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First International Symposium on Empirical Software Engineering and Measurement (ESEM 2007)
Evaluating the Usefulness and Ease of Use of a Groupware Tool for the Software Architecture Evaluation Process
Madrid, Spain
September 20-September 21
ISBN: 0-7695-2886-4
Muhammad Ali Babar, University of Limerick, Ireland
Dietmar Winkler, Institute of Software Technology, Austria
Stefan Biffl, Institute of Software Technology, Austria
We have developed a framework for groupware tool support for the software architecture evaluation process in the context of global software development. We have empirically assessed the effectiveness of the groupwaresupported software architecture evaluation process in a set of controlled experiments. While we found that groupware-supported distributed meetings can be very effective, we saw the need to investigate users? acceptance of the tool used in these empirical studies. In this paper we report on the "perceived usefulness" and "ease of use" of the groupware tool based on the adapted Davis? Technology Acceptance Model (TAM), a widely used general-purpose instrument for measuring users? attitude towards a particular technology. Main results from analyzing the TAM data are: a majority of the participants found the tool quite useful and easy to use for supporting collaborative tasks like architecture evaluation; a majority of the respondents was also very positive about the regular use of the tool for collaborative tasks in the future. However, there was considerably less support for preferring a distributed tool-based meeting to a face-to-face meeting.
Index Terms:
Software architecture evaluation, groupware support, empirical study, Technology Acceptance Model, global software development.
Citation:
Muhammad Ali Babar, Dietmar Winkler, Stefan Biffl, "Evaluating the Usefulness and Ease of Use of a Groupware Tool for the Software Architecture Evaluation Process," esem, pp.430-439, First International Symposium on Empirical Software Engineering and Measurement (ESEM 2007), 2007
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