by Patrick Mäder, Alexander Egyed
Abstract:
Software traceability is a required component of many software development processes. Advocates of requirements traceability cite advantages like easier program comprehension and sup- port for software maintenance (i.e., software change). However, despite its growing popularity,there exists no published evaluation about the usefulness of requirements traceability.It is important, if not crucial, to investigate whether the use of requirements traceability can significantly support de- velopment tasks to eventually justify its costs. We thus conducted acontrolled experiment with 71 subjects re-performing real maintenance tasks on twothird-party development projects: half of the tasks with and the other half without traceability. Subjects sketched their task solutions on paper to focus on the their ability to solving the problems rather than their programming skills. Our findings showthat subjects with traceability performed on average 24% faster on a given task and created on average 50% more correct solutions – suggesting that traceability not only saveseffort butcan profoundly improve software maintenance quality.
Reference:
Do developers benefit from requirements traceability when evolving and maintaining a software system? (Patrick Mäder, Alexander Egyed), In Proceeding of the Software Engineering 2016, Fachtagung des GI-Fachbereichs Softwaretechnik, (SE 2016), Wien, Österreich, 2016.
Bibtex Entry:
@Conference{DBLP:conf/se/MaderE16,
author = {Patrick M{\"{a}}der and Alexander Egyed},
title = {Do developers benefit from requirements traceability when evolving and maintaining a software system?},
booktitle = {Proceeding of the Software Engineering 2016, Fachtagung des GI-Fachbereichs Softwaretechnik, (SE 2016), Wien, Österreich},
year = {2016},
pages = {109--110},
abstract = {Software traceability is a required component of many software development
processes. Advocates of requirements traceability cite advantages
like easier program comprehension and sup- port for software maintenance
(i.e., software change). However, despite its growing popularity,there
exists no published evaluation about the usefulness of requirements
traceability.It is important, if not crucial, to investigate whether
the use of requirements traceability can significantly support de-
velopment tasks to eventually justify its costs. We thus conducted
acontrolled experiment with 71 subjects re-performing real maintenance
tasks on twothird-party development projects: half of the tasks with
and the other half without traceability. Subjects sketched their
task solutions on paper to focus on the their ability to solving
the problems rather than their programming skills. Our findings showthat
subjects with traceability performed on average 24% faster on a given
task and created on average 50% more correct solutions – suggesting
that traceability not only saveseffort butcan profoundly improve
software maintenance quality.},
bibsource = {dblp computer science bibliography, https://dblp.org},
biburl = {https://dblp.org/rec/bib/conf/se/MaderE16},
crossref = {DBLP:conf/se/2016},
file = {:Conferences\\SE 2016 - Do developers benefit from requirements traceability when evolving and maintaining a software system\\Do developers benefit from requirements traceability when evolving and maintaining a softwa-preprint.pdf:PDF},
keywords = {FWF M1268, FWF P23115},
timestamp = {Mon, 16 Apr 2018 16:29:13 +0200},
url = {https://dl.gi.de/20.500.12116/748},
}