Basics of qualitative research: Grounded theory procedures and techniques

http://www.cs.rug.nl/paris/papers/JSS15.pdf

A systematic mapping study on technical debt and its management

Context: Variability (i.e., the ability of software systems or artifacts to be adjusted for different contexts) became a key property of many systems. Objective: We analyze existing research on variability in software systems. We investigate variability handling in major software engineering phases (e.g., requirements engineering, architecting). Method: We performed a systematic literature review. A manual search covered 13 premium software engineering journals and 18 premium conferences, resulting in 15,430 papers searched and 196 papers considered for analysis. To improve reliability and to increase reproducibility, we complemented the manual search with a targeted automated search. Results: Software quality attributes have not received much attention in the context of variability. Variability is studied in all software engineering phases, but testing is underrepresented. Data to motivate the applicability of current approaches are often insufficient; research designs are vaguely described. Conclusions: Based on our findings we propose dimensions of variability in software engineering. This empirically grounded classification provides a step towards a unifying, integrated perspective of variability in software systems, spanning across disparate or loosely coupled research themes in the software engineering community. Finally, we provide recommendations to bridge the gap between research and practice and point to opportunities for future research.

/pdf/variability-in-software-systems-a-systematic-literature-87sm8ue4cj.pdf

Variability in Software Systems—A Systematic Literature Review

Humans are increasingly relying on complex systems that heavily adopts Artificial Intelligence (AI) techniques. Such systems are employed in a growing number of domains, and making them explainable is an impelling priority. Recently, the domain of eXplainable Artificial Intelligence (XAI) emerged with the aims of fostering transparency and trustworthiness. Several reviews have been conducted. Nevertheless, most of them deal with data-driven XAI to overcome the opaqueness of black-box algorithms. Contributions addressing goal-driven XAI (e.g., explainable agency for robots and agents) are still missing. This paper aims at filling this gap, proposing a Systematic Literature Review. The main findings are (i) a considerable portion of the papers propose conceptual studies, or lack evaluations or tackle relatively simple scenarios; (ii) almost all of the studied papers deal with robots/agents explaining their behaviors to the human users, and very few works addressed inter-robot (inter-agent) explainability. Finally, (iii) while providing explanations to non-expert users has been outlined as a necessity, only a few works addressed the issues of personalization and context-awareness.

Explainable Agents and Robots: Results from a Systematic Literature Review

Ambient assisted living (AAL) is focused on providing assistance to people primarily in their natural environment. Over the past decade, the AAL domain has evolved at a fast pace in various directions. The stakeholders of AAL are not only limited to patients, but also include their relatives, social services, health workers, and care agencies. In fact, AAL aims at increasing the life quality of patients, their relatives and the health care providers with a holistic approach. This paper aims at providing a comprehensive overview of the AAL domain, presenting a systematic analysis of over 10 
years of relevant literature focusing on the stakeholders’ needs, bridging the gap of existing reviews which focused on technologies. The findings of this review clearly show that until now the AAL domain neglects the view of the entire AAL ecosystem. Furthermore, the proposed solutions seem to be tailored more on the basis of the available existing technologies, rather than supporting the various stakeholders’ needs. Another major lack that this
 review is pointing out is a missing adequate evaluation of the various solutions. Finally, it seems that, as the domain of AAL is pretty new, it is still in its incubation phase. Thus, this review calls for moving the AAL domain to a more mature phase with respect to the research approaches.

Exploring the ambient assisted living domain: a systematic review

Context The software architecture of a system is the result of a set of architectural decisions. The topic of architectural decisions in software engineering has received significant attention in recent years. However, no systematic overview exists on the state of research on architectural decisions. Objective The goal of this study is to provide a systematic overview of the state of research on architectural decisions. Such an overview helps researchers reflect on previous research and plan future research. Furthermore, such an overview helps practitioners understand the state of research, and how research results can help practitioners in their architectural decision-making. Method We conducted a systematic mapping study, covering studies published between January 2002 and January 2012. We defined six research questions. We queried six reference databases and obtained an initial result set of 28,895 papers. We followed a search and filtering process that resulted in 144 relevant papers. Results After classifying the 144 relevant papers for each research question, we found that current research focuses on documenting architectural decisions. We found that only several studies describe architectural decisions from the industry. We identified potential future research topics: domain-specific architectural decisions (such as mobile), achieving specific quality attributes (such as reliability or scalability), uncertainty in decision-making, and group architectural decisions. Regarding empirical evaluations of the papers, around half of the papers use systematic empirical evaluation approaches (such as surveys, or case studies). Still, few papers on architectural decisions use experiments. Conclusion Our study confirms the increasing interest in the topic of architectural decisions. This study helps the community reflect on the past ten years of research on architectural decisions. Researchers are offered a number of promising future research directions, while practitioners learn what existing papers offer.

/pdf/past-and-future-of-software-architectural-decisions-a-3askkl0h6a.pdf

Past and future of software architectural decisions - A systematic mapping study

Much research exists on architectural decisions, but little work describes architectural decisions in the real-world. In this paper, we present the results of a survey with 43 architects from industry. We study characteristics of 86 real-world architectural decisions and factors that contribute to their difficulty. Also, we compare decisions made by junior architects and senior architects. Finally, we compare good and bad architectural decisions. Survey results indicate that architectural decisions take an average time of eight working days. Dependencies between decisions and the effort required to analyze decisions are major factors that contribute to their difficulty. Compared to senior architects, junior architects spend a quarter of the time on making a decision. Good architectural decisions tend to include more decision alternatives than bad decisions. Finally, we found that 86% of architectural decisions are group decisions.

Difficulty of architectural decisions: a survey with professional architects

Context: Service-oriented architecture has become a widely used concept in software industry. However, we currently lack support for designing variability-intensive service-oriented systems. Such systems could be used in different environments, without the need to design them from scratch. To support the design of variability-intensive service-oriented systems, reference architectures that facilitate variability in instantiated service-oriented architectures can help. Objective: The design of variability-intensive service-oriented reference architectures is subject to specific constraints. Architects need to know these constraints when designing such reference architectures. Our objective is to identify these constraints. Method: An exploratory case study was performed in the context of local e-government in the Netherlands to study constraints from the perspective of (a) the users of a variability-intensive service-oriented system (municipalities that implement national laws), and (b) the implementing organizations (software vendors). We collected data through interviews with representatives from five organizations, document analyses and expert meetings. Results: We identified ten constraints (e.g., organizational constraints, integration-related constraints) which affect the process of designing reference architectures for variability-intensive service-oriented systems. Also, we identified how stakeholders are affected by these constraints, and how constraints are specific to the case study domain. Conclusions: Our results help design variability-intensive service-oriented reference architectures. Furthermore, our results can be used to define processes to design such reference architectures.

/pdf/constraints-for-the-design-of-variability-intensive-service-1uttl9suk5.pdf

Constraints for the design of variability-intensive service-oriented reference architectures - An industrial case study

Architecture decisions are often not explicitly documented in practice but reside in the architect's mind as tacit knowledge, even though explicit capturing and documentation of architecture decisions has been associated with a multitude of benefits. As part of a research collaboration with ABB, we developed a tool to document architecture decisions. This tool is an add-in for Enterprise Architect and is an implementation of a viewpoint-based decision documentation framework. To validate the add-in, we conducted an exploratory case study with ABB architects. In the study, we assessed the status quo of architecture decision documentation, identified architects' expectations of the ideal decision documentation tool, and evaluated the new add-in. We found that although awareness of decision documentation is increasing at ABB, several barriers exist that limit the use of decisions in practice. Regarding their ideal tool, architects want a descriptive and efficient approach. Supplemental features like reporting or decision sharing are requested. The new add-in, was well-perceived by the architects. As a result of the study, we propose a clearer separation of problem, outcomes, and alternatives for the decision documentation framework.

/pdf/industrial-implementation-of-a-documentation-framework-for-52u892yju9.pdf

Dan Tofan

Papers

Variability in Software Systems—A Systematic Literature Review

Past and future of software architectural decisions - A systematic mapping study

Difficulty of architectural decisions: a survey with professional architects

Constraints for the design of variability-intensive service-oriented reference architectures - An industrial case study

Industrial Implementation of a Documentation Framework for Architectural Decisions