Information needs for integration decisions in the release process of large-scale parallel development

ABSTRACT

Version control branching allows an organization to parallelize its development efforts. Releasing a software system developed in this manner requires release managers, and other project stakeholders, to make decisions about how to integrate the branched work. This group decision-making process becomes very complex in the case of large-scale parallel development. To better understand the information needs of release managers in this context, we conducted an interview study at a large software company. Our analysis of the interviews provides a view into how release managers make integration decisions, organized around ten key factors. Based on these factors, we discuss specific information needs for release managers and how the needs can be met in future work.

References

1. Barcellini, F., Détienne, F., Burkhardt, J.-M., and Sack, W. A socio-cognitive analysis of online design discussions in an open source software community. Interact. Comput. 20 (January 2008), 141--165.
2. Brun, Y., Holmes, R., Ernst, M., and Notkin, D. Speculative analysis: exploring future development states of software. In FSE/SDP workshop on Future of software engineering research, FoSER'10, ACM (2010), 59--64.
3. Buse, R., and Zimmermann, T. Information needs for software development analytics. Tech. rep., Microsoft Research, 2011.
4. Corbin, J., and Strauss, A. Basics of Qualitative Research, 3rd ed. SAGE Publications, 2008.
5. Gutwin, C., and Greenberg, S. The importance of awareness for team cognition in distributed collaboration. In Team Cognition: Understanding the Factors that Drive Process and Performance, APA Press (2004), 177--201.
6. Hansen, P., and Jrvelin, K. Collaborative information retrieval in an information-intensive domain. Information Processing and Management 41, 5 (2005), 1101 -- 1119.
7. Ko, A., DeLine, R., and Venolia, G. Information needs in co-located software development teams. In International conference on Software Engineering, ICSE'07, IEEE Computer Society (Washington, DC, USA, 2007), 344--353.
8. Limayem, M., Banerjee, P., and Ma, L. Impact of gdss: opening the black box. Decis. Support Syst. 42 (November 2006), 945--957.
9. Mens, T. A state-of-the-art survey on software merging. Software Engineering, IEEE Transactions on 28, 5 (may 2002), 449--462.
10. Paul, S., and Reddy, M. Understanding together: sensemaking in collaborative information seeking. In Computer supported cooperative work, CSCW'10, ACM (New York, NY, USA, 2010), 321--330.
11. Perry, D., Siy, H., and Votta, L. Parallel changes in large scale software development: an observational case study. In International Conference on Software Engineering (apr 1998), 251--260.
12. Phillips, S., Sillito, J., and Walker, R. Branching and merging: an investigation into current version control practices. In International workshop on Cooperative and human aspects of software engineering, CHASE'11, ACM (2011), 9--15.
13. Rönkkö, K., Dittrich, Y., and Randall, D. When plans do not work out: How plans are used in software development projects. Comput. Supported Coop. Work 14 (October 2005), 433--468.
14. Ruhe, G. Software engineering decision support--a new paradigm for learning software organizations. In Advances in Learning Software Organizations, vol. 2640 of Lecture Notes in Computer Science. Springer, 2003, 104--113.
15. Ruhe, G. Product Release Planning: Methods, Tools and Applications. CRC Press, 2010.
16. Saarelainen, M.-M., Koskinen, J., Ahonen, J., Kankaanpaa, I., Sivula, H., Lintinen, H., Juutilainen, P., and Tilus, T. Group decision-making processes in industrial software evolution. In International Conference on Software Engineering Advances, IEEE Computer Society (2007), 78--.
17. Sack, W., Detienne, F., Ducheneaut, N., Burkhardt, J.-M., Mahendran, D., and Barcellini, F. A methodological framework for socio-cognitive analyses of collaborative design of open source software. Comput. Supported Coop. Work 15 (June 2006), 229--250.
18. Sassenburg, H. A multi-disciplinary view on software release decisions. In International workshop on Workshop on interdisciplinary software engineering research, WISER'06, ACM (2006), 45--52.
19. Sonnenwald, D., and Pierce, L. Information behavior in dynamic group work contexts: interwoven situational awareness, dense social networks and contested collaboration in command and control. Information Processing and Management 36, 3 (2000), 461--479.
20. Walrad, C., and Strom, D. The importance of branching models in scm. Computer 35 (September 2002), 31--38.
21. Wright, H., and Perry, D. Subversion 1.5: A case study in open source release mismanagement. In ICSE Workshop on Emerging Trends in Free/Libre/Open

Index Terms

• Social and professional topics

  • Professional topics

    • Management of computing and information systems

      • Project and people management

• Software and its engineering

  • Software creation and management

    • Software development process management

  • Software notations and tools

    • Software configuration management and version control systems