Software Engineers' Information Seeking Behavior in Change Impact Analysis - An Interview Study
This provides insights for improving CIA tools in software engineering, but it is incremental as it builds on prior work on task-specific information seeking.
The study investigated software engineers' information seeking behavior during Change Impact Analysis in large projects, finding that engineers exhibit diverse behaviors, some do not find traceability useful, and they prefer flexible support over formal approaches.
Software engineers working in large projects must navigate complex information landscapes. Change Impact Analysis (CIA) is a task that relies on engineers' successful information seeking in databases storing, e.g., source code, requirements, design descriptions, and test case specifications. Several previous approaches to support information seeking are task-specific, thus understanding engineers' seeking behavior in specific tasks is fundamental. We present an industrial case study on how engineers seek information in CIA, with a particular focus on traceability and development artifacts that are not source code. We show that engineers have different information seeking behavior, and that some do not consider traceability particularly useful when conducting CIA. Furthermore, we observe a tendency for engineers to prefer less rigid types of support rather than formal approaches, i.e., engineers value support that allows flexibility in how to practically conduct CIA. Finally, due to diverse information seeking behavior, we argue that future CIA support should embrace individual preferences to identify change impact by empowering several seeking alternatives, including searching, browsing, and tracing.