Shinobu Saito

Shinobu Saito

In software maintenance work, software architects and programmers need to identify modules that require modification or deletion. Whilst user requests and bug reports are utilised for this purpose, evaluating the execution status of modules within the software is also crucial. This paper, therefore, applies spatial statistics to assess internal software execution data. First, we define a software space dataset, viewing the software's internal structure as a space based on module call relationships. Then, using spatial statistics, we conduct the visualization of spatial clusters and the statistical testing using spatial measures. Finally, we consider the usefulness of spatial statistics in the software engineering domain and future challenges. (This paper has been published in the 14th International Conference on Model-Based Software and Systems Engineering (MODELSWARD 2016).

Shinobu Saito, Yukako Iimura, Emad Aghayi et al.

A critical issue in software development projects in IT service companies is finding the right people at the right time. By enabling assignments of tasks to people to be more fluid, the use of crowdsourcing approaches within a company offers a potential solution to this challenge. Inside a company, as multiple system development projects are ongoing separately, developers with slack time on one project might use this time to contribute to other projects. In this paper, we report on a case study of the application of crowdsourcing within an industrial web application system development project in a large telecommunications company. Developers worked with system specifications which were organized into a set of microtasks, offering a set of short and self-contained descriptions. When crowd workers in other projects had slack time, they fetched and completed microtasks. Our results offer initial evidence for the potential value of microtask programming in increasing the fluidity of team assignments within a company. Crowd contributors to the project were able to onboard and contribute to a new project in less than 2 hours. After onboarding, the crowd workers were together able to successfully implement a small program which contained only a small number of defects. Interview and survey data gathered from project participants revealed that crowd workers reported that they perceived onboarding costs to be reduced and did not experience issues with the reduced face to face communication, but experienced challenges with motivation.