research-article

Exploring the evolution of software practices

Authors:

Yvonne Dittrich,

Christian Bo Michelsen,

Allan EbdrupAuthors Info & Claims

ESEC/FSE 2020: Proceedings of the 28th ACM Joint Meeting on European Software Engineering Conference and Symposium on the Foundations of Software Engineering

Pages 493 - 504

https://doi.org/10.1145/3368089.3409766

Published: 08 November 2020 Publication History

Abstract

When software products and services are developed and maintained over longer time, software engineering practices tend to drift away from both structured and agile methods. Nonetheless, in many cases the evolving practices are far from ad hoc or chaotic. How are the teams involved able to coordinate their joint development?This article reports on an ethnographic study of a small team at a successful provider of software as a service. What struck us was the very explicit way in which the team adopted and adapted their practices to fit the needs of the evolving development. The discussion relates the findings to the concepts of social practices and methods in software engineering, and explores the differences between degraded behavior and the coordinated evolution of development practices. The analysis helps to better understand how software engineering practices evolve, and thus provides a starting point for rethinking software engineering methods and their relation to software engineering practice.

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Cited By

Rolland KFitzgerald BDingsøyr TStol K(2023)Acrobats and Safety Nets: Problematizing Large-Scale Agile Software DevelopmentACM Transactions on Software Engineering and Methodology10.1145/361716933:2(1-45)Online publication date: 23-Dec-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3617169
Krings KBohn NHille NLudwig T(2023)“What if everyone is able to program?” – Exploring the Role of Software Development in Science FictionProceedings of the 2023 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3544548.3581436(1-13)Online publication date: 19-Apr-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3544548.3581436
Knutas ASiemon DTylosky NMaccani GHoda RSerebrenik A(2023)Contradicting Motivations in Civic Tech Software Development: Analysis of a Grassroots ProjectProceedings of the 45th International Conference on Software Engineering: Software Engineering in Society10.1109/ICSE-SEIS58686.2023.00021(157-163)Online publication date: 17-May-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1109/ICSE-SEIS58686.2023.00021
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Index Terms

Exploring the evolution of software practices
1. Human-centered computing
  1. Collaborative and social computing
    1. Collaborative and social computing theory, concepts and paradigms
      1. Computer supported cooperative work
    2. Empirical studies in collaborative and social computing
2. Software and its engineering
  1. Software creation and management
    1. Collaboration in software development
      1. Programming teams
    2. Software development process management
      1. Software development methods
        Agile software development

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cover image ACM Conferences

ESEC/FSE 2020: Proceedings of the 28th ACM Joint Meeting on European Software Engineering Conference and Symposium on the Foundations of Software Engineering

November 2020

1703 pages

ISBN:9781450370431

DOI:10.1145/3368089

General Chair:
Prem Devanbu
University of California at Davis, USA
,
Program Chairs:
Myra Cohen
Iowa State University, USA
,
Thomas Zimmermann
Microsoft Research, USA

Copyright © 2020 ACM.

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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Published: 08 November 2020

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ESEC/FSE '20: 28th ACM Joint European Software Engineering Conference and Symposium on the Foundations of Software Engineering

November 8 - 13, 2020

Virtual Event, USA

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Cited By

Rolland KFitzgerald BDingsøyr TStol K(2023)Acrobats and Safety Nets: Problematizing Large-Scale Agile Software DevelopmentACM Transactions on Software Engineering and Methodology10.1145/361716933:2(1-45)Online publication date: 23-Dec-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3617169
Krings KBohn NHille NLudwig T(2023)“What if everyone is able to program?” – Exploring the Role of Software Development in Science FictionProceedings of the 2023 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3544548.3581436(1-13)Online publication date: 19-Apr-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3544548.3581436
Knutas ASiemon DTylosky NMaccani GHoda RSerebrenik A(2023)Contradicting Motivations in Civic Tech Software Development: Analysis of a Grassroots ProjectProceedings of the 45th International Conference on Software Engineering: Software Engineering in Society10.1109/ICSE-SEIS58686.2023.00021(157-163)Online publication date: 17-May-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1109/ICSE-SEIS58686.2023.00021
Vial GRivard S(2022)Conceptualizing Information Systems Development as an Organizational RoutineACM SIGMIS Database: the DATABASE for Advances in Information Systems10.1145/3551783.355179053:3(91-107)Online publication date: 26-Jul-2022
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3551783.3551790
Ulas MGuler H(2021)A New Sustainable Hybrid Software Development Methodology: FIRAT-UG2021 9th International Symposium on Digital Forensics and Security (ISDFS)10.1109/ISDFS52919.2021.9486385(1-4)Online publication date: 28-Jun-2021
https://doi.org/10.1109/ISDFS52919.2021.9486385

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