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1 – 10 of 696Jun Lin, Han Yu, Zhengxiang Pan, Zhiqi Shen and Lizhen Cui
Today’s software engineers often work in teams to develop complex software systems. Therefore, successful software engineering in practice require team members to possess not only…
Abstract
Purpose
Today’s software engineers often work in teams to develop complex software systems. Therefore, successful software engineering in practice require team members to possess not only sound programming skills such as analysis, design, coding and testing but also soft skills such as communication, collaboration and self-management. However, existing examination-based assessments are often inadequate for quantifying students’ soft skill development. The purpose of this paper is to explore alternative ways for assessing software engineering students’ skills through a data-driven approach.
Design/methodology/approach
In this paper, the exploratory data analysis approach is adopted. Leveraging the proposed online agile project management tool – Human-centred Agile Software Engineering (HASE), a study was conducted involving 21 Scrum teams consisting of over 100 undergraduate software engineering students in multi-week coursework projects in 2014.
Findings
During this study, students performed close to 170,000 software engineering activities logged by HASE. By analysing the collected activity trajectory data set, the authors demonstrate the potential for this new research direction to enable software engineering educators to have a quantifiable way of understanding their students’ skill development, and take a proactive approach in helping them improve their programming and soft skills.
Originality/value
To the best of the authors’ knowledge, there has yet to be published previous studies using software engineering activity data to assess software engineers’ skills.
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Malathi Sivasankara Pillai and Kannan Balakrishnan
This paper aims to prove the following hypothesis Problem Statement: HYPOTHESIS (1) User Experience collection of mobile applications can be done using the Crowdsourcing…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to prove the following hypothesis Problem Statement: HYPOTHESIS (1) User Experience collection of mobile applications can be done using the Crowdsourcing mechanism; (2) User Experience collection of mobile applications are influenced by the mindset of Crowdmembers, culture/ethnicity/social background, ease of interface use and rewards, among other factors.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors of this paper, did a literature review first to find if Crowdsourcing was applicable and a used method to solve problems in Software Engineering. This helped us to narrow down the application of Crowdsourcing to the Requirements Engineering-Usability (User Experience) collection. User experience collection of two Malayalam language-based mobile applications, AarogyaSetu and BevQ was done as the next step. Incorporating findings from Study I, another study using AarogyaSetu and Manglish was launched as Study II. The results from both cases were consolidated and analyzed. Significant concerns relating to expectations of Crowd members with User Experience collection were unraveled and the purpose of Study was accomplished.
Findings
(1) Crowdsourcing is and can be used in Software Engineering activities. (2) Crowd members have expectations (motivating factors) of User Interface and other elements that enable them to be an effective contributor. (3) An individual’s environment and mindset (character) are influential in him becoming a contributor in Crowdsourcing. (4) Culture and social practices of a region strongly affects the crowd-participating decision of an individual.
Originality/value
This is purely self-done work. The value of this research work is two-fold. Crowdsourcing is endorsed significant in Software Engineering tasks, especially in User Experience collection of mobile applications. Two, the Crowd service requesters can be careful about designing the questionnaire for Crowdsourcing. They have to be aware and prepared to meet the expectations of the Crowd. This can ensure the active participation of potential contributors. Future researchers can use the results of this work to base their research on similar purposes.
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Victor Chang, Stéphane Gagnon, Raul Valverde and Muthu Ramachandran
Abstract
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Abstract
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