, we could observe that this approach can provide modern software development companies with the ability to use examples to teach an algorithm to recognize violations of code/design guidelines and thus increase the number of reviews conducted before the product release. This, in turn, leads to the increased quality of the final software.

How Technology Support for Contextualization Affects Enterprise Social Media Use: A Media System Dependency Perspective

Research background: Using enterprise social media (ESM) in the workplace has become an important channel for initiating communication activities for employees in the organization. However, some organizations reported that they did not obtain expected returns from their ESM investments. This outcome may be attributed to employee underutilization of ESM. Thus, exploring how employees use ESM is vital to improving communication efficiency. Research questions: 1. How does ESM support for contextualization affect employees’ dependency relations with ESM? 2. How do dependency relations affect ESM use? Literature review: For professional communicators and other workers, dependency relations can enhance their media use behavior by channeling more useful information. In studying how professional communicators use a medium, researchers indicated that users’ continuance intention rarely occurs without users’ dependency on the medium, thus making media system dependency (MSD) relations critical for media use. Based on the MSD theory, we investigate how ESM support for cognitive and affective contextualization affects employees’ understanding, orientation, and play dependency relations with ESM, and consequently affect work-related and social ESM uses. Methodology: We surveyed 258 employees of a large software development firm in China. Results and conclusions: Our findings suggest that technical and professional communicators who have not yet used ESM in their work may take the following steps: 1. explore ESM and their specific use by employees; 2. manage and control different information sharing among employees on ESM so as to satisfy employees’ different goals; and 3. design and develop different ESM functionalities.

Does every formal peer review really need to take place? An industrial case study

Existing studies on formal peer reviews (FPR) are mostly based on design and code review practices observed from the open source software (OSS) community, and there is a lack of studies and evidence from proprietary, large scale software development in systems engineering settings. This study fills the gap by reporting an industrial case study on FPR practices in a safety-critical embedded system development organization. First, we follow the Goal-Question-Metric (GQM) methodology to establish a set of metrics for understanding FPR practices and the resulting effectiveness. Second, we collect the metric data from 100 programs employing FPR practices on a variety of document types. Third, we analyze the data and derive answers to a set of questions defined in the GQM. The study contributes to more comprehensive understanding of FPR practices and effectiveness evaluation, and the findings reported here may serve as a basis for process improvements initiatives in similar settings.

Coordination Challenges in Large-Scale Software Development: A Case Study of Planning Misalignment in Hybrid Settings

Achieving effective inter-team coordination is one of the most pressing challenges in large-scale software development. Hybrid approaches of traditional and agile development promise combining the overview and predictability of long-term planning on an inter-team level with the flexibility and adaptability of agile development on a team level. It is currently unclear, however, why such hybrids often fail. Our case study within a large software development unit of 13 teams at a global enterprise software company explores how and why a combination of traditional planning on an inter-team level and agile development on a team level can result in ineffective coordination. Based on a variety of data, including interviews with scrum masters, product owners, architects and senior management, and using Grounded Theory data analysis procedures, we identify a lack of dependency awareness across development teams as a key explanation of ineffective coordination. Our findings show how a lack of dependency awareness emerges from misaligned planning activities of specification, prioritization, estimation and allocation between agile team and traditional inter-team levels and ultimately prevents effective coordination. Knowing about these issues, large-scale hybrid projects in similar contexts can try to better align their planning activities across levels to improve dependency awareness and in turn achieve more effective coordination.

A Review for Improving Software Change using Traceability Model with Test Effort Estimation

Maintaining a software system includes tasks such as fixing defects, adding new features, or modifying the software (software changes) to accommodate different environments. Then, the modified software system needs to be tested, to ensure the changes will not having any adverse effects on the previously validated code. Regression testing is one of the approaches which software tester used to test the software system. The traditional regression testing strategy was to repeat all the previous tests and retesting all the features of the program even for small modifications. For programming with thousand lines of codes (LOC), the cost of retesting the entire system is expensive if attempted after every change. This practice is becoming increasingly difficult because of the demand for testing the new functionalities and correcting errors with limited resources. Numerous techniques and tools have been proposed and developed to reduce the costs of regression testing and to aid regression testing processes, such as test suite reduction, test case prioritization, and test case done on the thresholds and weightings used in regression testing. However, there is still need to study on the software traceability model of coverage analysis in software changes during regression testing and test effort estimation on regression testing. Hence, this paper describes the proposal for improving software changes with hybrid traceability model and test effort estimation during regression testing. We will explain our proposed work including the problem background, the intended research objectives, literature review and plan for future implementation. This study is expected to contribute in developing hybrid traceability model for large software development project to support software changes during regression testing with test estimation approach and expected to reduce operational cost during the implementation on software maintenance. Also, it is hoped that an efficient and improve solution to regression testing can be realized, thus, gives the benefits to software testers and project manager manage the software maintenance task since it is a critical part in software project development.

Task assignment to distributed teams aided by a hybrid methodology of verbal decision analysis

An increasingly common practice in large software development companies is to distribute tasks among geographically dispersed teams. This practice can bring many benefits, such as gains in terms of time and cost, but many are the challenges. One of the major challenges regards the method of assigning tasks to remote teams. This method involves knowing, classifying and ordering the factors that drive the assignment of tasks in a distributed scenario. This is a typical scenario for decision-making based on multiple criteria. Verbal decision analysis (VDA) is a multi-criteria framework to decision-making. This study presents a hybrid methodology structured on methods of VDA for classification ORdinal CLASSification (ORCLASS) and ordering (ZAPROS III-i) of factors that drive task assignment to distributed teams in software development projects. Tasks were grouped according to their type, i.e. requirements, architecture, implementation, and testing.

FACIA: A Fully Automatic Change Impact Analysis Method for Large Scale Requirements

The blooming change of requirements poses a challenge for change impact analysis (CIA), especially in large scale software development. Existing CIA techniques exploiting manual analysis and automatic methods suffer from high cost, low accuracy and expert dependence in current industrial practice. Therefore, this paper proposes a fully automatic change impact analysis (FACIA) method to overcome the aforementioned shortcomings. We consider the requirement changes generally happen as the form of phrases. The impact units for the changed phrases may contain the changed phrases (CP1), the co-occurrence phrases of CP1(CP2), the tokens of CP1 in the changed requirement, the similar phrases of CP1 and the similar phrases of CP2 in the whole requirements. Then five algorithms are designed based on the combinations of those impact units, so as to get a more precise change propagation and generate the lists of change impact automatically. We conduct extensive evaluations for the proposed approach with two different industrial data sets. The results show that compared with the method of expert depended, our approach can get a reliable sorted list for CIA more quickly with lower cost.

Introduction to the Special Issue on “International Conference on Software Reuse 2015”

Conducting requirements reviews before the start of software design is one of the central goals in requirements management. Fast and accurate reviews promise to facilitate software development process and mitigate technical risks of late design modifications. In large software development companies, however, it is difficult to conduct reviews as fast as needed, because the number of regularly incoming requirements is typically several thousand. Manually reviewing thousands of requirements is a time-consuming task and disrupts the process of continuous software development. As a consequence, software engineers review requirements in parallel with designing the software, thus partially accepting the technical risks. In this paper we present a measurement-based method for automating requirements reviews in large software development companies. The method, Rendex, is developed in an action research project in a large software development organization and evaluated in four large companies. The evaluation shows that the assessment results of Rendex have 73%-80% agreement with the manual assessment results of software engineers. Succeeding the evaluation, Rendex was integrated with the requirements management environment in two of the collaborating companies and is regularly used for proactive reviews of requirements.

Industrial experiences from evolving measurement systems into self‐healing systems for improved availability

SummaryAutomated measurement programs are an efficient way of collecting, processing, and visualizing measures in large software development companies. The number of measurements in these programs is usually large, which is caused by a diversity of the needs of the stakeholders. In this paper, we present the application of the self‐healing concepts to assure the availability of measurements to the stakeholders without the need for effort‐intensive and costly manual interventions of the operators. We study the measurement infrastructure at one of the development units of a large infrastructure provider. In this paper, we present how the Monitor, Analyze, Plane, and Execute with Knowledge model was instantiated in a simplistic manner to reduce the need for manual intervention in the operation of the measurement systems. Based on the experiences from the 2 cases studied in this paper, we show how an evolution toward self‐healing measurement systems is done both with a dedicated failure taxonomy and with an effective straightforward handling of the most common errors in the execution. The mechanisms studied and presented in this paper show that self‐healing provides significant improvements to the operation of the measurement program and reduces the need for daily oversight by an operator for the measurement systems.

Transition of organizational roles in Agile transformation process: A grounded theory approach

Abstract This study aims to identify how traditional organizational roles are transformed towards Agile roles. A grounded theory study with 5 software teams in a large software development company in Spain was conducted. We interviewed 21 people, participated in Agile Coaching sessions and observed daily activities in the company during a six-month period. The transition of organizational roles during the Agile transformation process is influenced by many circumstances such as: higher management commitment and support, knowledge about Agile, project team size and culture. The theory demonstrates how enterprise factors influence the transition of organizational roles and how practitioners cope with the challenges during the Agile transformation process. Based on our results, we proposed recommendations and guidelines for organizational roles transition during the Agile method adoption.

Collaboration in OSS Communities: Who Solves Whose Problems?

In open collaboration, an economically important form of organizing technology development in online communities, both producers and users, either firm or independent users, invest their resources to develop and share technological problems as well as solutions freely accessible to the public. Existing literature draws ambivalent conclusions about whether and how the different actors engage in joint problem solving. Given potential conflicts of interest and variance in problem types, in terms of who shares the problem and how much generative efforts a problem demands, we know little about the role and nature of joint problem solving in open collaboration. Taking a dynamic view towards knowledge collaboration, this paper uses granular data about problem solving in OpenStack, a large and successful open source software development community, to examine joint problem solving in open collaboration. We show that not all problem types channel participation in the same way. Both producers and users prefer firm user problems. Secondarily, they also focus more on generative problems unless they are independent users. Our findings contribute to the theoretical puzzle about whether and when open collaboration is actually about “collaboration” and informs managers about opportunities for greater joint problem solving.

Assessing the impact of meta-model evolution: a measure and its automotive application

Background: Domain-specific meta-models play an important role in the design of large software systems by defining language for the architectural models. Such common modeling languages are particularly important if multiple actors are involved in the development process as they assure interoperability between modeling tools used by different actors. Objective: The main objective of this paper is to facilitate the adoption of new domain-specific meta-model versions, or a subset of the new architectural features they support, by the architectural modeling tools used by different actors in the development of large software systems. Method: We developed a simple measure of meta-model evolution (named NoC - Number of Changes) that captures atomic modification between different versions of the analyzed meta-model. We evaluated the NoC measure on the evolution of the AUTOSAR meta-model, a domain specific meta-model used in the design of automotive system architectures. The evaluation shows that the measure can be used as an indicator of effort needed to update meta-model-based tools to support different actors in modeling new architectural features. Results: We showed the impact of 14 new AUTOSAR features on the modeling tools used by the main actors in the automotive development process. We validated our results by finding a significant correlation between the results of the NoC measure and the actual effort needed to support these features in the modeling tools reported by the modeling practitioners from four AUTOSAR tool vendors and the AUTOSAR tooling team at Volvo Cars. Conclusions: Our study shows that quantitative analysis of domain-specific meta-model evolution using a simple measure such as NoC can be used as an indicator of the required updates in the meta-model-based tools that are needed to support new meta-model versions. However, our study also shows that qualitative analysis that may include an inspection of the actual meta-model changes is needed for more accurate assessment.

Rendex: A method for automated reviews of textual requirements

Abstract Conducting requirements reviews before the start of software design is one of the central goals in requirements management. Fast and accurate reviews promise to facilitate software development process and mitigate technical risks of late design modifications. In large software development companies, however, it is difficult to conduct reviews as fast as needed, because the number of regularly incoming requirements is typically several thousand. Manually reviewing thousands of requirements is a time-consuming task and disrupts the process of continuous software development. As a consequence, software engineers review requirements in parallel with designing the software, thus partially accepting the technical risks. In this paper we present a measurement-based method for automating requirements reviews in large software development companies. The method, Rendex, is developed in an action research project in a large software development organization and evaluated in four large companies. The evaluation shows that the assessment results of Rendex have 73%-80% agreement with the manual assessment results of software engineers. Succeeding the evaluation, Rendex was integrated with the requirements management environment in two of the collaborating companies and is regularly used for proactive reviews of requirements.

Software Project Management Observes: Fiasco V/S Victory

A study on successful and un-successful about 210 large software (development) projects from around the world between February 1995 and December 2017 has been presented in this review paper. All these projects involved on mass level that completed on time with their scheduled expense, and time frame estimates in development of those are getting late as defined, much expensive as decide, or were get delayed or close without its completion, major seven hurdles were noted: un sufficient project planning, un sufficient cost estimating, un sufficient measurements, un sufficient milestone tracking, un sufficient change control, and un sufficient -quality control, Poor Coronation and communication. After detail study on past reviews on these hurdles in project management, in this review paper we have presented a short overview of success and failure reasons/causes/possibilities of all those seven factor/ hurdles are noted. Maybe the clearest aspect of these major problems is linked with project management rather than technical resource. Two occupied ideas combine which are no proper excellence regulator are the huge funder for the rates, and late time and unfair plan organization have number of prospective reason of insufficient excellence actions.

An IT Project as a Plaything of its Organizational Environment: Long-term Challenges in Financial Services

At the end of 2015, and after 10 years, the German financial service provider FinAdvizard finally achieved the first results from the development project of its next-generation advisory application. Although this achievement can be considered as project success, the new application includes only the core of the initially intended scope because of environmental changes. First, the project team had to continuously deal with resource scarcity, stakeholder influences, regulatory requirements, and the involvement of its sales force. The team also had to adapt different management approaches and software development methods. Furthermore, the organization's focus and management attention repeatedly changed over time. Subsequently, this case retrospectively highlights information technology (IT) project management issues and challenges faced by large software development projects. Given the longitudinal analysis of the period of a decade, both positive and negative effects that are not visible in shorter IT projects become apparent. Additionally, the case sheds light and stimulates a discussion on, among others, collaboration between the business and IT departments, the importance of top IT management support, the challenge of bimodal or two-speed IT, and the influence of a strong sales force.

The Best Software Development Teams Might be Temporary

A study of a large company's software development projects indicates that quality often suffers if team members have worked together previously. Thus, in many cases, temporary teams might be best.

Coordination in multi-team programmes: An investigation of the group mode in large-scale agile software development

Coordination of work teams is critical when managing large programmes that involve multiple teams. Prior studies of knowledge work indicate that such work relies heavily on coordination through "personal" modes such as mutual adjustment between individuals or through scheduled or unscheduled meetings. We studied how coordination through scheduled and unscheduled meetings change over time in two large software development programmes. Findings include transitions from scheduled to unscheduled meetings and from unscheduled to scheduled meetings. The main implication is that programme management needs to be sensitive to the vital importance of coordination as well as the coordination needs as they change over time.

A Review of Scaling Agile Methods in Large Software Development

Agile methods such as Dynamic Systems Development Method (DSDM), Extreme Programming (XP), SCRUM, Agile Modeling (AM) and Crystal Clear enable small teams to execute assigned task at their best. However, larger organizations aim at incorporating more Agile methods owing to the fact that its application is prevalently tailored for small teams. The scope in which large firms are interested will extend the original Agile methods to include larger teams, coordination, communication among teams and customers as well as oversight. Determining particular software method is always challenging for software companies especially when considering start-up, small to medium or large enterprises. Most of large organizations develop large-scale projects by teams of teams or teams of teams of teams. Therefore, most recognized Agile methods or first-generation methods such as XP and SCRUM need to be modified before they are employed in large organizations; which is not an easy task. Accomplishing said task would necessitate large organizations to pick and select from the scaling Agile methods in accommodating a single vision for large and multiple teams. Deciding the right choice requires wholesome understanding of the method including its strengths and weaknesses as well as when and how it makes sense. Therefore, the main aim of this paper is to review the existing literature of the utilized scaling Agile methods by defining, discussing and comparing them. In-depth reviews on the literature were performed to juxtapose the methods in impartial manner. In addition, the content analysis was used to analyse the resultant data. The result indicated that the DAD, LeSS, LeSS huge, SAFe, Spotify, Nexus and RAGE are the adopted scaling Agile methods at large organizations. They seem to be similar but there are discrepancies among them that take the form of team size, training and certification, methods and practices adopted, technical practices required and organizational type.

A Linguistic Model in Component Oriented Programming

Abstract It is a fact that the component-oriented programming, well organized, can bring a large increase in efficiency in the development of large software systems. This paper proposes a model for building software systems by assembling components that can operate independently of each other. The model is based on a computing environment that runs parallel and distributed applications. This paper introduces concepts as: abstract aggregation scheme and aggregation application. Basically, an aggregation application is an application that is obtained by combining corresponding components. In our model an aggregation application is a word in a language.

Large Scale Agile Adoption Model from Management Perspective

field of software engineering is growing rapidly due to increased change of customers' requirements and progress in technologies. Agile software development (ASD) have substituted the conventional Software development methodologies to enhance the software productivity through short increments and increased user satisfaction. The purpose of this research is to pinpoint the factors (success factors and risk factors) in adopting agile methods for large scale software development team from management perspective. We have adopted systematic literature review (SLR) as a research methodology for the identification of these factors. The expected outcomes of this research will provide input to our proposed model Large Scale Agile Adoption Model (LSAAM) from management perspective. The LSAAM intends to assist the agile experts in managing large team for software development. Keywordssoftware development, success factors, large development team, Systematic literature review.