Empirical Studies of Software Development Knowledge Management

Software engineering (SE) development is a knowledge-intensive process, and how to manage SE knowledge, including mining, structuring, and analysis, has received much attention. Software development knowledge is scatted in a significant number of both formal and informal software artefacts, such as requirement documents, architecture documents, and Wikis. In addition, as the field of software engineering matures, there is an increased demand for empirically validated results. We applied empirical research methods, including case studies, mining software repositories for rich data, structured interviews, and surveys with practitioners, to manage software development knowledge that can help developers' productivity.

We investigated the main development concerns from a high-level viewpoint in release note documents. We classified the development knowledge into several categories.

We found that a set of vital quality attributes are discussed in release notes frequently, and those quality attributes drive software development and design decisions.

Accessibility, as one of the most critical quality attributes, has not been investigated systemically. We proposed a comprehensive guideline for accessibility design and development by potential mining solutions for accessibility issues.

Project Team

Dr Tingting Bi,  Prof John Grundy, Dr Aldeida Aleti, Dr Nin Xia

Papers

  • Bi, T., Xia, X., Lo, D., Aleti, A. A First Look at Accessibility Issues in Popular GitHub Projects. International Conference on Software Maintenance and Engineering
  • T Bi, P Liang, A Tang, X Xia, Mining architecture tactics and quality attributes knowledge in Stack Overflow. Journal of Systems and Software 180, 111005
  • Bi, T., Xia, X., Lo, D., Grundy, J.C., Zimmerman, T., An Empirical Study of Release Note Production and Usage in Practice, to appear in IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering. -- Final publication available at DOI Author pre-published version PDF
  • Bi, T., Xia, X., Lo, D.; Grundy, J.C.; Zimmermann, T., Ford, D., Accessibility in Software Practice: A Practitioner’s Perspective, to appear in ACM Transactions on Software Engineering and Methodology. -- Final publication available at DOI Author pre-published version PDF
  • Yang, Y., Xia, X., Lo, D., Bi, T.; Grundy, J.C., Yang, X., Predictive Models in Software Engineering: Challenges and Opportunities, to appear in ACM Transactions on Software Engineering and Methodology. -- Final publication available at DOI Author pre-published version PDF