The changing balance of technology and process: A case study on a combined setting of model‐driven development and classical C coding. Issue 11 (17th March 2017)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Hebig, Regina; Derehag, Jesper
• Other Names: Kuhrmann Marco guestEditor.; O'Connor Rory V. guestEditor.; Perry Dewayne E. guestEditor.; Raffo David guestEditor.
• Is Part Of: Journal of software. Volume 29:Issue 11(2017)
• Page Start: n/a
• Page End: n/a
• Publication Date: 2017-03-17
• Subjects: case study, development technologies, empirical investigation, software process; Software engineering -- Periodicals; Computer software -- Development -- Periodicals; Software maintenance -- Periodicals; 005.1
• DOI: 10.1002/smr.1863
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 2047-7473

Abstract

Abstract: The increasing flexibility in industry leads to an ecosystem of change, affecting the balance of processes and technology as well as the developers who have to cope with the change. Furthermore, the change itself might impact the ability to use quantitative methods to learn from previous experience. The goal of this study is to better understand the ecosystem of mutual impacts and changes of process and technologies as well as how developers perceive a technology setting and deal with its change. Therefore, we conducted a case study at Ericsson, performing a series of interviews among 6 employees (senior developers and architects). We identified a time line of changes that happened over 7 years. A set of observations about the relation between processes and tooling, and observations about developer's perceptions of the technology settings, and their strategy to deal with these changing technology settings. We discuss how the observed change impacts the ability to perform quantitative evaluations of technology and processes. The findings show that a bad choice of technologies can lead to unexpected impact on team dynamics. Furthermore, change happens so regular that it needs to be considered when collecting data for a quantitative evaluation of, eg, productivity. Abstract : The paper identifies a timeline of changes that happened over 7 years within the context of a product's software development. Results are a set of observations about the relation between processes and tooling and observations about developer's perceptions of the technology settings and their strategy to deal with these changing technology settings. It is discussed how the observed change impacts the ability to perform quantitative evaluations of technology and processes.