Abstract Software Ecosystem (SECO) comprises third‐party developers cooperating and competing when contributing to a platform provided by a central organization (keystone). There are keystones investing in Developer Relations (DevRel) internal team as a global business strategy to attract and engage a critical mass of third‐party developers in producing and evolving contributions. For this reason, the DevRel team should promote social relationships among SECO actors and synergy among keystone' goals and developers' expectations to survive to inherit changes. However, the understanding of DevRel structure and the way DevRel team can act on a SECO to better engage the developers' communities establishing a robust VCN (Value Creation Network) remain a challenge. In this article, we advance on the structure for developers' governance from DevRel by proposing and refining a model because of the following research methods: grey literature review, opinion survey, and interviews. The model is called DevGo (DEVeloper GOVernance) and consists of four focus areas, three developer advancement phases, six stages, enablers, and value transfer objects. In addition, a set of 62 lessons learned from DevRel practitioners is associated with DevGo stages.

Software Ecosystem (SECO) comprises third-party developers cooperating and competing when contributing to a platform provided by a central organization (keystone). A keystone has invested in a Developer Relations (DevRel) internal team as a global business strategy to attract and engage a critical mass of third-party developers in producing and evolving contributions. For this reason, the DevRel team should promote social relationships among SECO actors and synergy among keystone' goals and developers' expectations. It can help to establish and sustain a competitive value creation network (VCN) within a SECO that must survive to inherit changes. However, it is still a challenge the way DevRel team can act on a SECO to better engage the developers' communities aiming to establish a robust VCN. In this paper, we advance on investigating the perceptions of 31 DevRel practitioners from large, medium and small-size companies based on seven countries about value creation in DevRel. We found 55 elements of value creation distributed in retention, efficiency, innovation, and complementarity. Based on our analysis, we contribute with a set of seven insights (feedback loop, loyalty program, roadmap enhancement, technical training, processes restructuring, innovative products, cost reducing) and a DevRel VCN that involves elements, suppliers and consumers. It fosters a common perspective for DevRel practitioners, keystones and researchers for designing strategies and a research roadmap.

Testing is a very essential activity for software development. It is the act of executing a software product in order to validate whether it behaves as intended and identify possible malfunctions. Studies have shown that testing makes up more than 50% of the development cost. Besides, much effort and emphasis have now been placed on tasks related to automation with the purpose of reducing cost and the participation of the human element in software testing activities. Testing is still a human-based activity. Therefore, efficient ways of testing software products for quality assurance will require a better and more comprehensive understanding of testers' feelings, perceptions and motivations, in this paper referred to as Tester Experience (TX). Thus, the better the tester's experience during the software testing process, the better the result. TX can be defined as a means of capturing how testers think and feel about their activities within the software testing environment, with the assumption that an improvement of the tester's experience has positive impact on quality assurance. This paper motivates the importance of TX, highlights related approaches from other domains, proposes a definition based on similar concepts in other domains, and proposes future research activities.

In a Mobile Software Ecosystem (MSECO), the central organization (keystone), must restructure processes to aid external developers to produce mobile applications.The external developer helps the keystone to reach goals, such as growing number of mobile applications.However, there is no process in this context to support developers in the development aligned with the keystone's goals.This paper presents MSECO-DEV, a process to support external developers in reaching keystone's goals by developing mobile applications.MSECO-DEV comprises 8 activities, 7 artifacts, 8 recommendations, and 17 practices.Activities, recommendations, and practices were evaluated by 65 Brazilian developers (experts and novices).Such developers acted within the main MSECOs (Android, iOS and Windows Phone) to assess their benefits for the mobile applications development routine.As result, we stated that developers have difficulties to perform marketing activities, as well as to find materials that support development.Practices, activities, and recommendations were also evolved and adjusted for the definition of MSECO-DEV.

The development of mobile applications around a central software platform has been impacting the software industry. Software solutions are collaboratively built within a dynamic market, often requiring adaptation of software development processes. This trend has been broadly studied as Software Ecosystem (SECO) - in the mobile platform domain, named as Mobile Software Ecosystem (MSECO). In this paper, we share the results of a systematic mapping study on the MSECO field that analyzed 28 papers identified as relevant to answer our research questions. The results indicate the growing interest in this research field as well as the main software platforms and trending topics. We confirmed the three main MSECOs as Android (Google), iOS (Apple) and Windows Phone (Microsoft). We observed the more investigated area is mobile app development. Finally, we highlighted the main benefits: the attracting and supporting developers, then helping developers to learn and create content and the app store that allows selling and buying processes.

Due high popularization of cloud services and the use of a wide range of mobile devices with different environments and platforms, a new model to offer software test service emerged, called Testing as a Service (TaaS). It uses cloud infrastructure to provide on-demand testing services on cloud for end users at any time. Nowadays there are many studies about different services about TaaS. Based on this scenario, we propose a framework, called Automated Mobile Testing as a Service (AM-TaaS), which offers automated test for mobile applications based on AQuA's test criteria. We performed an experiment emulating nine Android mobile devices with different characteristics in order to test the criterion "OTA Install" (automated installation of mobile applications in a device). We emulated devices under virtual machines and cloud infrastructure. Experimental results show 100% of the emulated devices could be tested using automated test cases designed in the framework for this test criterion.

Educators in emerging and developing countries face the challenge of conveying international software engineering concepts within their local contexts, cultures and environments. In Brazil, where the local software industry is domestically focused, this becomes a factor in the development and expansion of the local software industries. This paper investigates the issue of localization of software engineering education in the context of using localized examples in the teaching of an introductory software engineering course in Brazil. Results from student questionnaires illustrate that the use of examples familiar to the students' environment increased student motivation, participation and general positive perception and attitudes towards the teaching material and the learning experience. This paper contributes empirical evidence to justify further research into contextualization and localization of software engineering education.

This paper presents a framework to instantiate software technologies selection approaches by using search techniques. The software technologies selection problem (STSP) is modeled as a Combinatorial Optimization problem aiming attending different real scenarios in Software Engineering. The proposed framework works as a top-level layer over generic optimization frameworks that implement a high number of metaheuristics proposed in the technical literature, such as JMetal and OPT4J. It aims supporting software engineers that are not able to use optimization frameworks during a software project due to short deadlines and limited resources or skills. The framework was evaluated in a case study of a complex real-world software engineering scenario. This scenario was modeled as the STSP and some experiments were executed with different metaheuristics using the proposed framework. The results indicate its feasibility as support to the selection of software technologies.

The technical literature on model-based testing (MBT) offers us several techniques with different characteristics and goals. Contemporary software projects usually need to make use of different software testing techniques. However, a lack of empirical information regarding their scalability and effectiveness is observed. It makes their application difficult in real projects, increasing the technical difficulties to combine two or more MBT techniques for the same software project. In addition, current software testing selection approaches offer limited support for the combined selection of techniques. Therefore, this paper describes the conception and evaluation of an approach aimed at supporting the combined selection of MBT techniques for software projects. It consists of an evidence-based body of knowledge with 219 MBT techniques and their corresponding characteristics and a selection process that provides indicators on the level of adequacy (impact indicator) amongst MBT techniques and software projects characteristics. Results from the data analysis indicate it contributes to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of the selection process when compared to another selection approach available in the technical literature. Aiming at facilitating its use, a computerized infrastructure, evaluated into an industrial context and evolved to implement all the facilities needed to support such selection approach, is presented.

Software engineering is by nature a highly collaborative activity. However, this collaboration is more difficult when the teams are geographically separated, as several factors, such as work-time, cultural differences, communication, technical capability, among others, may impact on its success. Moreover, each activity in the software development process has specific needs in a distributed software development (DSD) environment. In this paper, we report an industrial experience of a testing team separated geographically in the context of a software project that followed an agile method. The agile testing process was adapted to deal with the DSD characteristics. As results, we observed the feasibility and success of applying distributed testing in an agile software project when dealing with aspects such as communication, coordination, collaboration, task distribution, and tests automation. The challenges, results, and lessons learned from this experience are discussed.

The selection of software technologies represents a risk factor to a software project. Therefore, using tailored software technologies to support this task can contribute to reduce the risk of inadequate choices made by software engineers. This paper presents the results of an experimental study conducted to evaluate if three dependent variables (selection time, % of correct choices, and used information) can be significantly affected by two different approaches to support the selection of model-based testing techniques. This study consists of an external replication of an experiment conducted to evaluate two approaches for the selection of testing techniques. Therefore, we present the adaptations performed in the planning and design of the experiment and the challenges observed in conducting a study replication. The results indicated that the time spent to select MBT techniques and the percentage of right selections can be affected by the approach used to select MBT techniques for different software project categories.

In this paper, we describe the planning, execution, and initial results analysis of a survey accomplished with Model Based Testing researchers and practitioners. This survey has two purposes: observing (1) which attributes could be adequate to characterize Model-based Testing Approaches and (2) what is the relevance of them when selecting MBT approaches for software projects. An initial list of attributes with their relevance has been identified. These results compose a body of knowledge regarding Model-based Testing Approaches intended to support software engineers in using MBT approaches in software projects.

Experimental studies have been used as a mechanism to acquire knowledge through a scientific approach based on measurement of phenomena in different areas. However it is hard to run such studies when they require models (simulation), produce large amount of information, and explore science in large scale. In this case, a computerized infrastructure is necessary and constitutes a complex system to be built. In this paper we discuss an experimentation environment that has being built to support large scale experimentation and scientific knowledge management in Software Engineering.