Dag I. K. Sjøberg

Dag I. K. Sjøberg, Gunnar R. Bergersen

In a recent article, Falessi et al. (2017) call for a deeper understanding of the pros and cons of using students and professionals in experiments. The authors state: we have observed too many times that our papers were rejected because we used students as subjects. Good experiments with students are certainly a valuable asset in the body of research in software engineering. Papers should thus not be rejected solely on the ground that the subjects are students. However, the distribution in skill is different for students and professionals. Since previous studies have shown that skill may have a moderating effect on the treatment of participants, we are concerned that studies involving developers with only low to medium skill (i.e., students) may result in wrong inferences about which technology, method or tool is better in the software industry. We therefore provide suggestions for how experiments with students can be improved and also comment on some of the alleged drawbacks of using professionals that Falessi et al. point out.

Viktoria Stray, Nils Brede Moe, Dag I. K. Sjøberg

Members of high performing software teams collaborate, exchange information and coordinate their work on a frequent, regular basis. Most teams have the daily stand-up meeting as a central venue for these activities. Although this kind of meeting is one of the most popular agile practices, it has received little attention from researchers. We observed 102 daily stand-ups and interviewed 60 members of 15 teams in five countries. We found that the practice is usually challenging to conduct in a way that benefits the whole team. Many team members have a negative experience from conducting the meeting, which reduces job satisfaction, co-worker trust and well-being. However, the practice can be adjusted and improved to empower teams. In this article, we describe key factors that affect the meeting and propose four recommendations for improving the practice.