Assessing the effects of introducing a new software development process: a methodological description

In this article, we report from a 22-months long action research study in which we evaluate the usefulness of a set of software development tools in an industrial setting, a small software company. We focus on how developers in the industry use and adopt these tools, what expectations they have on t...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:International journal on software tools for technology transfer 2015-02, Vol.17 (1), p.1-16
Main Authors: Nilsson, Agneta, Castro, Laura M., Rivas, Samuel, Arts, Thomas
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Change assessment
Computer programs
Computer Science
Developers
Industrial development
Process change
Process engineering
Process improvement
Programvaruteknik
Regular Paper
Software
Software development
Software development process
Software development tools
Software Engineering
Software Engineering/Programming and Operating Systems
Strategy
Technology transfer
Theory of Computation
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:In this article, we report from a 22-months long action research study in which we evaluate the usefulness of a set of software development tools in an industrial setting, a small software company. We focus on how developers in the industry use and adopt these tools, what expectations they have on them, how the tools can be improved, and how the adoption process itself can be improved. We describe these change processes from a methodological perspective, how we monitored the processes, how we reviewed the outcomes, and the strategies that we applied. We show how the processes evolved, intermediate results, and the steps that were taken along the way based on the outcomes. We believe that the described study may inspire other tool-developers and/or researchers to organize similar studies to further our understanding of the complex processes involved in the adoption of software development tools in industry.
ISSN:1433-2779
1433-2787
1433-2787
DOI:10.1007/s10009-013-0275-0