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An Exploratory Study of How Developers Seek, Relate, and Collect Relevant Information during Software Maintenance Tasks
December 2006 (vol. 32 no. 12)
pp. 971-987
ASCII Text
x 
 
Andrew J. Ko, Brad A. Myers, Michael J. Coblenz, Htet Htet Aung, "An Exploratory Study of How Developers Seek, Relate, and Collect Relevant Information during Software Maintenance Tasks," IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering, vol. 32, no. 12, pp. 971-987, December, 2006.
 
 
BibTex
x
 
@article{ 10.1109/TSE.2006.116,
author = {Andrew J. Ko and Brad A. Myers and Michael J. Coblenz and Htet Htet Aung},
title = {An Exploratory Study of How Developers Seek, Relate, and Collect Relevant Information during Software Maintenance Tasks},
journal ={IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering},
volume = {32},
number = {12},
issn = {0098-5589},
year = {2006},
pages = {971-987},
doi = {http://doi.ieeecomputersociety.org/10.1109/TSE.2006.116},
publisher = {IEEE Computer Society},
address = {Los Alamitos, CA, USA},
}
 
 
RefWorks Procite/RefMan/Endnote
x 
 
TY - JOUR
JO - IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering
TI - An Exploratory Study of How Developers Seek, Relate, and Collect Relevant Information during Software Maintenance Tasks
IS - 12
SN - 0098-5589
SP971
EP987
EPD - 971-987
A1 - Andrew J. Ko,
A1 - Brad A. Myers,
A1 - Michael J. Coblenz,
A1 - Htet Htet Aung,
PY - 2006
KW - Program investigation
KW - program understanding
KW - program comprehension
KW - empirical software engineering
KW - information foraging
KW - information scent.
VL - 32
JA - IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering
ER -
 
Much of software developers' time is spent understanding unfamiliar code. To better understand how developers gain this understanding and how software development environments might be involved, a study was performed in which developers were given an unfamiliar program and asked to work on two debugging tasks and three enhancement tasks for 70 minutes. The study found that developers interleaved three activities. They began by searching for relevant code both manually and using search tools; however, they based their searches on limited and misrepresentative cues in the code, environment, and executing program, often leading to failed searches. When developers found relevant code, they followed its incoming and outgoing dependencies, often returning to it and navigating its other dependencies; while doing so, however, Eclipse's navigational tools caused significant overhead. Developers collected code and other information that they believed would be necessary to edit, duplicate, or otherwise refer to later by encoding it in the interactive state of Eclipse's package explorer, file tabs, and scroll bars. However, developers lost track of relevant code as these interfaces were used for other tasks, and developers were forced to find it again. These issues caused developers to spend, on average, 35 percent of their time performing the mechanics of navigation within and between source files. These observations suggest a new model of program understanding grounded in theories of information foraging and suggest ideas for tools that help developers seek, relate, and collect information in a more effective and explicit manner.

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Index Terms:
Program investigation, program understanding, program comprehension, empirical software engineering, information foraging, information scent.
Citation:
Andrew J. Ko, Brad A. Myers, Michael J. Coblenz, Htet Htet Aung, "An Exploratory Study of How Developers Seek, Relate, and Collect Relevant Information during Software Maintenance Tasks," IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering, vol. 32, no. 12, pp. 971-987, Dec. 2006, doi:10.1109/TSE.2006.116
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