Teaching Requirements Engineering (RE) is challenging, as it involves dealing with the complexity and abstraction of technical and business problems. Students need to learn how to properly identify requirements, document them, validate them, and communicate with various stakeholders, such as clients and technical teams, to understand what needs to be done. Traditional teaching methods often fail to engage students, making bridging theoretical concepts with practical applications difficult. This paper presents the Game Design Storytelling (GDS) process as a framework to gamify educational experiences in RE. GDS integrates narrative-based game elements with learning objectives, offering a structured approach to create interactive and engaging lessons. We applied GDS in an RE class focused on creating user stories using a dystopian narrative set in a fictional world called “Cyberium.” Students were challenged to solve complex problems by developing user stories within this immersive environment. The results indicate that the gamified lesson increased student engagement and facilitated the understanding of technical concepts. The professor reported greater student interest in completing the gamified activity, and the feedback from students was positive, with some stating it was the “best class” they had in their undergraduate program, highlighting the relevance of narrative and interactivity for learning.

Micro frontend (MFE) architectures have gained significant popularity for promoting independence and modularity in development. Despite their widespread adoption, the field remains relatively unexplored, especially concerning identifying problems and documenting best practices. Drawing on both established microservice (MS) anti-patterns and the analysis of real problems faced by software development teams that adopt MFE, this paper presents a catalog of 12 MFE anti-patterns. We composed an initial version of the catalog by recognizing parallels between MS anti-patterns and recurring issues in MFE projects to map and adapt MS anti-patterns to the context of MFE. To validate the identified problems and proposed solutions, we conducted a survey with industry practitioners, collecting valuable feedback to refine the anti-patterns. Additionally, we asked participants if they had encountered these problems in practice and to rate their harmfulness on a 10-point Likert scale. The survey results revealed that participants had encountered all the proposed anti-patterns in real-world MFE architectures, with only one reported by less than 50% of participants. They stated that the catalog can serve as a valuable guide for both new and experienced developers, with the potential to enhance MFE development quality. The collected feedback led to the development of an improved version of the anti-patterns catalog. Furthermore, we developed a web application designed to not only showcase the anti-patterns but also to actively foster collaboration and engagement within the MFE community. The proposed catalog is a valuable resource for identifying and mitigating potential pitfalls in MFE development. It empowers developers of all experience levels to create more robust, maintainable, and welldesigned MFE applications.

User-centered design (UCD) is a foundational approach in software development that prioritizes users’ needs, behaviors, and expectations throughout the design process. For instance, Design Sprints effectively integrate UCD into fastpaced software development, enabling teams to fail fast, learn quickly, and refine solutions based on real user feedback. This paper explores the potential of Large Language Models (LLMs) as an integrated component of UCD methodologies, specifically within the Design Sprint framework. Our goal is to analyze how LLMs can assist designers throughout different phases of the Design Sprint, improving efficiency and aiding in developing user-centered solutions. To achieve this goal, we conducted a study with Computer Science, Software Engineering, and Design students during a course on innovative software product engineering. The study was structured into three phases: (i) theoretical instruction, (ii) practical application of the design sprint methodology with LLM integration, and (iii) presentation and discussion of the developed products. We conducted focus groups to gather insights on the participants’ experiences using an LLM as a support tool for Design Sprint activities. Our results provide insights into how LLM can be leveraged to assist in rapid product design while preserving UCD principles.

Technology is reshaping how audiences engage with events, influencing emotions, arousal, and reactions. While many studies explore audience experience, they often focus on isolated concepts within specific event contexts. Our research examines how interaction technology impacts different event scenarios using a taxonomy that connects key experience concepts. We conducted an empirical study where undergraduate students analyzed recorded events featuring technological interactions. Their qualitative reports provided practical insights, refining the taxonomy. Our findings show that the taxonomy effectively characterizes interaction technology across various event settings. This study deepens our understanding of audience experience by highlighting how technology influences emotions, immersion, collaboration, and collective engagement. These insights help researchers and event managers better understand the role of technology in shaping audience participation across different contexts.

An immersive experience is a multisensory experience across a journey or task that’s contextually relevant, enabled by a combination of interactions that create intuitive and emotional value for the user. As the technological landscape has evolved, immersive experiences have become increasingly integrated into our lives. The rise of immersive experiences comes with a focus on how to evaluate those experiences considering User Experience (UX). UX is a multifaceted construct, and its importance differs according to the type of experience. In this scenario, knowing how to evaluate UX is fundamental to understanding whether immersive experiences are pleasant. Despite some attempts to address the UX, a systematic approach to addressing UX in the immersive context still needs to be developed. This paper presents a Systematic Literature Mapping (SLM) to investigate how UX evaluations have been performed and the main UX dimensions that should be considered in immersive experiences, such as engagement, presence, and immersion. Our main result is a theoretical model that we proposed based on the UX definitions and relations from the literature. Our model can help study the relations between UX dimensions, establishing the primary UX dimensions regarding immersive experiences, and as a base for developing new UX evaluation techniques.

Context: The Systematic Literature Review (SLR) process involves searching, selecting, and synthesizing relevant literature on a specific research topic for evidence-based decision-making in Software Engineering (SE). Due to the time-consuming of the SLR process, tool support is essential. Gap: ChatGPT is a significant advancement in Natural Language Processing (NLP), and it can potentially accelerate time-consuming and propone-error activities, such as the selection activity of the SLR process. Therefore, having a tool to assist in the selection process appears beneficial, and we argue that ChatGPT can facilitate the analysis of extensive studies, saving time and effort. Objective: We aim to evaluate the accuracy (i.e., studies correctly classified) of using ChatGPT–4.0 in SLR in SE, particularly to support the first stage, based on the title, abstract, and keywords. Method: We assessed the accuracy of utilizing ChatGPT for selecting studies, the first stage, to be included in two SLRs (SLR1 and SLR2), in contrast to the conventional method of reading the title and abstract. Results: The accuracy of ChatGPT supporting the initial selection activity was 75.3% (SLR1 – 101 correct selections: 48 inclusions and 53 exclusions; 33 incorrect selections: 17 inclusions and 16 exclusions) and 86.1% (SLR2 – 386 correct selections: 113 inclusions and 273 exclusions; 62 incorrect selections: 27 inclusions and 35 exclusions). Conclusions: Our accuracy results indicate that it is not advisable to completely outsource the selection process to ChatGPT. However, it could be valuable as a support tool, aiding novice researchers or even experienced ones when they are in doubt.

Context: Systematic mapping studies (SMS) are adopted in Software Engineering (SE) to select and synthesize relevant literature on a research topic and, thus, support evidence-based decision-making. Performing SMS is effort-demanding and time-consuming. Hence, using tools is beneficial. Large Language Models (LLMs) such as ChatGPT–4.o can potentially accelerate repetitive activities, such as data extraction in SMS, saving time and effort. Goal: We conducted this work to evaluate and provide preliminary evidence on how ChatGPT–4.o can support data extraction in SMS. Method: We performed a proof-of-concept study and assessed the results’ accuracy of using ChatGPT 4.0 to extract data in one SMS compared to the results produced manually. Results: The accuracy of ChatGPT–4.o was 87.83%. Conclusions: Our preliminary findings suggest that entirely replacing the manual data extraction with ChatGPT–4.o is not recommended. However, employing ChatGPT for semi-automated data extraction to aid in evidence synthesis in SMS is promising.

Pressure for higher productivity and faster delivery is increasingly pervading software organizations. This can lead software engineers to act like chess players playing a gambit—making sacrifices of their technically sound estimates, thus submitting their teams to time pressure. In turn, time pressure can have varied detrimental effects, such as poor product quality and emotional distress, decreasing productivity, which leads to more time pressure and delays: a hard-to-stop vicious cycle. This reveals a need for moving on from the more passive strategy of yielding to pressure to a more active one of defending software estimates. Therefore, we propose an approach to support software estimators in acquiring knowledge on how to carry out such defense, by introducing negotiation principles encapsulated in a set of defense lenses, presented through a digital simulation. We evaluated the proposed approach through a controlled experiment with software practitioners from different companies. We collected data on participants' attitudes, subjective norms, perceived behavioral control, and intentions to perform the defense of their estimates in light of the Theory of Planned Behavior. We employed a frequentist and a bayesian approach to data analysis. Results show improved scores among experimental group participants after engaging with the digital simulation and learning about the lenses. They were also more inclined to choose a defense action when facing pressure scenarios than a control group exposed to questions to reflect on the reasons and outcomes of pressure over estimates. Qualitative evidence reveals that practitioners perceived the set of lenses as useful in their current work environments. Collectively, these results show the effectiveness of the proposed approach and its perceived relevance for the industry, despite the low amount of time required to engage with it.

User eXperience (UX) evaluations play an essential role in the software development process. As the results from such evaluations can drive future releases, it is necessary to identify which factors can substantially change users’ judgments about their experience to have more precise results and understand UX better. This article investigates how interaction sequencing, previous experience, and the number of problems could affect overall satisfaction and the two main UX dimensions: pragmatic and hedonic. We employed three different evaluation methods to evaluate a chatbot-based mobile shopping application. The results revealed that participants with previous experience with similar apps tended to give lower ratings. We also found that as inspectors identify more problems, they tend to rate the pragmatic dimension lower. Finally, we did not identify a significant influence of interaction sequencing on UX evaluation. We discuss the reasons for these results, the implications for practitioners and researchers, and research opportunities.

Software bots automate tasks within Open Source Software (OSS) projects' pull requests and save reviewing time and effort ("the good"). However, their interactions can be disruptive and noisy and lead to information overload ("the bad"). To identify strategies to overcome such problems, we applied Design Fiction as a participatory method with 32 practitioners. We elicited 22 design strategies for a bot mediator or the pull request user interface ("the promising"). Participants envisioned a separate place in the pull request interface for bot interactions and a bot mediator that can summarize and customize other bots' actions to mitigate noise. We also collected participants' perceptions about a prototype implementing the envisioned strategies. Our design strategies can guide the development of future bots and social coding platforms.

Together with many success stories, promises such as the increase in production speed and the improvement in stakeholders’ collaboration have contributed to making agile a transformation in the software industry in which many companies want to take part. However, driven either by a natural and expected evolution or by contextual factors that challenge the adoption of agile methods as prescribed by their creator(s), software processes in practice mutate into hybrids over time. Are these still agile? In this article, we investigate the question: what makes a software development method agile? We present an empirical study grounded in a large-scale international survey that aims to identify software development methods and practices that improve or tame agility. Based on 556 data points, we analyze the perceived degree of agility in the implementation of standard project disciplines and its relation to used development methods and practices. Our findings suggest that only a small number of participants operate their projects in a purely traditional or agile manner (under 15 percent). That said, most project disciplines and most practices show a clear trend towards increasing degrees of agility. Compared to the methods used to develop software, the selection of practices has a stronger effect on the degree of agility of a given discipline. Finally, there are no methods or practices that explicitly guarantee or prevent agility. We conclude that agility cannot be defined solely at the process level. Additional factors need to be taken into account when trying to implement or improve agility in a software company. Finally, we discuss the field of software process-related research in the light of our findings and present a roadmap for future research.

Success in Open Source Software (OSS) is often perceived as an exclusively code-centric endeavor. This perception can exclude a variety of individuals with a diverse set of skills and backgrounds, in turn helping exacerbate the current diversity & inclusion imbalance in OSS. Because one's perspective of success can affect one's personal, professional, and life choices, to support a diverse class of individuals we must first understand how OSS contributors understand success. Thus far, research has used a uni-dimensional, code-centric lens to define success. In this paper, we challenge this status quo to reveal OSS contributors’ multifaceted definitions of success. We do so through interviews with 27 OSS contributors whose communities recognize them as successful, and a follow-up open survey with 193 OSS contributors. Our study provides nuanced definitions of success perceptions in OSS, which might help devise strategies to attract and retain a diverse set of contributors, helping them attain their unique “pot of gold at the end of the rainbow”.

There is a rapidly increasing amount of Artificial Intelligence (AI) systems developed in recent years, with much expectation on its capacity of innovation and business value generation. However, the promised value of AI systems in specific business contexts might not be understood, and further integrated into the development processes. We wanted to understand how software engineering processes and practices can be applied to develop AI systems in a fast-faced, business-driven manner. As the first step, we explored contextual factors of AI development and the connections between AI developments to business opportunities. We conducted 12 semi-structured interviews in seven companies in Brazil, Norway and Southeast Asia. Our investigation revealed different types of AI systems and different AI development approaches. However, it is common that business opportunities involving with AI systems are not validated and there is lack of business-driven metrics that guide the development of AI systems. The findings have implications for future research on business-driven AI development and supporting tools and practices.

The adoption of Continuous Deployment (CD) aims at allowing software systems to quickly evolve to accommodate new features. However, structural changes to the database schema are frequent and may incur in systems' services downtime. This encompasses the proper maintenance of both schema and source code, including rewrites of all outdated queries that use the same database. Previous solutions try to mitigate the burdening task of manually rewriting outdated queries. Unfortunately, a software team must still interact with some tools to properly fix the affected queries. Moreover, the team still has to locate and modify all the impacted code, which are often error-prone tasks. Thus, a project may not experience CD benefits when changes impact various code regions. In this paper we present an alternative approach, called LESSQL, whose goal is to improve queries' stability in the presence of structural schema changes over time. LESSQL supports queries that are less dependent on the database schema since they do not include the FROM clause. An underlying framework intercepts each LESSQL query and generates a corresponding SQL query for the current schema. It also locates the query attributes in the current schema and generates proper expressions to join the required tables. LESSQL supports unsupervised, supervised and hybrid configurations to process mappings of attributes to a newer schema version. We conducted experiments in the context of a popular open-source project, which experienced many diverse structural schema changes. Experiments outcomes indicate that our approach is effective in significantly reducing the modifications required for applying schema changes, allowing to better reap the benefits of CD. While supervised and hybrid configurations achieved a success rate higher than 95% with a minor query generation overhead, the unsupervised configuration was also successful for certain types of structural schema changes. These results show that LESSQL effectively favours CD and keeps queries running after database schema changes without services interruption.

Design Thinking (DT) has been chosen as an approach to support problem-solving by many software development companies. However, there are divergences between the professionals of these companies concerning which techniques are performed, which steps are followed, and the way to implement this approach, as it proposes itself, to be divergent to generate numerous alternatives and, also, convergent, to find a solution. For this reason, aiming to characterize how the software companies have been implemented DT, this paper presents the results of a survey answered by 127 professionals from the Brazilian software industry. The results report a variety of scenarios in which DT has been applied: more than ten different models (sets of steps) are followed by the professionals; more than 50 techniques have been used, mainly, for meeting the needs in the process, according to the context of use and based on previous experiences. We also present 29 computational tools that, according to the respondents, assist the execution of DT, in addition to the integration with agile methods, allowing them to generate ideas and solutions, to explore and understand the problem.

In the software maintenance, business process models help practitioners understanding of the software, because it represents the organisational process in which software is embedded. BPMN (Business Process Modelling and Notation) is the standard notation for business process modelling. However, it is common for the BPMN diagrams to be outdated, which, among other possibilities, may be caused due to the lack of adequate knowledge of some practitioners about the notation. It is important to provide means to stimulate the evolution of these models and, consequently, to aid in the learning of BPMN notation. With this focus, the authors proposed and evaluated the e‐VOL BPMN, a technique that supports the evolution and the learning of BPMN diagrams. In this evaluation, they compared e‐VOL BPMN with the BPMN 2.0 Poster, an artefact used commonly to support BPMN notation in companies. Participants who used the e‐VOL BPMN in a scenario of diagrams evolution presented more correct BPMN diagrams and had a higher learning perception of the notation. In addition, in a written exam on BPMN notation, participants who used e‐VOL BPMN scored higher. From these results, they notice that e‐VOL BPMN support both evolution and learning of BPMN diagrams.

Interaction models specify the structure and content of the user interface, the allowed user actions, and the corresponding system responses. There is a need to inspect interaction models, as it avoids the propagation of defects to other artefacts. We created two inspection techniques for interaction models, called MoLVERIC Cards (MCards) and MoLVERIC Check (MCheck). MCards employs a gamification mechanism to motivate practitioners during the inspection. MCheck is a simple technique to be used by practitioners in a traditional way. Both techniques have questions, whose answers assist in identifying defects. We performed three studies to verify whether these techniques support the inspection of interaction models. In the first and second studies, we evaluated MCards and MCheck in comparison with an ad‐hoc technique supported by the conventional inspection approach based on defect types. The results of these studies showed that both techniques support the inspection of interaction models. In the third study, we evaluated MCard in comparison with MCheck to understand the participants'; perceptions of both techniques. The study results showed that MCards was considered more suitable for practitioners interested in using dynamic activities, while MCheck was considered more suitable for practitioners who want to use a more traditional technique.

The development of systems with different features becomes increasingly challenging, given the actual context, implying on the search for new approaches for requirements elicitation. One of these approaches is design thinking (DT), a process of encouraging innovation used by designers, which presents itself as fundamental in the success of new products. This scenario motivates the importance of knowing DT concepts and their techniques, which can support requirements elicitation. In this context, the authors present DTA4RE (DT assistant for requirements elicitation), a tool that suggests DT techniques for requirements elicitation, which can be used by both students and professionals who would like to adopt DT in their projects. The DTA4RE is composed of a set of 27 techniques that could be suggested to the user through a recommendation questionnaire as well as an open repository with material to support the application of these techniques. Results from the authors’ two empirical studies with software engineering undergraduate and graduate students and industry professionals indicate that DTA4RE has helped in the selection of and in the learning of DT techniques when considering real problems. Most participants considered the questions from the recommendation questionnaire easy to answer, and the techniques suggested by the tool useful.

Background: Software development teams adopt various communication tools to support coordination and team interaction during the software development process. Among many other communication channels, developers' use instant messaging to discuss ideas, decisions and other project related issues with team members. Due to the informal nature of instant messaging, many of these discussions and decisions are lost. This situation could be even more critical in startups and other software companies that rely more heavily on instant message tools or other informal communication channels.Aims: This work investigates the effectiveness of using a semiautomatic approach for identifying, extracting, and determining a project's lost knowledge that was discussed using unstructured communication tools such as instant message.Methodology: We employed data-mining techniques to automatically retrieve discussions from instant message logs and showed them to the project managers to identify lost knowledge from two startup companies.Results: Our results demonstrate that the data-mining technique was capable of retrieving sentences with relevant issues discussion; reaching a precision of 75% at the first 10 relevant sentences evaluated. Moreover, the qualitative analysis conducted involving project managers shows an association of retrieved sentences with the project's lost knowledge.Conclusion: Our findings indicate that automated approaches can be used to identify such lost knowledge in software development projects. Follow-up interviews revealed the interest of PMs in adopting such automated tools in other projects.

Background: The number of Machine Learning (ML) systems developed in the industry is increasing rapidly. Since ML systems are different from traditional systems, these differences are clearly visible in different activities pertaining to ML systems software development process. These differences make the Software Engineering (SE) activities more challenging for ML systems because not only the behavior of the system is data dependent, but also the requirements are data dependent. In such scenario, how can Software Engineering better support the development of ML systems? Aim: Our objective is twofold. First, better understand the process that developers use to build ML systems. Second, identify the main challenges that developers face, proposing ways to overcome these challenges. Method: We conducted interviews with seven developers from three software small companies that develop ML systems. Based on the challenges uncovered, we proposed a set of checklists to support the developers. We assessed the checklists by using a focus group. Results: We found that the ML systems development follow a 4-stage process in these companies. These stages are: understanding the problem, data handling, model building, and model monitoring. The main challenges faced by the developers are: identifying the clients' business metrics, lack of a defined development process, and designing the database structure. We have identified in the focus group that our proposed checklists provided support during identification of the client's business metrics and in increasing visibility of the progress of the project tasks. Conclusions: Our research is an initial step towards supporting the development of ML systems, suggesting checklists that support developers in essential development tasks, and also serve as a basis for future research in the area.

Business process models help understand the organizational process and the software that supports it.BPMN (Business Process Modeling and Notation) is the standard notation for business process modeling, and it is widely accepted in industry.BPMN models can elucidate the activities carried out by a software during its construction and maintenance.However, during the maintenance of the software that supports an organizational process, usually only the source code of the software undergoes modifications, even when inserting new features.The software design models, including the BPMN models, often become outdated over time and, in future maintenance, they will not help understand the business process in which the software is inserted and which the software aims to support.Such scenario highlights the importance of supporting the maintenance of BPMN models.However, what has been experimentally investigated regarding the maintenance of BPMN models?To answer this question, we performed a systematic mapping, which showed experimental studies, factors and technologies that influence the maintenance of BPMN models.These results present conclusions about the state of the art and gaps that can be explored in this field of research.

Requirements communication is essential in software development projects since customer needs must be communicated to the development team clearly and effectively. Although the use case (UC) specifications are used to communicate requirements in detail, developers do not always follow them. This study presents an empirical study carried out to understand the reasons why developers do not follow UC specifications and their difficulties using UC specifications in generating prototypes. Results show that the four reasons why developers fail to follow UC specifications are the existence of specification errors, ambiguous information, lack of detailed specification, or incomplete information, and due to improvement suggestions. Also, the specification defects types that impacted prototypes creation the most were an omission, ambiguity, and incorrect fact. The authors noted that 6 out of 25 (24%) defects in the UC specifications caused discrepancies in prototypes, 12 (48%) were corrected during the prototypes creation, and 7 (28%) were not propagated to the prototypes.

Requirements Engineering (RE) has established itself as a software engineering discipline over the past decades. While researchers have been investigating the RE discipline with a plethora of empirical studies, attempts to systematically derive an empirical theory in context of the RE discipline have just recently been started. However, such a theory is needed if we are to define and motivate guidance in performing high quality RE research and practice. We aim at providing an empirical and externally valid foundation for a theory of RE practice, which helps software engineers establish effective and efficient RE processes in a problem-driven manner. We designed a survey instrument and an engineer-focused theory that was first piloted in Germany and, after making substantial modifications, has now been replicated in 10 countries worldwide. We have a theory in the form of a set of propositions inferred from our experiences and available studies, as well as the results from our pilot study in Germany. We evaluate the propositions with bootstrapped confidence intervals and derive potential explanations for the propositions. In this article, we report on the design of the family of surveys, its underlying theory, and the full results obtained from the replication studies conducted in 10 countries with participants from 228 organisations. Our results represent a substantial step forward towards developing an empirical theory of RE practice. The results reveal, for example, that there are no strong differences between organisations in different countries and regions, that interviews, facilitated meetings and prototyping are the most used elicitation techniques, that requirements are often documented textually, that traces between requirements and code or design documents are common, that requirements specifications themselves are rarely changed and that requirements engineering (process) improvement endeavours are mostly internally driven. Our study establishes a theory that can be used as starting point for many further studies for more detailed investigations. Practitioners can use the results as theory-supported guidance on selecting suitable RE methods and techniques.

Background: Aligning IT to business goals is a top priority for CIOs. However, managers in the IT Service Industry face difficulties to define and monitor IT service goals and strategies aligned to business goals. Goal: We carried out a study to investigate how IT service managers define, measure and monitor IT service goals and strategies, and the difficulties they have faced in this context. Method: We interviewed five IT service managers from four service provider organizations and used coding procedures to analyze the collected data. Results: We obtained information about how organizations define, measure and evaluate IT service goals and strategies and, from the difficulties reported by the managers, we identified 19 pitfalls. Conclusions: By analyzing the relations among the pitfalls, we defined five hypotheses: (i) lack of awareness and transparency on the relationship between strategies and goals may harm the achievement of IT service goals and strategies, (ii) lack of proper support to execute measurement inhibits reevaluation and adjustment of strategies and indicators related to IT service goals, (iii) lack of motivation can jeopardize decision-making by IT service managers, (iv) conflicts between strategies may harm IT service goals achievement, and (v) lack of proper support to execute IT service management initiatives may harm IT service goals achievement.

Communication failures in software development teams can compromise the software quality.Therefore, identifying and mitigating risks for effective team communication are important activities in software development.Software models are one of the means of communication in development teams, because it communicates other members of the development team about the software.Thus, our research focuses on inspection techniques for identifying defects that affect the team communication through the software models.This paper presents a family of techniques for inspecting defects that affect team communication, called ComD2 (Communication between Designers and Developers).The ComD2 family was developed based on theories that investigate different ways of communication.For the time being, the ComD2 family has three specific inspection techniques for UML models, such as class diagrams, activity diagrams, and state machine diagrams.We performed a feasibility study and the results showed that the ComD2 family was considered useful for the identification of defects that affect the team communication through the software models.

User experience (UX) is a quality aspect of an application that considers the emotions evoked by the system.There are several types of UX evaluation methods, such as scales, interviews, user monitoring, among others methods.However, there is still not enough information regarding if and in which contexts these methods are more suitable.This paper focuses on finding more information about the feasibility of applying scaletype methods for the UX evaluation in interactive systems.Thus, we carried out a UX evaluation on the Edmodo educational mobile application employing two scale-type methods: AttrakDiff and Hedonic Utility Scale.These methods were chosen after a selection process applying inclusion and exclusion criteria.The results indicate that it is possible to evaluate the quality of an application at a low cost.However, it is necessary to adapt these methods to provide a more complete report of the UX, allowing users to subjectively report their experiences and, consequently, identify the issues that affected the UX.

Software organizations need to increase their productivity to stay competitive.Although there is a lot of research on productivity in software development, software organizations still do not know what are the most significant productivity factors in which they should invest.This paper presents a Tertiary Literature Review (TLR) that aimed to identify and analyze Systematic Literature Reviews (SLR) on the influence factors of software productivity reported in the scientific literature.We extracted and classified the influence factors into organizational factors (organizational dependent factors) and human factors (people dependent factors).Using this information, software organizations can improve the productivity of their projects by evaluating the influence factors that best fit their context.

Front-end interface and user-system interaction are factors that must be carefully considered in software development due to their influence in quality of use.On some occasions, it is the first concern addressed by developers, as it comes naturally from the requirements analysis performed with stakeholders.IFML is a standard language of OMG that supports the abstract description of these front-end interfaces, for software applications on different devices.IFML has been used in the context of Model-Driven Development (MDD) and Model-Driven Architecture (MDA) to describe the elements and behavior of interfaces, aiming to generate code for those interfaces.However, it is necessary to investigate the use of IFML in traditional software development, in order to better understand how it is used for modeling front-end interfaces.This article presents an empirical study that aimed to verify the quality of IFML models created based on a subset of requirements of software two web applications.The quality was defined in terms of models' correctness and completeness.The results showed that the correctness of the models was low, varying from 51% to 55%, while the completeness varied from 66% to 69%.In order to better understand the results, we analyzed syntactic and semantic defects found.

Software organizations need to increase their productivity to stay competitive. Although there is a lot of research on productivity in software development, software organizations still do not know what are the most significant productivity factors in which they should invest. This paper presents a Tertiary Literature Review (TLR) that aims to identify and analyze Systematic Literature Reviews (SLR) on the influence factors of software productivity reported in the scientific literature. We extracted and classified the influence factors into organizational factors (organizational-dependent factors) and human factors (people-dependent factors). The relevance of the factors was extracted according to the amount of references found in the secondary studies. Using this information, software organizations can improve the productivity of their projects by evaluating the influence factors that best fit their context.

Unified Modeling Language (UML) is a modeling standard that has been commonly used in the software industry. However, students face difficulties while learning how to model complete and correct UML diagrams. One of the reasons is the way UML has been taught. In order to improve the effectiveness of learning it is necessary to employ methods in which the students actively take part in the learning process. This paper describes an empirical study that evaluates two teaching methods: Problem Based Learning (PBL) and Learning from Erroneous Examples (ErrEx). We compared these methods by assessing the degree of correctness and completeness of the produced diagrams. We analyzed students' perceptions about each method. The quantitative results showed that the diagrams created using both methods presented similar level of correctness and completeness. The qualitative results showed that students found PBL easier when learning UML diagrams. Results showed that students found PBL easier when learning UML diagrams.

GQM+Strategies is a goal-oriented measurement approach that supports organizations in identifying goals, strategies to achieve goals, and measures to monitor strategies and goals. However, identifying proper strategies is not an easy task. This paper presents two studies performed to investigate how strategies can be established to achieve IT service goals. First, we carried out a qualitative study involving three IT service-related departments of a large company to find out how they have been defining strategies and problems faced. We noted that strategies were defined by leaders, in a top-down approach, or by teams, in a bottom-up approach, and causal analysis techniques have been used to investigate aspects which can impact goals achievement. We also found the relation between the IT service strategies and goals was not clear for the teams. Considering these findings, we performed an empirical study in another IT-service related department applying an approach combining GQM+Strategies plus some instruments (checklists, templates and examples) and causal analysis to support IT strategies identification. As a result, we noticed that by using that approach the team was able to derive IT strategies based on goals, define measures to monitor goals and strategies, and better understand the alignment between the goals to be achieved and the strategies to be performed. Moreover, results showed that causal analysis is useful to define strategies and that supporting instruments facilitate using the approach and building GQM+Strategies grid.

Context -- Developers' productivity plays an important role in software development organizations; however, in many cases the management of such human capital is mainly based on how project managers perceive productivity. Therefore, it is important to investigate what these perceptions are in practice. Goal -- This study's main goal is to understand project managers' perception regarding developers' productivity. Method -- We employed a qualitative research methodology using semi-structured interviews for data collection. We interviewed 12 managers from three software development organizations in the city of Manaus (Brazil). Results -- We identified that the managers' perceptions about developers' productivity are influenced by four different factors: (1) tasks delivered on time, (2) produced artifacts that do not need rework, (3) products that meet stakeholders' expectations, and (4) personal behavior such as focus and proactivity. Conclusions -- This qualitative study shows a perception of developers' productivity different from that presented in other research papers, and suggests that human factors play an important role in managers' perceptions about productivity. Future work will investigate how these perceptions concretely influence developers' productivity, and how they relate to the existing developers' productivity factors in the literature.

Community-based Open Source Software (OSS) projects are usually self-organized and dynamic, receiving contributions from distributed volunteers. Newcomer are important to the survival, long-term success, and continuity of these communities. However, newcomers face many barriers when making their first contribution to an OSS project, leading in many cases to dropouts. Therefore, a major challenge for OSS projects is to provide ways to support newcomers during their first contribution. In this paper, we propose and evaluate FLOSScoach, a portal created to support newcomers to OSS projects. FLOSScoach was designed based on a conceptual model of barriers created in our previous work. To evaluate the portal, we conducted a study with 65 students, relying on qualitative data from diaries, self-efficacy questionnaires, and the Technology Acceptance Model. The results indicate that FLOSScoach played an important role in guiding newcomers and in lowering barriers related to the orientation and contribution process, whereas it was not effective in lowering technical barriers. We also found that FLOSScoach is useful, easy to use, and increased newcomers' confidence to contribute. Our results can help project maintainers on deciding the points that need more attention in order to help OSS project newcomers overcome entry barriers.

Conveying a positive User eXperience (UX) is essential for the success of any application, as it affects use a product.Nevertheless, novice software engineers may have difficulties in finding an appropriate solution for UX problems due to their lack of knowledge in interface design.User interface design patterns are well-working solutions to user problems that occur repeatedly which can help new developers solve interface problems.Although several studies investigated the effectiveness of applying design patterns in real development projects, few studies evaluate the difficulties that novice software engineers face when applying user interface design patterns for the first time.To understand how novice software engineers apply design patterns in the correction of UX problems, we carried out an empirical study with four small novice development teams redesigning mobile applications interfaces.We collected data on factors affecting the applicability of the employed design patterns, through questionnaires.Our results suggest that novice software engineers find this type of patterns useful but require means to find and select an adequate pattern to solve a problem.

Usability and UX (User eXperience) are some of the most important factors for evaluating the quality of mobile applications.They focus on how easy to use an application is and the emotions that such use evokes.However, these aspects are often evaluated separately in industry through different evaluation techniques.Although it is possible to identify more usability and UX problems by employing different UX and usability evaluation methods, this distributed approach may not be cost effective and may not allow to thoroughly explore the identified issues.In order to support the identification of both UX and usability problems in a single evaluation, we have proposed Userbility, an UX and usability inspection technique that allows evaluating these aspects in mobile applications.This paper presents an empirical study over the second version of Userbility to verify its feasibility.In this study, we compared Userbility with the UX and Usability Guidelines Approach (UUGA) that helps the evaluation of usability and UX separately in mobile applications.According to the quantitative results, considering efficiency, UUGA was better than the Userbility technique.However, the qualitative results suggest that Userbility pointed more improvement suggestions, which could be useful for redesigning the evaluated application.

Newcomers' seamless onboarding is important for online communities that depend upon leveraging the contribution of outsiders. Previous studies investigated aspects of the joining process and motivation in open collaboration communities, but few have focused on identifying and understanding the critical barriers newcomers face when placing their first contribution, a period that frequently leads to dropout. This is important for Open Source Software (OSS) projects, which receive contributions from many one-time contributors. Focusing on OSS, our study qualitatively analyzed social barriers that hindered newcomers' first contributions. We defined a conceptual model composed of 58 barriers including 13 social barriers. The barriers were identified from a qualitative data analysis considering different sources: a systematic literature review; open question responses gathered from OSS projects' contributors; students contributing to OSS projects; and semi-structured interviews with 36 developers from 14 different projects. This paper focuses on social barriers and its contributions include gathering empirical evidence of the barriers faced by newcomers, organizing and better understanding these barriers, surveying the literature from the perspective of the barriers, and identifying new potential research streams.

A Use Case Model is composed of use cases that describe software functionalities through Use Case Specifications. The evaluation of the specifications that compose such a model can allow for an early identification of usability defects. We previously proposed MIT 1-Model Inspection Technique for Usability Evaluation that aims to support the identification of usability defects through the evaluation of use cases specifications. In this paper, we present the evaluation of this technique through a controlled experiment that measured its efficiency, effectiveness, perceived ease of use, and perceived usefulness when compared to the Use Case Evaluation (UCE) method. Our quantitative findings indicate that MIT 1 allows users to find more usability defects in less time than UCE. However, UCE was considered easiest to use and more useful than MIT 1, highlighting improvement needs for MIT 1.

Usability is related to software quality, improving its ability to be understood, operated and attractive to users.We proposed the Design Usability Evaluation (DUE) technologies to allow identifying usability problems earlier in the development of Web applications, through the inspection of mockups.While we found that the DUE technique and tool were effective and efficient in the identification of usability problems, we saw the need to investigate their acceptance in practitioners' work environment.This paper reports the results from a study evaluating the acceptance of the DUE technologies from the point of view of software engineers.We asked questions based on the indicators from the Technology Acceptance Model and identified that a majority of the software engineers who participated in the study: (a) found the DUE technologies useful and easy to use for supporting the usability inspection process; and (b) would regularly use the DUE technologies for future inspections in their job.Nevertheless, the practitioners indicated that the technique should be refined in order to reduce the ambiguity and repetition of some of its items, while the tool should become more intuitive.

User Experience (UX) is one of the most important attributes for the success and quality of a software product.UX explores how a person uses an application, and the emotional and behavioral consequences of such use.Although several UX evaluation methods allow gathering information on the reasons for a poor UX, some of them tend to make users feel uncomfortable, such as asking direct questions to shy users.This paper presents our proposal for evaluating UX, the Method for the Assessment of eXperience (MAX), which through cards and a board intends to motivate users to report their experience.The MAX method does not require experienced evaluators for performing the evaluation.Instead, this method is intended at software engineers willing to obtain data on UX and make users feel comfortable during the evaluation.To verify the feasibility of the MAX method from the point of view of users, we conducted a pilot study.The results showed that the MAX method has proven useful for evaluating the UX of finished or prototyped software applications.Also, we have made improvements in the method to meet users' needs when reporting their experience, and gathering data on factors affecting the UX.

A software product's acceptance depends on the user experience that it provides to its users.The software product must meet the user needs, and one way to understand those needs is through creation of Personas.The Personas technique allows describing the users' characteristics, goals and skills.The Empathy Map (EM) method can be used to describe personas.The EM's goal is to create a degree of empathy with the user so the product developing team starts to understand more deeply the users and become more aware of their real needs.To assess the EM effects on the creation of personas, we conducted a feasibility study with 20 subjects.Initially, the subjects learned how to describe personas in textual form.After that, they applied the EM to create personas.After using the EM, the subjects answered a questionnaire about their perceptions regarding the EM's ease of use and its usefulness.The results showed that majority of subjects considered EM useful and easy to create personas.Furthermore, this majority also said that they would use the EM for the creation of personas again.

Context] Many software projects fail due to problems in requirements engineering (RE).[Objective] The goal of this paper is to gather information on relevant RE problems and to represent knowledge on their most common causes.[Method] We replicated a global family of RE surveys in Brazil and used the data to identify critical RE problems and to build probabilistic causeeffect diagrams to represent knowledge on their common causes.[Results] The survey was answered by 74 different organizations, including small, medium and very large sized companies, conducting both, plan-driven and agile development.The most critical RE problems, according to those organizations, are related to communication and to incomplete or underspecified requirements.We provide the full probabilistic cause-effect diagrams with knowledge on common causes of the most critical identified RE problems online.[Conclusion] We believe that the knowledge presented in the diagrams can be helpful to support organizations in conducting causal analysis sessions by providing an initial understanding on what usually causes critical RE problems.

During interaction design, interaction models are developed to help design adequate user interaction with the system.MoLIC (Modeling Language for Interaction as Conversation) is a language used to represent an interaction model, which can then be used as a basis for building other artifacts, such as mockups.However, inspections are necessary to verify whether the MoLIC diagrams are complete, consistent, unambiguous, and contain few or no defects, to avoid propagating preventable defects to derived artifacts.In this paper, we present MoLVERIC, a technique for the inspection of MoLIC diagrams that uses cards with verification items and employs principles of gamification.Furthermore, we discuss the results of a pilot study conducted to analyze the feasibility of this technique.

Usability inspections can be employed in early phases of the software development process.They improve usability through artifacts that are built during the development of the software.These artifacts will influence the usability of the developed software.Usability inspection techniques have been proposed and considered as an effective alternative for addressing usability issues in early phases.However, these techniques are often avoided by software engineers due to their lack of experience and knowledge in the field.Therefore, there is an opportunity to investigate how industry practitioners have employed an early usability inspection technique in practice.This paper describes an observational study in the industry aimed at eliciting the process used by software engineers when applying an early usability inspection technique.We analyzed the qualitative data, discussing their impact in the improvement of the technique.The results indicated which steps the software engineers adopted in the technique's application.

Collaborative Systems go beyond user-system interaction, allowing users to cooperate, coordinate and communicate with each other. To support model-based design for collaborative systems, we propose an extension to the Modeling Language for Interaction as Conversation (MoLIC), allowing designers to represent user influences, cooperative tasks and awareness mechanisms to design collaboration. In this paper, we present a case study to evaluate the extended MoLIC during interpretation and design tasks performed by 12 undergraduate students. Our results point to a good acceptance of the extension, but defects introduced in the models indicate that some concepts were not very easy to understand as they were presented to participants.

User Experience (UX) is an important attribute for the success and quality of a software application. UX explores how an application is used and the emotional and behavioral consequences of such use. Although several UX evaluation methods allow understanding the reasons for a poor UX, some of them are tedious or too intrusive, making the evaluation unpleasant. This paper presents the Method for the Assessment of eXperience (MAX), which through cards and a board assists software engineers in gathering UX data while motivating users to report their experience. We conducted two pilot studies to verify the feasibility of MAX, which showed that the method is useful for evaluating the UX of finished/prototyped applications from the point of view of users and software engineers.

Background: Effort estimation is the key for efficiently managing Web projects and achieving their success. In order to correctly estimate, it is necessary to have a broad knowledge of the factors that influence effort estimation in Web projects. Aim: In this research we aim to increase the understanding of Web effort estimation by using a set of factors identified in literature along with the knowledge from experts in effort estimation. Method: We have gathered data from two different sources: (a) our previous work, in which we applied Grounded Theory procedures to identify factors that influence Web effort estimation from the point of view of Web project estimation experts; and (b) a Systematic Literature Review (SLR) extension, in which we identified factors reported in research papers. We have used the qualitative results from these sources to make comparisons and draw conclusions on factors affecting Web effort estimation. Results: We identified a total of 90 factors that influence effort estimation in Web projects. From this set, 30 factors were identified only in the qualitative study with experts in effort estimation, not being present in the SLR extension. Conclusions: By integrating the factors found in both our qualitative study with effort estimation experts and the SLR extension, we managed to create a comprehensive list of factors influencing effort estimation. Also, this set can be a starting point in the proposal of effort estimation models. Finally, the results from our comparison can be considered an indication that it is necessary to increase the employment of qualitative research to capture evidences regarding the current state of practice in Software Engineering.

[Context] Experiment planners need to be aware of relevant Threats to Validity (TTVs), so they can devise effective control actions or accept the risk. [Objective] The aim of this paper is to introduce a TTV knowledge base (KB) that supports experiment planners in identifying relevant TTVs in their research context and actions to control these TTVs. [Method] We identified requirements, designed and populated a TTV KB with data extracted during a systematic review: 63 TTVs and 149 control actions from 206 peer-reviewed published software engineering experiments. We conducted an initial proof of concept on the feasibility of using the TTV KB and analyzed its content. [Results] The proof of concept and content analysis provided indications that experiment planners can benefit from an extensible TTV KB for identifying relevant TTVs and control actions in their specific context. [Conclusions] The TTV KB should be further evaluated and evolved in a variety of software engineering contexts.

Communication and collaboration skills are very important for Software Engineering practitioners. The practitioner who possesses these skills, as well as solid technical knowledge, will possibly perform his activities in a more efficient way. Generally, people acquire these skills through experience. However what can happen when we emphasize training this kind of skills during Software Engineering courses? Practitioners might get better prepared to the market expectations in lesser time, which could reduce training costs in the industry. In this paper we present an observational study aiming to allow a better understanding on how can communication and collaboration skills be improved by using Distributed Software Development (DSD). In the literature, we found previous researches that indicate a relationship between DSD and the improvement of skills. We use these researches as basis for our study. After a qualitative analysis of the data, we identified that, in the context of our experiment, the use of DSD in classroom accelerated the adoption of communication and collaboration practices and it can improve these skills.

Context: Reliable effort estimation is essential for better management of Web projects, hence the need to identify what are the key factors that affect effort estimates for new Web projects and how they are inter-related. Objective: This paper improves our understanding of Web effort estimation using as basis the knowledge of Web effort estimation experts. Method: We employed qualitative research with the participation of four different Web development companies in Manaus (Brazil) using semi-structured interviews for data collection; our data analysis was carried out using Grounded Theory-based procedures to identify and combine factors affecting the estimation effort of Web projects. Results: We identified four main groupings (categories) of factors - Web project, Web development complexity, Web development team, and Clients. Each of these groupings contains a set of factors that impact upon Web effort estimation. Conclusions: This is the first time that qualitative research is employed in the field of Web effort estimation to further understand and help improve this process. In addition, some of the factors found had never been identified in any of the previous studies in this field, thus suggesting that the use of Grounded Theory-based procedures may provide a way to enrich our understanding of the phenomenon under investigation via the identification of factors that overlap and also complement those from previous studies.

Context: During the planning phase of an experiment, the threats to validity must be identified in order to assess their impact over the data. In addition, the actions to address these threats must be defined (if possible). Objective: This paper proposes a conceptual model which contains the relationships between threats to validity and actions to address them. Method: A Systematic Literature Review was conducted to collect data for building the conceptual model. We identified 166 papers published in nine journals and four conferences that reported threats to validity in controlled experiments. Results: We identified 39 threats to internal validity (95 actions to address them), 9 to external validity (23 actions to address them), 10 to construct validity (21 actions to address them), and 8 to conclusion validity (19 actions to address them). Conclusion: By presenting this conceptual model, we intend to assist novice researchers in identifying and addressing the threats to validity of empirical studies.

An adequate task allocation plan is an effective strategy to reduce collaboration issues in distributed software development. Practitioners adopt distinct processes to allocate tasks as well as diverse labels for the same activities and artifacts. This diversity is also found in literature. Task allocation proposals consider different elements and use distinct names for the same concepts. The lack of a standardized vocabulary and of an understanding of the elements involved impairs knowledge acquisition and sharing. Our paper presents a domain ontology to represent concepts related to task allocation in distributed teams. The ontology was defined based on a literature systematic mapping and on the opinion of experts. Preliminary evaluation suggests that the relationships among concepts are valid in real projects. The ontology brings awareness to managers regarding the factors related to task allocation planning and provides researchers with a framework to define processes and design tools to support such activity.

Usability is one of the most important software qualities regarding its acceptability by end users. It is even more important in the context of Web applications. One way of evaluating applications usability is through inspections. The WDP (Web Design Perspectives-based Usability Evaluation) is a usability inspection technique presenting evidence of industrial use feasibility; however the need for some computerized support was suggested by its users. Therefore, the WDP Tool was built aiming to provide automated support to the application of the WDP technique, reducing the effort involved in usability inspections with WDP. This paper presents two observational studies regarding the use of the WDP Tool, which aimed to analyze the cost-effectiveness of its application and its appropriateness to the industrial environment through the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM). The results provide feasibility indication of using the WDP Tool to support usability inspections in real software development projects in industry.

In the area of requirements engineering there are elicitation techniques that are based on business context to identify the software requirements. However, these techniques do not commonly use business processes models as a source of information relevant to the elicitation of requirements. Such techniques extract use cases from business processes models. However, before modeling use cases, it is important to produce a document with functional and non-functional requirements and business rules. Therefore, this work proposes a new technique to aid extracting the requirements from business process diagrams: the REMO (Requirements Elicitation oriented by business process MOdeling) technique. This paper shows that, through the use of empirical studies, it was possible to obtain results that contributed to the evolution of the REMO technique. Additionally, the paper describes the qualitative analysis of the second empirical study, which used the procedures of two different methods: the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) and Grounded Theory.

Background: Understanding how to successfully deal with human and technical aspects involved in Software Process Improvement (SPI) programs is a challenging issue. Technical aspects are not enough to guarantee the success of activities. Human factors (e.g., experiences, opinions and perceptions) impact the effectiveness of SPI programs. Aim: this paper aims to improve our current understanding on how human aspects can influence SPI programs from the point of view of the professionals involved in such efforts. We compare our findings with the results of previous studies in order to analyze the different contexts in which human aspects influence SPI. Method: We conducted a qualitative study in the context of small companies involved in SPI programs in Amazonas State in Brazil based on the Brazilian Maturity Model - MPS.BR. We used semi-structural interviews with software engineers. Results: We identified findings about eleven of the fourteen investigated human aspects. We identified new characteristics that motivate actors to get involved in SPI programs. Finally, while previous research indicated that the process of individual decision making as a negative aspect, we identified this as a positive aspect. Conclusions: Despite the differences in companies' size and maturity models, our findings corroborate many of the important results of previous case studies. The consistency of the presented results with previous research in different organizations, teams, and countries suggest that these results are true for software engineering in general. However, there were differences related to the motivating factors and the perception of the individual decision making. In our study, we observed that the personality, perception and employee selection aspects were also significant to the SPI program's success. This has not been re

Opportunities for global software development are limited in those countries with a lack of English-speaking professionals. Machine translation technology is today available in the form of cross-language web services and can be embedded into multiuser and multilingual chats without disrupting the conversation flow. However, we still lack a thorough understanding of how real-time machine translation may affect communication in global software teams.

Distributed Software Development (DSD) emerged from the need to achieve geographically distant customers and currently, allows organizations have global customers and other benefits. This scenario has given rise to new Software Engineering challenges resulting from DSD particularities. Several Systematic Reviews were conducted to address these new challenges. The objective of this paper is to categorize systematic reviews conducted in DSD context. We used the systematic review method to identify SLRs (Systematic Literature Reviews) that address DSD aspects. This study is categorized as a tertiary review. Of fourteen SLRs, seven address aspects of managing distributed development. Four SLRs addressed topics of engineering process. The three remaining are related to Requirements, Design and Software Engineering Education in DSD. The topic areas covered by SLRs are limited, where the majority are focused on summarize the current knowledge concerning a research question. Despite the number of SLRs, the amount of empirical studies is relatively small.

Given the growth in the number and size of Web Applications worldwide, Web quality assurance, and more specifically Web usability have become key success factors. Therefore, this work proposes a usability evaluation technique based on the combination of Web design perspectives adapted from existing literature, and heuristics. This new technique is assessed using a controlled experiment aimed at measuring the efficiency and effectiveness of our technique, in comparison to Nielsen's heuristic evaluation. Results indicated that our technique was significantly more effective than and as efficient as Nielsen's heuristic evaluation.