CONTEXT. Focus Group (FG) is a qualitative technique that collects data through moderated group discussion. Although widely used in fields where human behavior is central, their use in Software Engineering (SE) is comparatively less common. In SE, FG applications often need to accommodate technical domains, participants with specialized expertise, and research goals that differ from those typically addressed in traditional social science settings. OBJECTIVE. This study analyzes four FG experiences conducted to investigate distinct SE technologies and topics. The objective is to examine how design decisions, execution strategies, and contextual conditions support or hinder the identification of the benefits and drawbacks of using FGs in SE research. METHOD. We performed a reflective cross-case methodological analysis of four FGs conducted in both academic and industrial settings. The studies differed in goals, group configurations, participant expertise, and moderation strategies. Data sources included session transcripts, written artifacts, moderator observations, and participant feedback. RESULTS. The results indicate that data quality depended on participants’ prior knowledge, the moderator's impartiality, the execution context, and the use of multimodal data capture. Depth and generalizability were limited by time constraints, uneven engagement, and the diverse qualitative data that hindered comparison. CONCLUSIONS. FG is an effective complementary method in SE research, particularly for exploratory analysis and for understanding practitioner perspectives on SE technologies. However, its effectiveness depends on deliberate design choices, including participant selection and preparation, group configuration, and systematic documentation.

Technical debt (TD) expresses the lack of internal quality directly affecting software evolution. Therefore, it has gained the attention of software researchers and practitioners recently. Software researchers have performed empirical studies to observe the perspective of TD in different software cultures and organizations. However, it is important to replicate such studies in more places and with more practitioners to strengthen the perception of TD. In this paper, we present the results of a set of new research questions from an evolved survey design of a survey replication in the Uruguayan software industry to characterize how the software industry professionals understand, perceive, and adopt TD management (TDM) activities. The results allow us to observe that different participant contexts (startups, government, job roles) show different levels of awareness and perception of TD. Details in the form of the adoption of each TDM activity were presented. We could observe some difficulties in conducting some TDM activities that the practitioners consider very important, especially in TDM and monitoring. Differences in specific organizational contexts like startups and government could indicate the need for research efforts in other software engineering communities that meet their specific TD challenges and needs.

Software design seeks to contribute to developing quality software. During the design phase, the requirements are translated into a representation of the software (also known as design), whose quality can be evaluated and improved. For graduating students, software design is difficult to understand and produce. In fact, producing a good design seems to require a certain level of cognitive development that few students achieve. The aims of this study are, on the one hand, to know the effort devoted by students to software design, how is the effort variation throughout the different programs and how is the effort variation between students. On the other hand, we analyzed the software quality during the programs and the students’ perception of the problems they related to design. We found that students spend at least 3 times as much time on coding as on design. Also, regarding design, students have highly variable behavior among themselves and also highly variable behavior when developing different programs. We believe this may be due to a lack of knowledge on design, a lack of knowledge of the importance of design in software quality and an important lack of habits and discipline when developing software. Also, we found that students did not produce better quality products in the latest programs compared with the first ones.

This paper describes and discusses a pilot study about code quality practices from the software development leader perspective. Semi-structured interview and thematic analysis have been selected as qualitative analysis methods. This article introduces the design of the research protocol, the execution of the interviews and the analysis process. The results drawn from the present study suggest potential dependence of the practices according to the context of the organisation: type of client and methodology. Code review, pull request in distributed repositories and coding standards emerge as the main code quality practices.

Background: Technical debt (TD) has been an important focus of attention in recent years by the scientific community and the software industry. TD is a concept for expressing the lack of internal software quality that directly affects its capacity to evolve. Some studies have focused on the TD industry perspective. Aims: To characterize how the software industry professionals in Uruguay understand, perceive, and adopt technical debt management (TDM) activities. Method: To replicate a Brazilian survey with the Uruguayan software industry and compare their findings. Results: From 259 respondents, many indicated any awareness of the TD concept due to the faced difficult to realize how to associate such a concept with actual software issues. Therefore, it is possible to observe a considerable variability in the importance of TDM among the respondents. However, a small part of the respondents declares to carry out TDM activities in their organizations. A list of software technologies declared as used by practitioners was produced and can be useful to support TDM activities. Conclusions: The TD concept and its management are not common yet in Uruguay. There are indications of TD unawareness and difficulties in the conduction of some TDM activities considered as very important by the practitioners. There is a need for more effort aiming to disseminate the TD knowledge and to provide software technologies to support the adoption of TDM in Uruguay. It is likely other software engineering communities face similar issues. Therefore, further investigations in these communities can be of interest.

This paper presents an adoption and adaptation of the Curriculum Guidelines for Graduate Degree Programs in Software Engineering (GSwE2009) proposed by the IEEE-CS and the ACM for the creation of a curriculum for a Master's degree in software engineering at the Universidad de la República (Uruguay). A method for evaluating contents and its application is also presented. This evaluation allows us to know the obtained thematic coverage, effort and balance. It also provides information that enables the detection of numerous opportunities for the improvement in the implementation of the program.

This paper presents an adoption and adaptation of the Curriculum Guidelines for Graduate Degree Programs in Software Engineering (GSwE2009) proposed by the IEEE-CS and the ACM for the creation of a curriculum for a Master's degree in software engineering at the Universidad de la República (Uruguay). The adaptation respects the reality of information technology in Uruguay and the University's regulations. A method for evaluating contents and its application is also presented. This evaluation allows us to know the coverage obtained both thematically and in depth and also provides information that enables the detection of numerous opportunities for the improvement in the implementation of the career.

The current ACM and IEEE Computer Society recommended guidelines for graduate software engineering programs (GSwE2009) were created in 2009 by an international group of experts from industry, government and academia. We report here on some of the early experiences using GSwE2009 to create a new curriculum in software assurance and to create and/or improve 4 different academic programs in 3 countries. All of these experiences have been positive, confirming the validity and usefulness of GSwE2009.