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| David L. Atkins, Thomas Ball, Todd L. Graves, Audris Mockus, "Using Version Control Data to Evaluate the Impact of Software Tools: A Case Study of the Version Editor," IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering, vol. 28, no. 7, pp. 625-637, July, 2002. | |||
| BibTex | x | ||
| @article{ 10.1109/TSE.2002.1019478, author = {David L. Atkins and Thomas Ball and Todd L. Graves and Audris Mockus}, title = {Using Version Control Data to Evaluate the Impact of Software Tools: A Case Study of the Version Editor}, journal ={IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering}, volume = {28}, number = {7}, issn = {0098-5589}, year = {2002}, pages = {625-637}, doi = {http://doi.ieeecomputersociety.org/10.1109/TSE.2002.1019478}, publisher = {IEEE Computer Society}, address = {Los Alamitos, CA, USA}, } | |||
| RefWorks Procite/RefMan/Endnote | x | ||
| TY - JOUR JO - IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering TI - Using Version Control Data to Evaluate the Impact of Software Tools: A Case Study of the Version Editor IS - 7 SN - 0098-5589 SP625 EP637 EPD - 625-637 A1 - David L. Atkins, A1 - Thomas Ball, A1 - Todd L. Graves, A1 - Audris Mockus, PY - 2002 KW - Software tools KW - version control system KW - effort analysis. VL - 28 JA - IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering ER - | |||
Software tools can improve the quality and maintainability of software, but are expensive to acquire, deploy, and maintain, especially in large organizations. We explore how to quantify the effects of a software tool once it has been deployed in a development environment. We present an effort-analysis method that derives tool usage statistics and developer actions from a project's change history (version control system) and uses a novel effort estimation algorithm to quantify the effort savings attributable to tool usage. We apply this method to assess the impact of a software tool called VE, a version-sensitive editor used in Bell Labs. VE aids software developers in coping with the rampant use of certain preprocessor directives (similar to #if/#endif in C source files). Our analysis found that developers were approximately 40 percent more productive when using VE than when using standard text editors.
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