A database for publications published by researchers and students at SimulaMet.
Research area
Journal articles
How to pose for a professional photo: The effect of three facial expressions on perception of competence of a software developer
Australian Journal of Psychology 72 (2020): 257-266.Status: Published
How to pose for a professional photo: The effect of three facial expressions on perception of competence of a software developer
| Afilliation | Software Engineering |
| Project(s) | Department of IT Management |
| Publication Type | Journal Article |
| Year of Publication | 2020 |
| Journal | Australian Journal of Psychology |
| Volume | 72 |
| Pagination | 257-266 |
| Publisher | Wiley |
Team resource management decisions in software development projects
submitted to a journal (2020).Status: Submitted
Team resource management decisions in software development projects
Purpose: This paper examines to what extent resource managers are likely to make normatively correct decisions in complex, but realistic, software development team resource management situations.
Research design: Three scenarios were designed, all of them with a software development project consisting of a higher and a lower productivity team. The resource managers were asked to decide which team to increase (or decrease) the productivity by 10% in order to minimize the total effort or the total duration of the software project. Ninety-nine software professionals, most of them with substantial resource management experience, were randomly allocated one of the scenarios.
Findings: Most of the resource managers perceived their scenario as realistic and occurring in practice. The decisions tended, however, to be different from the normatively correct ones. In particular, when the scenario structure resembled that used to document a time-saving bias, the great majority of the managers made non-normative decisions. The findings suggest that the resource managers made decisions based on simple heuristics, often leading to non-normative decisions. When asked about the decisions they would make in practice, more of the resource managers gave normatively correct responses. Our findings suggest a cost-saving potential from more awareness of how to make team resource management decisions.
Originality: The study may be the first to document non-normative team resource decisions, including those related to the time-saving bias, in the context of project management.
| Afilliation | Software Engineering |
| Project(s) | Department of IT Management |
| Publication Type | Journal Article |
| Year of Publication | 2020 |
| Journal | submitted to a journal |
| Publisher | xxx |
Practices connected to perceived client benefits of software projects
IET Software 14, no. 6 (2020): 677-683.Status: Published
Practices connected to perceived client benefits of software projects
It is well-documented that many software projects deliver fewer benefits than planned. However prior research has had a stronger focus on the ability to deliver within budget, on time and with the specified functionality, than on what to do to successfully deliver client benefits. The authors have conducted a survey collecting information about benefits management practices, agile practices, use of contracts, and the perceived success in delivery of client benefits. The authors received responses from 83 software professionals with information about 73 recent and 74 older software projects. There was no statistically significant improvement of the delivered client benefits from the older to the recent projects. Statistically significant findings, applying a general linear model-based analysis, include that the degree of success in delivering client benefits is connected to a project having: (i) a plan for how to realise the benefits, (ii) implemented practices for benefits management during project execution, (iii) frequent deliveries to production during the project execution, and (iv) a process for the evaluation of realised benefits after project completion. The authors argue that greater use of these practices represents a potential for organisations to increase their success in delivering benefits from software projects.
| Afilliation | Software Engineering |
| Project(s) | Department of IT Management |
| Publication Type | Journal Article |
| Year of Publication | 2020 |
| Journal | IET Software |
| Volume | 14 |
| Issue | 6 |
| Pagination | 677-683 |
| Publisher | The Institution of Engineering and Technology |
An empirically evaluated checklist for surveys in software engineering
Information and Software Technology 119 (2020): 106240.Status: Published
An empirically evaluated checklist for surveys in software engineering
| Afilliation | Software Engineering |
| Project(s) | Department of IT Management |
| Publication Type | Journal Article |
| Year of Publication | 2020 |
| Journal | Information and Software Technology |
| Volume | 119 |
| Pagination | 106240 |
| Date Published | Jan-03-2020 |
| Publisher | Elsevier |
| ISSN | 09505849 |
| URL | https://doi.org/10.1016/j.infsof.2019.106240 |
| DOI | 10.1016/j.infsof.2019.106240 |
Sequence effects in the estimation of software development effort
Journal of Systems and Software 159, no. January 2020 (2020): 110448.Status: Published
Sequence effects in the estimation of software development effort
Currently, little is known about how much the sequence in which software development tasks or projects are estimated affects judgment-based effort estimates. To gain more knowledge, we examined estimation sequence effects in two experiments. In the first experiment, 362 software professionals estimated the effort of three large tasks of similar sizes, whereas in the second experiment 104 software professionals estimated the effort of four large and five small tasks. The sequence of the tasks was randomised in both experiments. The first experiment, with tasks of similar size, showed a mean increase of 10% from the first to the second and a 3% increase from the second to the third estimate. The second experiment showed that estimating a larger task after a smaller one led to a mean decrease in the estimate of 24%, and that estimating a smaller task after a larger one led to a mean increase of 25%. There was no statistically significant reduction in the sequence effect with higher competence. We conclude that more awareness about how the estimation sequence affects the estimates may reduce potentially harmful estimation biases. In particular, it may reduce the likelihood of a bias towards too low effort estimates.
| Afilliation | Software Engineering |
| Project(s) | Department of IT Management |
| Publication Type | Journal Article |
| Year of Publication | 2020 |
| Journal | Journal of Systems and Software |
| Volume | 159 |
| Issue | January 2020 |
| Pagination | 110448 |
| Publisher | Elsevier |
Revealing the State-of-the-Art in Large-Scale Agile Development: A Systematic Mapping Study
arXiv preprint arXiv:2007.05578 (2020).Status: Submitted
Revealing the State-of-the-Art in Large-Scale Agile Development: A Systematic Mapping Study
| Afilliation | Software Engineering |
| Project(s) | Department of IT Management |
| Publication Type | Journal Article |
| Year of Publication | 2020 |
| Journal | arXiv preprint arXiv:2007.05578 |
| Publisher | arXiv |
Relations Between Effort Estimates, Skill Indicators, and Measured Programming Skill
Transactions on Software Engineering (2020).Status: Published
Relations Between Effort Estimates, Skill Indicators, and Measured Programming Skill
There are large skill differences among software developers, and clients and managers will benefit from being able to identify those with better skill. This study examines the relations between low effort estimates, and other commonly used skill indicators, and measured programming skill. One hundred and four professional software developers were recruited. After skill-related information was collected, they were asked to estimate the effort for four larger and five smaller programming tasks. Finally, they completed a programming skill test. The lowest and most over-optimistic effort estimates for the larger tasks were given by those with the lowest programming skill, which is in accordance with the well-known Dunning-Kruger effect. For the smaller tasks, however, those with the lowest programming skill had the highest and most over-pessimistic estimates. The other programming skill indicators, such as length of experience, company assessed skill and self-assessed skill, were only moderately correlated with measured skill and not particularly useful in guiding developer skill identification. A practical implication is that for larger and more complex tasks, the use of low effort estimates and commonly used skill indicators as selection criteria leads to a substantial risk of selecting among the least skilled developers.
| Afilliation | Software Engineering |
| Project(s) | Department of IT Management |
| Publication Type | Journal Article |
| Year of Publication | 2020 |
| Journal | Transactions on Software Engineering |
| Date Published | February 2020 |
| Publisher | IEEE |
Miscellaneous
ACM SIGSOFT empirical standards
In arXiv preprint arXiv:2010.03525. https://arxiv.org/abs/2010.03525: ACM, 2020.Status: Published
ACM SIGSOFT empirical standards
Empirical Standards are brief public document that communicate expectations for a specific kind of study (e.g. a questionnaire survey). The ACM SIGSOFT Paper and Peer Review Quality Initiative generated empirical standards for common research methods in software engineering. These living documents, which should be continuously revised to reflect evolving consensus around research best practices, can be used to make peer review more transparent, structured, harmonious and fair.
| Afilliation | Software Engineering |
| Project(s) | Department of IT Management |
| Publication Type | Miscellaneous |
| Year of Publication | 2020 |
| Publisher | ACM |
| Place Published | https://arxiv.org/abs/2010.03525 |
Proceedings, refereed
Benefits management and agile practices in software projects: how perceived benefits are impacted
In IEEE 22nd Conference on Business Informatics (CBI). Vol. 2. IEEE, 2020.Status: Published
Benefits management and agile practices in software projects: how perceived benefits are impacted
Considerable resources are wasted on projects that deliver few or no benefits. The main objective is to better understand the characteristics of projects that are successful in delivering good client benefits. We asked 71 Norwegian software professionals to report information about projects completed between 2016 and 2018. We found that both benefits management and agile practices have a significant relationship with perceived realisation of client benefits. This includes the benefits management practices of having a plan for benefits realisation, individuals with assigned responsibility for benefits realisation, benefits management during project execution, quantification of realised benefits, evaluation of realised benefits, re-estimation of benefits during project execution, and the agile practices of a flexible scope and frequent deliveries to production. The software projects that were successful in delivering client benefits adopted benefits management and agile practices to a larger extent than the less successful ones. Future studies are required to establish more comprehensive understanding of what distinguishes projects that deliver good client benefits from the rest, including studies of the realisation of client benefits in agile software projects.
| Afilliation | Software Engineering |
| Project(s) | Department of IT Management |
| Publication Type | Proceedings, refereed |
| Year of Publication | 2020 |
| Conference Name | IEEE 22nd Conference on Business Informatics (CBI) |
| Volume | 2 |
| Pagination | 48-56 |
| Publisher | IEEE |
Enabling Team Autonomy in a Large Public Organization
In Agile Processes in Software Engineering and Extreme Programming - Workshops. Springer, 2020.Status: Published
Enabling Team Autonomy in a Large Public Organization
| Afilliation | Software Engineering |
| Project(s) | Department of IT Management |
| Publication Type | Proceedings, refereed |
| Year of Publication | 2020 |
| Conference Name | Agile Processes in Software Engineering and Extreme Programming - Workshops |
| Pagination | 245–252 |
| Publisher | Springer |