Context factors perceived important when looking for similar experiences in decision-making for software components: An interview studyShow others and affiliations
2024 (English)In: Journal of Software: Evolution and Process, ISSN 2047-7473, E-ISSN 2047-7481, Vol. 36, no 9, article id e2668Article in journal (Refereed) Accepted
Abstract [en]
During software evolution, decisions related to components’ origin or source significantly impact the quality properties of the product and development metrics such as cost, time to market, ease of maintenance, and further evolution. Thus, such decisions should ideally be supported by evidence, i.e., using previous experiences and information from different sources, even own previous experiences. A hindering factor to such reuse of previous experiences is that these decisions are highly context-dependent and it is difficult to identify when previous experiences come from sufficiently similar contexts to be useful in a current setting. Conversely, when documenting a decision (as a decision experience), it is difficult to know which context factors will be most beneficial when reusing the experience in the future. An interview study is performed to identify a list of context factors that are perceived to be most important by practitioners when using experiences to support decision-making for component sourcing, using a specific scenario with alternative sources of experiences. We observed that the further away (from a company or an interviewee) the experience evidence is, as is the case for online experiences, the more context factors are perceived as important by practitioners to make use of the experience. Furthermore, we discuss and identify further research to make this type of decision-making more evidence-based.
Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
John Wiley and Sons Ltd , 2024. Vol. 36, no 9, article id e2668
Keywords [en]
Open source software; Open systems; Components off the shelves; Context factors; Decision experience; Decisions makings; Experience source; In-house; Interview study; Open-source softwares; Software Evolution; Software-component; Decision making
National Category
Computer and Information Sciences
Identifiers
URN: urn:nbn:se:ri:diva-73248DOI: 10.1002/smr.2668Scopus ID: 2-s2.0-85190424140OAI: oai:DiVA.org:ri-73248DiVA, id: diva2:1860591
Note
The work is supported by a research grant for the ORION project (reference number 20140218) from the Knowledge Foundation in Sweden.
2024-05-242024-05-242025-09-23