Context: Computer science, even now, attracts a small number of women, and the proportion of women in the field decreases through advancing career stages. Consequently, few women progress to Ph.D. studies in computer science after completing master’s studies. Empowering women at this stage in their careers is essential, not just for equality reasons, but to unlock untapped potential for society, industry and academia. Objective: This paper aims to identify students’ career assumptions and information related to Ph.D. studies focused on gender-based differences. We propose a program to inform female master students about Ph.D. studies that explains the process, clarifies misconceptions, and alleviates concerns. Method: An extensive survey was conducted to identify factors that encourage and discourage students from undertaking Ph.D. studies. The analysis identified statistically significant differences between those who undertook Ph.D. studies and those who did not, as well as statistically significant gender differences. A catalogue of questions to initiate discussions with potential Ph.D. students which allowed them to explore these factors was developed. These were structured into a Women’s Career Lunch program where students can explore and discuss the benefits of Ph.D. study. Results: Encouraging factors towards Ph.D. study include interest and confidence in research arising from a research involvement during earlier studies; enthusiasm for and self-confidence in computer science in addition to an interest in an academic career; encouragement from external sources; and a positive perception towards Ph.D. studies which can involve achieving personal goals. Discouraging factors include uncertainty and lack of knowledge of the Ph.D. process, a perception of lower job flexibility, and the requirement for long-term commitment. Gender differences highlighted that female students who pursue a Ph.D. have less confidence in their technical skills than males but a higher preference for interdisciplinary areas. Female students are less inclined than males to perceive the industry as offering better job opportunities and more flexible career paths than academia. Conclusions: The insights collected from the survey facilitated the development of a questions catalogue structured into the Women Career Lunch program to help students make a more informed decision concerning whether they should pursue a Ph.D. in computer science. Localised versions of this program, in 8 languages, were created to support its adoption in different countries and assist in mitigating the female under-representation challenge.

Climate change calls for action from all sectors of our global economy, including ICT. Therefore, it is important to change the way we develop software to address the challenges posed by sustainability. Our goal is to contribute with a reusable sustainability requirements catalogue that helps developers be aware of sustainability-related properties worth considering during software development. The information for this catalogue was gathered via a systematic mapping study, whose results were synthesised in feature models and then modelled using iStar for a more expressive and configurable representation. A qualitative evaluation of the catalogue’s readability, interest, utility, and usefulness by 50 participants from the domain, showed that around 79% of the respondents found the catalogue “Good” or “Very Good”. However, more than 5% of the expert participants found weaknesses regarding most of the evaluated questions and around 25% are neutral in their overall evaluation. This led us to evolve the initial version of the catalogue for the social and technical dimensions of sustainability to improve its completeness and usefulness. This is achieved by aligning the information gathered in the systematic mapping study with the well-established quality model of the ISO/IEC 25010:2011, as we expect most of the experts are familiar with those qualities and respective hierarchies. During this process, we found information that led us to propose two additional qualities that were not covered by the ISO standard: fairness and legislation. We applied this evolved version of the catalogue to the U-Bike project comparing the requirements elicited without the catalogue with those identified using the catalogue. The result suggests that new sustainability requirements were worth considering from a sustainability point of view, supporting the usefulness of the catalogue.

Managers rarely have deep knowledge of cyber security and yet are expected to make decisions with cyber security implications for software-based systems. We investigate the decision-making conversations of seven teams of senior managers from the same organisation as they complete the Decisions & Disruptions cyber security exercise. We use grounded theory to situate our analysis of their decision-making and help us explore how these complex socio-cognitive interactions occur. We have developed a goal-model (using iStar 2.0) of the teams’ dialogue that illustrates what cyber security goals teams identify and how they operationalise their decisions to reach these goals. We complement this with our model of cyber security reasoning that describes how these teams make their decisions, showing how each team members’ experience, intuition, and understanding affects the team’s overall shared reasoning and decision-making. Our findings show how managers with little cyber security expertise are able to use logic and traditional risk management thinking to make cyber security decisions. Despite their lack of cyber security–specific training, they demonstrate reasoning that closely resembles the decision-making approaches espoused in cyber security–specific standards (e.g., NIST/ISO). Our work demonstrates how organisations and practitioners can enrich goal modelling to capture not only what security goals an organisation has (and how they can operationalise them) but also how and why these goals have been identified. Ultimately, non–cyber security experts can develop their cyber security model based on their current context (and update it when new requirements appear or new incidents happen), whilst capturing their reasoning at every stage.

Context: User stories are often used for elicitation and prioritisation of requirements. However, the lack of a widely adopted user story template, covering benefit and the usage (or not) of a persona, can affect user stories’ quality, leading to ambiguity, lack of completeness, or accidental complexity. Objectives: Our goal was to analyse the differences between 4 alternative user story templates when creating and understanding user stories. Methods: We conducted a quasi-experiment. We asked 41 participants to perform creation and understanding tasks with the user story templates. We measured their accuracy, using metrics of task success; their speed, with task duration; visual effort, collected with an eye-tracker; and participants’ perceived effort, evaluated with NASA-TLX. Results: Regarding the impact of the different templates in creating user stories, we observed statistically significant differences in some of the metrics for accuracy, speed and visual effort. For understanding user stories, we observed small differences in terms of visual effort. Conclusions: Although some templates outperformed others in a few metrics, no template obtained the best overall result. As such, we found no compelling evidence that one template is "better" than the others.

Context: Managing Non-Functional Requirements (NFRs) in software projects is challenging, and projects that adopt Model-Driven Development (MDD) are no exception. Although several methods and techniques have been proposed to face this challenge, there is still little evidence on how NFRs are handled in MDD by practitioners. Knowing more about the state of the practice may help researchers to steer their research and practitioners to improve their daily work. Objective: In this paper, we present our findings from an interview-based survey conducted with practitioners working in 18 different companies from 6 European countries. From a practitioner's point of view, the paper shows what barriers and benefits the management of NFRs as part of the MDD process can bring to companies, how NFRs are supported by MDD approaches, and which strategies are followed when (some) types of NFRs are not supported by MDD approaches. Results: Our study shows that practitioners perceive MDD adoption as a complex process with little to no tool support for NFRs, reporting productivity and maintainability as the types of NFRs expected to be supported when MDD is adopted. But in general, companies adapt MDD to deal with NFRs. When NFRs are not supported, the generated code is sometimes changed manually, thus compromising the maintainability of the software developed. However, the interviewed practitioners claim that the benefits of using MDD outweight the extra effort required by these manual adaptations. Conclusion: Overall, the results indicate that it is important for practitioners to handle `NFRs in MDD, but further research is necessary in order to lower the barrier for supporting a broad spectrum of NFRs with MDD. Still, much conceptual and tool implementation work seems to be necessary to lower the barrier of integrating the broad spectrum of NFRs in practice.

Context: Recent research has shown gender differences in problem-solving, and gender biases in how software supports it. GenderMag has 5 problem-solving facets related to gender-inclusiveness: motivation for using the software, information processing style, computer self-efficacy, attitude towards risk, and ways of learning new technology. Some facet values are more frequent in women, others in men. The role these facets may play when building social goal models is largely unexplored. Objectives: We evaluated the impact of different levels of GenderMag facets on creating and modifying iStar 2.0 models. Methods: We performed a quasi-experiment. We characterised 100 participants according to each GenderMag facet. Participants performed creation and modification tasks on iStar 2.0. We measured their accuracy, speed, and ease, using metrics of task success, time, and effort, collected with eye-tracking, EEG and EDA sensors, and participants' feedback. Results: Although participants with facet levels frequently seen in women had lower perceived performance and speed, their accuracy was higher. We also observed some statistically significant differences in visual effort, mental effort, and stress. Conclusions: Participants with a comprehensive information processing style and a more conservative attitude towards risk (characteristics more frequently seen in women) solved the tasks with a lower speed but higher accuracy.

We use Grounded Theory to study the evolution of requirements practices of 16 software startups as they grow and introduce new products and services. These startups operate in a dynamic environment, with significant time and market pressure, and rarely have time for systematic requirements analysis. Our theory describes the evolution of practice along six dimensions that emerged as relevant to their requirements activities: requirements artefacts, knowledge management, requirements-related roles, planning, technical debt and product quality. Beyond the relationships among the dimensions, our theory also explains the turning points that drove the evolution along these dimensions. These changes are reactive, rather than planned, suggesting an overall pragmatic lightness, i.e., flexibility, in the startups' evolution towards engineering practices for requirements. Our theory organises knowledge about evolving requirements practice in maturing startups, and provides practical insights for startups' assessing their own evolution as they face challenges to their growth. Our research also suggests that a startup's evolution along the six dimensions is not fundamental to its success, but has significant effects on their product, their employees and the company.

Context: The OutSystems Platform is a development environment composed of several DSLs, used to specify, quickly build and validate web and mobile applications. The DSLs allow users to model different perspectives such as interfaces and data models, define custom business logic and construct process models. Problem: The DSL for process modelling (Business Process Technology (BPT)), has a low adoption rate and is perceived as having usability problems hampering its adoption. This is problematic given the language maintenance costs. Method: We used a combination of interviews, a critical review of BPT using the "Physics of Notation" and empirical evaluations of BPT using the System Usability Scale (SUS) and the NASA Task Load indeX (TLX), to develop a new version of BPT, taking these inputs and Outsystems' engineers culture into account. Results: Evaluations conducted with 25 professional software engineers showed an increase of the semantic transparency on the new version, from 31% to 69%, an increase in the correctness of responses, from 51% to 89%, an increase in the SUS score, from 42.25 to 64.78, and a decrease of the TLX score, from 36.50 to 20.78. These differences were statistically significant. Conclusions: These results suggest the new version of BPT significantly improved the developer experience of the previous version. The end users background with OutSystems had a relevant impact on the final concrete syntax choices and achieved usability indicators.

Context: i* is one of the most influential languages in the Requirements Engineering research community. Perhaps due to its complexity and low adoption in industry, it became a natural candidate for studies aiming at improving its concrete syntax and the stakeholders' ability to correctly interpret i* models. Objectives: We evaluate the impact of semantic transparency on understanding and reviewing i* models, in the presence of a language key. Methods: We performed a quasi-experiment comparing the standard i* concrete syntax with an alternative that has an increased semantic transparency. We asked 57 novice participants to perform understanding and reviewing tasks on i* models, and measured their accuracy, speed and ease, using metrics of task success, time and effort, collected with eye-tracking and participants' feedback. Results: We found no evidence of improved accuracy or speed attributable to the alternative concrete syntax. Although participants' perceived ease was similar, they devoted significantly less visual effort to the model and the provided language key, when using the alternative concrete syntax. Conclusions: The context provided by the model and language key may mitigate the i* symbol recognition deficit reported in previous works. However, the alternative concrete syntax required a significantly lower visual effort.

Model-driven engineering relies on effective collaboration between different teams which introduces complex model management challenges. DSE Merge aims to efficiently merge model versions created by various collaborators using search-based exploration of solution candidates that represent conflict-free merged models guided by domain-specific knowledge. In this paper, we report how we systematically evaluated the efficiency of the DSE Merge technique from the user point of view using a reactive experimental Software engineering approach. The empirical tests included the involvement of the intended end users (i.e. engineers), namely undergraduate students, which were expected to confirm the impact of design decisions. In particular, we asked users to merge the different versions of the same model using DSE Merge when compared to using Diff Merge. The experiment showed that to use DSE Merge participant required lower cognitive effort, and expressed their preference and satisfaction with it.

The primary scientific targets of the European COST Action Multi-Paradigm Modelling for Cyber-Physical Systems (MPM4CPS) are: i) the conceptualization of techniques and tools for improving interoperability; ii) the development of new ontologies and formalisms (and the links between them) to deal with the heterogeneity; and, iii) to perform the integration of the problems resulting from several application domains, under a common MPM4CPS umbrella. The action also aims at crystallizing MPM4CPS contents into a suitable format for educational purposes. This entails to create the base for a European Master and PhD program in MPM4CPS involving several European leading Universities and setting up the respective discipline roadmap facing the challenge of development mutually recognized cross-domain expertise based study program in CPS. This paper offers a methodology for the creation of CPS expert profile for educational purposes, provides an analysis of results of an initial survey of experts in the field and sets up a discussion about the next steps of the research. The paper depicts the work in a progress.

There is currently a lack of Requirements Engineering (RE) approaches applied to, or supporting, the development of a Domain-Specific Language (DSL) taking into account the environment in which it is to be used. We present a model-based RE approach to support DSL development with a focus on usability concerns. RDAL is a RE fragment language that can be complemented with other languages to support RE and design. USE-ME is a model driven approach for DSLs usability evaluation which is integrable with a DSL development approach. We combine RDAL and a new DSL, named DSSL, that we created for the specification of DSL-based systems. Integrated with this combination we add USE-ME to support usability evaluation. This combination of existing languages and tools provides a comprehensive RE approach for DSL development. We illustrate the approach with the development of the Gyro DSL for programming robots.

Summary Software reuse is a broadly accepted practice to improve software development quality and productivity. Although an object of study in software engineering since the late sixties, achieving effective reuse remains challenging for many software development organizations. This paper reports a systematic mapping study on how reusability relates to other non‐functional requirements and how different contextual factors influence the success of a reuse initiative. The conclusion is that the relationships are discussed rather informally, and that human, organizational, and technological domain factors are extremely relevant to a particular reuse context. This mapping study highlights the need for further research to better understand how exactly the different non‐functional requirements and context factors affect reusability. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

The i* community has published guidelines, including model layout guidelines, for the construction of models. Our goal is to evaluate the effect of the layout guidelines on the i* novice stakeholders' ability to understand and review i* models. We performed a quasi-experiment where participants were given two understanding and two reviewing tasks. Both tasks involved a model with a bad layout and another model following the i* layout guidelines. We evaluated the impact of layouts by combining the success level in those tasks and the required effort to accomplish them. Effort was assessed using time, perceived complexity (with NASA TLX), and eye-tracking data. Participants were more successful in understanding than in reviewing tasks. However, we found no statistically significant difference in the success, time taken, or perceived complexity, between tasks conducted with models with a bad layout and models with a good layout. Most participants had little to no prior knowledge in i*, making them more representative of stakeholders with no requirements engineering expertise. They were able to understand the models fairly well after a short tutorial, but struggled when reviewing models. In the end, adherence to the existing i* layout guidelines did not significantly impact i* model understanding and reviewing performance.

Model-Driven Development (MDD) is no longer a novel development paradigm. It has become mature from a research perspective and recent studies show its adoption in industry. Still, some issues remain a challenge. Among them, we are interested in the treatment of non-functional requirements (NFRs) in MDD processes. Very few MDD approaches have been reported to deal with NFRs (and they do it in a limited way). However, it is clear that NFRs need to be considered somehow in the final product of the MDD process. To better understand how NFRs are integrated into the existing MDD approaches, we have initiated the NFR4MDD project, a multi-national empirical study, based on interviews with companies working on MDD projects. Our project aims at surveying the state of the practice for this topic. In this paper, we summarize our research protocol and present the current status of our study. The discussion will focus on the peculiarities of our study's context and organization involving about 20 researchers from 8 European countries.

Component based software development is becoming more generalized, representing a considerable market for the software industry. The perspective of reduced development costs and shorter life cycles acts as a motivation for this expansion. However, several technical issues remain unsolved before the software components industry reaches the maturity exhibited by other component industries. Problems such as the component selection by their integrators, the component catalogs formalization and the uncertain quality of third-party developed components, bring new challenges to the software engineering community. This paper presents an overview of the current research efforts on software components, from a quality assessment perspective. The emerging of empirical component based software engineering practices, to complement the current research trends with a more effective component quality and complexity evaluation, is perceived as a research area that will become very active in a near future.