research-article

Empirical evidence of the benefits of workspace awareness in software configuration management

Authors:

David Redmiles,

André van der HoekAuthors Info & Claims

SIGSOFT '08/FSE-16: Proceedings of the 16th ACM SIGSOFT International Symposium on Foundations of software engineering

Pages 113 - 123

https://doi.org/10.1145/1453101.1453118

Published: 09 November 2008 Publication History

Abstract

In this paper, we present results from our empirical evaluations of a workspace awareness tool that we designed and implemented to augment the functionality of software configuration management systems. Particularly, we performed two user experiments directed at understanding the effectiveness of a workspace awareness tool in improving coordination and reducing conflicts. In the first experiment, we evaluated the tool through text-based assignments to avoid interference from the well-documented impact of individual differences among participants, as these differences are known to lessen the observable effect of proposed tools or to lead to them having no observable effect at all. This strategy of evaluating an application in a domain that is known to have less individual differences is novel and in our case particularly helpful in providing baseline quantifiable results. Upon this baseline, we performed a second experiment, with code-based assignments, to validate that the tool's beneficial effects also occur in the case of programming. Together, our results provide quantitative evidence of the benefits of workspace awareness in software configuration management, as we demonstrate that it improves coordination and conflict resolution without inducing significant overhead in monitoring awareness cues.

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Cited By

Costa CMenezes JTrindade BSantos R(2021)Factors that Affect Merge Conflicts: A Software Developers’ PerspectiveProceedings of the XXXV Brazilian Symposium on Software Engineering10.1145/3474624.3474641(233-242)Online publication date: 27-Sep-2021
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3474624.3474641
Brindescu CRamirez YSarma AJensen C(2020)Lifting the Curtain on Merge Conflict Resolution: A Sensemaking Perspective2020 IEEE International Conference on Software Maintenance and Evolution (ICSME)10.1109/ICSME46990.2020.00057(534-545)Online publication date: Sep-2020
https://doi.org/10.1109/ICSME46990.2020.00057
Brindescu CLeavens GGarcia APăsăreanu C(2018)How do developers resolve merge conflicts? an investigation into the processes, tools, and improvementsProceedings of the 2018 26th ACM Joint Meeting on European Software Engineering Conference and Symposium on the Foundations of Software Engineering10.1145/3236024.3275430(952-955)Online publication date: 26-Oct-2018
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3236024.3275430
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Index Terms

Empirical evidence of the benefits of workspace awareness in software configuration management
1. Software and its engineering
  1. Software creation and management
    1. Software post-development issues
      1. Software version control
  2. Software notations and tools
    1. Development frameworks and environments
    2. Software configuration management and version control systems

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cover image ACM Conferences

SIGSOFT '08/FSE-16: Proceedings of the 16th ACM SIGSOFT International Symposium on Foundations of software engineering

November 2008

369 pages

ISBN:9781595939951

DOI:10.1145/1453101

General Chair:
Mary Jean Harrold
Georgia Institute of Technology
,
Program Chair:
Gail C. Murphy
University of British Columbia

Copyright © 2008 ACM.

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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Published: 09 November 2008

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SIGSOFT '08/FSE-16: SIGSOFT 2008 -16th International Symposium on the Foundations of Software Engineering

November 9 - 14, 2008

Georgia, Atlanta

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https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3474624.3474641
Brindescu CRamirez YSarma AJensen C(2020)Lifting the Curtain on Merge Conflict Resolution: A Sensemaking Perspective2020 IEEE International Conference on Software Maintenance and Evolution (ICSME)10.1109/ICSME46990.2020.00057(534-545)Online publication date: Sep-2020
https://doi.org/10.1109/ICSME46990.2020.00057
Brindescu CLeavens GGarcia APăsăreanu C(2018)How do developers resolve merge conflicts? an investigation into the processes, tools, and improvementsProceedings of the 2018 26th ACM Joint Meeting on European Software Engineering Conference and Symposium on the Foundations of Software Engineering10.1145/3236024.3275430(952-955)Online publication date: 26-Oct-2018
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3236024.3275430
Galin D(2018)Configuration ManagementSoftware Quality: Concepts and Practice10.1002/9781119134527.ch25(522-543)Online publication date: 6-Apr-2018
https://doi.org/10.1002/9781119134527.ch25
Pastore FMariani LMicucci DBodden ESchäfer WDeursen AZisman A(2017)BDCI: behavioral driven conflict identificationProceedings of the 2017 11th Joint Meeting on Foundations of Software Engineering10.1145/3106237.3106296(570-581)Online publication date: 21-Aug-2017
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3106237.3106296
Soetens QRobbes RDemeyer S(2017)Changes as First-Class CitizensACM Computing Surveys10.1145/303892650:2(1-38)Online publication date: 6-Apr-2017
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3038926
Bang JBrun YMedvidovic N(2017)Continuous Analysis of Collaborative Design2017 IEEE International Conference on Software Architecture (ICSA)10.1109/ICSA.2017.45(97-106)Online publication date: Apr-2017
https://doi.org/10.1109/ICSA.2017.45
Chang YFong CTse EHancock MScott SNunes NCostanza EOlivier PSchöning J(2015)"Callout Bubble Saved My Life"Proceedings of the 2015 International Conference on Interactive Tabletops & Surfaces10.1145/2817721.2817733(73-82)Online publication date: 15-Nov-2015
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Nguyen HNguyen MDang SKästner CNguyen TDi Nitto EHarman MHeymans P(2015)Detecting semantic merge conflicts with variability-aware executionProceedings of the 2015 10th Joint Meeting on Foundations of Software Engineering10.1145/2786805.2803208(926-929)Online publication date: 30-Aug-2015
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Guzzi ABacchelli ARiche Yvan Deursen ACosley DForte ACiolfi LMcDonald D(2015)Supporting Developers' Coordination in the IDEProceedings of the 18th ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work & Social Computing10.1145/2675133.2675177(518-532)Online publication date: 28-Feb-2015
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