Teresa Mallardo received the MSc and PhD degrees in Computer Science from the University of Bari, Italy. Currently, she is associated with the Collaborative Development Group at the University of Bari as a postdoctoral research assistant. From 2002 to 2003, she was a research assistant at the Research Centre On Software Technology (RCOST) of the University of Sannio, Italy. Her research interests are focused on software inspection, global software development, and requirements engineering.
Abstract: Achieving agreement with respect to software requirements is a collaborative process that traditionally relies on same-time, same-place interactions. As the trend towards geographically distributed software development continues, co-located meetings are becoming increasingly problematic. Our research investigates the impact of computer-mediated communication on the performance of distributed client/developer teams involved in collaborative development of a requirements specification. Drawing on media selection theories, we posit that a combination of lean and rich media is needed for an effective process of requirements negotiations when stakeholders are geographically dispersed. In this paper we present an empirical study which investigates the performance of six educational global project teams of which negotiation process used both asynchronous text-based as well as synchronous videoconferencing-based communication modes. Findings indicate that requirements negotiations are more effective when the groups conducted asynchronous structured discussion of requirements issues prior to the synchronous negotiation meeting. Asynchronous discussions were useful in resolving issues related to uncertainty in requirements, thus allowing synchronous negotiations to focus more on removing ambiguities in the requirements.
Abstract: Many web applications use a mixture of HTML and scripting language code as the front-end to business services, where scripts can run on both the client and server side. Analogously to traditional applications, code duplication occurs frequently during the development and evolution of web applications. This ad-hoc but pathological form of reuse consists in copying, and eventually modifying, a block of existing code that implements a piece of required functionality. Duplicated blocks are named clones and the act of copying, including slight modifications, is called cloning. When entire functions are copied rather than fragments, duplicated functions are called function clones. This paper describes how a semiautomated approach can be used to identify cloned functions within scripting code of web applications. The approach is based on the automatic selection of potential function clones and the visual inspection of selected script functions. The results obtained from the clone analysis of four web applications show that the semiautomated approach is both effective and efficient at identifying function clones in web applications, and can be applied to prevent clone from spreading or to remove redundant scripting code.
Abstract: Software inspection is one of software engineering's best practices for detecting and removing defects early in the development process. However, the prevalence of manual activities and face-to-face meetings within software inspections hinder their applicability in the context of global software development, where software engineering activities are spread across multiple sites and even multiple countries.
In this article, we describe a web-based tool, called the Internet-Based Inspection System (IBIS), that aims to support geographically dispersed inspection teams. On the basis of findings from empirical studies of software inspections, the IBIS tool adopts a reengineered inspection process to minimize synchronous activities and coordination problems. We present the underlying process model, how the tool is used within the inspection stages, and experiences using the IBIS tool as the enabling infrastructure for distributed software inspections.
Abstract: Testing is an essential part of an agile process as test is automated and tends to take the role of specifications in place of documents. However, whenever test cases are faulty, developers’ time might be wasted to fix problems that do not actually originate in the production code. Because of their relevance in agile processes, we posit that the quality of test cases can be assured through software inspections as a complement to the informal review activity which occurs in pair programming. Inspections can thus help the identification of what might be wrong in test code and where refactoring is needed. In this paper, we report on a preliminary empirical study where we examine the effect of conducting software inspections on automated test code. First results show that software inspections can improve the quality of test code, especially the repeatability attribute. The benefit of software inspections also apply when automated unit tests are created by developers working in pair programming mode.
Abstract: Our research explores the combination of synchronous and asynchronous collaboration tools for global software development. In this paper we assess the impact of tool-mediated inspections to improve requirements negotiation meetings with stakeholders spread over different continents. We present the design of our investigation in an educational environment, in a course where the clients and developers in a software project were in geographically distributed locations. In particular, we studied the usefulness of asynchronous discussions in IBIS tool in enabling more effective requirements negotiations meetings. Our findings indicate that the requirements negotiations were more effective when the groups conducted asynchronous discussions prior to the synchronous negotiation meetings.
Abstract: Traditionally, software inspection has largely relied on collocated interaction of inspectors. As companies have begun to turn to distributed software development, meeting in a room has become impractical. In this paper we report on controlled experiment to assess the effect of synchronous and asynchronous communication in remote inspection meetings.
Abstract: Important and yet very difficult process in software development, requirements engineering is plagued with additional challenges in the emergent dynamics of geographically distributed software teams. Our hypothesis is that a mix of lean and rich communication media are needed towards increasing the effectiveness of meetings in reaching mutual agreement when stakeholders are geographically dispersed.We studied tool-supported remote inspections in six educational global project teams in a multicultural software development environment. In this paper we present the preliminary results from comparing the effectiveness of the requirements negotiations when preceded by the asynchronous discussions to those negotiations with no prior asynchronous discussions.
Abstract: Evolving software systems requires their preliminary analysis and assessment. In particular, information on the performance and costs of software system components must be gathered for identifying the most appropriate strategy for their evolution. A critical point is finding suitable data gathering means to effectively support the decision makers. This paper presents a strategy composed of a methodological approach and supporting toolkit to help maintainers in the evolution process. The strategy integrates measurement and decision-making tools, and critiquing techniques. It analyzes software systems and identifies a set of alternative evolution approaches by mapping critiques to specific innovation actions. The proposed strategy is validated by case studies conducted with a major software enterprise and public administration.
Abstract: Software inspections are a software engineering "best practice" for defect detection and rework reduction. In this paper, we describe an empirical evaluation with using a tool aiming to provide Internet groupware support for distributed software inspections. The tool is based on a restructured inspection process where inspection meetings have the only goal of removing false positives rather than finding additional defects. In place of face-to-face meetings, the tool provides web-based discussion forums and support for voting. We present an empirical study of nine remote inspections which were held as part of a university course. We investigated whether all collected defects are worth to be discussed as a group. Results show that discussions for filtering out false positives (non true defects) might be restricted to defects which were discovered by only one inspector.
Abstract: Many web applications use a mixture of HTML and scripting language code as the front-end to business services. Analogously to traditional applications, redundant code is introduced by copy-and-paste practices. Code duplication is a pathological form of software reuse because of its effects on the maintenance of large software systems. This paper describes how a simple semi-automated approach can be used to identity cloned functions within scripting code of web applications. The results obtained from applying our approach to three web applications show that the approach is useful for a fast selection of script function clones, and can be applied to prevent clone spreading or to remove redundant scripting code.
Abstract: Software inspection is one of the software engineering best practices for detecting and removing defects early in the development process. However, the prevalence of manual activities and face-to-face meetings within software inspections hinders their applicability in the context of distributed software development, where software engineering activities are spread across multiple sites and even multiple countries. Requirements inspections are especially affected by geographical distance, because they heavily rely on the same-place, same-time interaction between customers and developers.
To enable effective software requirements inspections in a distributed context, other than being supported by an Internet-mediated environment, the traditional inspection process should be reorganized to reduce synchronization and coordination issues.
This thesis firstly presents a tool for remote software inspections which adopts a reorganization of the traditional inspection process. Then, it reports a family of empirical studies conducted with the tool to understand in which conditions remote requirements inspections provide benefit to improve quality as well as increase shared understanding.
Findings from this thesis allow: 1) reorganizing the inspection process by limiting the discussion stage to a subset of the whole inspection team and focusing it on defects found by only one inspector; 2) improving the inspection effectiveness by supporting inspectors during the individual defect detection stage with focused checklist-based reading as well as perspective-based reading techniques; 3) overcoming the geographical dispersion when discriminating between true defects and false positives by replacing face-to-face meetings with asynchronous discussions; 4) increasing the shared understanding during a synchronous requirements negotiation meeting with an early asynchronous discussion on defects found by inspectors during their individual stage.
