Browsing by Author "Basili, Victor"
Now showing 1 - 7 of 7
Results Per Page
Sort Options
Item Building Knowledge through Families of Software Studies: An Experience Report(1999-02-04) Basili, Victor; Shull, Forrest; Lanubile, FilippoExperimentation in software engineering is difficult. One reason is that there are a large number of context variables, and so creating a cohesive understanding of experimental results requires a mechanism for motivating studies and integrating results. It requires a community of researchers that can replicate studies, vary context variables, and build abstract models that represent the common observations about the discipline. This paper discusses the experience of the authors, based upon a collection of experiments, in terms of a high level framework for organizing sets of related studies. With such a framework, experiments can be viewed as part of common families of studies, rather than being isolated events. Common families of studies can contribute to higher level hypotheses that no individual experiment could achieve. Then the replication of experiments within a family of studies can act as the cornerstone for building knowledge in an incremental manner. A mechanism is suggested that motivates, records, and integrates individual experiments within a family for analysis by the community at large. To support the framework, this paper discusses the experiences of the authors in carrying out empirical studies, with specific emphasis on persistent problems encountered in experimental design, threats to validity, criteria for evaluation, and execution of experiments in the domain of software engineering. (Also cross-referenced as UMIACS-TR-99-05)Item High Dependability Computing Program: Evolving a Dependability Requirements Elicitation and Modeling Framework Based on Use(2006-11) Donzelli, Paolo; Shull, Forrest; Asgari, Sima; Basili, VictorCorrectly identifying and expressing dependability requirements for software systems has wide-ranging consequences for planning and conducting software development as well as for the final system success. Yet crucial difficulties exist, many stemming from the fact that definitions of “dependable” will vary not only from system to system, but will be perceived differently by different stakeholders of the same system. UMD is a requirements engineering framework for eliciting and modeling dependability requirements that has been devised, to mitigate such difficulties. In this report, we introduce UMD and describe an empirical study designed to shed some light on the feasibility of the ideas behind UMD and to identify which aspects of the framework could be improved, in the perspective that software technology transfer from research to industrial use should proceed iteratively and empirically. Subjects in the study consisted of 7 students in a graduate-level class. Empirical qualitative and quantitative results show that the UMD approach is feasible but also allowed us to identify important missing aspects, confirming our assumption that it was not yet mature enough for a rigorous industrial study. The contributions of this study have been twofold: Demonstrating the usefulness of the tech transfer approach which we have followed as well as the feasibility of the UMD approach.Item Investigating the effect of Process Experience on Inspection Effectiveness(2003-04-04) Carver, Jeffrey; Shull, Forrest; Basili, VictorRequirements inspections are a process for improving the quality of software by allowing software developers to detect defects early in the lifecycle when they are cheaper to fix. One issue that arises is the experience level with a particular inspection technique an inspector needs before he or she is effective and efficient in using that technique. This technical report describes a study run in CMSC735 in Fall 2001. The goal of this study was to begin to understand the impact of process experience on a software inspection. Some of the subjects were given a chance to observe an inspection using the Perspective Based Reading (PBR) techniques before they had to use these techniques themselves. This report discusses how the particular experience with process was evaluated and how the efficiency and effectiveness of these subjects compared with that of the subjects who did not get the opportunity to observe someone else using PBR priorto their own use of it. UMIACS-TR-2003-12Item Investigating the Interaction Between Inspection Process Specificity and Software Development Experience(2003-11-25) Carver, Jeff; Van Voorhis, John; Basili, VictorThis paper describes a study conducted to compare the interaction of experience and specificity in a requirements inspection technique. Two versions of a requirements inspection technique, PBR, were generated. One version had a high level of specificity and the other had a low level of specify. These techniques were used by subjects of varying experience levels to determine if experience and specificity were related. The results of the study indicated very little difference among the treatment groups. As a result, we examined any assumptions that we made about the environment. In doing so, we uncovered some issues that must be addressed in future studies that focus on people. This paper provides a complete description of the results obtained and describes the assumptions that we made and their impact on the reliability of the results. (UMIACS-TR-2003-100)Item Perspective-based Usability Inspection: An Empirical Validation of Efficacy(2000-10-06) Zhang, Zhijun; Basili, Victor; Shneiderman, Ben;Inspection is a fundamental means of achieving software usability. Past research showed that the current usability inspection techniques were rather ineffective. We developed perspective-based usability inspection, which divides the large variety of usability issues along different perspectives and focuses each inspection session on one perspective. We conducted a controlled experiment to study its effectiveness, using a post- test only control group experimental design, with 24 professionals as subjects. The control group used heuristic evaluation, which is the most popular technique for usability inspection. The experimental design and the results are presented, which show that inspectors applying perspective-based inspection not only found more usability problems related to their assigned perspectives, but also found more overall problems. Perspective-based inspection was shown to be more effective for the aggregated results of multiple inspectors, finding about 30% more usability problems for 3 inspectors. A management implication of this study is that assigning inspectors more specific responsibilities leads to higher performance. Internal and external threats to validity are discussed to help better interpret the results and to guide future empirical studies. (Also cross-referenced as HCIL 99-33) (Also cross-referenced as UMIACS-TR-2000-72)Item Reading Techniques for OO Design Inspections(2002-04-05) Travassos, Guilherme H.; Shull, Forrest; Carver, Jeffrey; Basili, VictorInspections can be used to identify defects in software artifacts. In this way, inspection methods help to improve software quality, especially when used early in software development. Inspections of software design can be especially crucial since design defects (problems of correctness and completeness with respect to the requirements, internal consistency, or other quality attributes) can directly affect the quality of, and effort required for, the implementation. We have created a new family of "reading techniques" (so called because they help a reviewer to "read" a design artifact for the purpose of finding relevant information) that gives specific and practical guidance for identifying defects in Object-Oriented designs. Each reading technique in the family focuses the reviewer on some aspect of the design, with the goal that an inspection team applying the entire family should achieve a high degree of coverage of the design defects. In this paper, we present an overview of this new set of reading techniques. We discuss how these techniques were developed and suggest how readers can use them to detect defects in high level object oriented design UML diagrams. Also UMIACS-TR-2002-33Item SIMPL-R and Its Application to Large, Sparse Matrix Problems(1974-07) McHugh, John; Basili, Victor