A Systematic Literature Review on Intertemporal Choice in Software Engineering - Protocol and Results
It addresses the problem of understanding decision-making with uncertain future outcomes for software engineers and stakeholders, but is incremental as it synthesizes existing research.
This paper conducted a systematic literature review to characterize the assumptions underlying intertemporal choice in software engineering, analyzing how time is considered in decision-making studies to support descriptive frameworks for empirical research.
When making choices in software projects, engineers and other stakeholders engage in decision making that involves uncertain future outcomes. Research in psychology, behavioral economics and neuroscience has questioned many of the classical assumptions of how such decisions are made. This literature review aims to characterize the assumptions that underpin the study of these decisions in Software Engineering. We identify empirical research on this subject and analyze how the role of time has been characterized in the study of decision making in SE. The literature review aims to support the development of descriptive frameworks for empirical studies of intertemporal decision making in practice.