During software evolution, decisions related to components' origin or source significantly impact the quality properties of the product and development metrics such as cost, time to market, ease of maintenance, and further evolution. Thus, such decisions should ideally be supported by evidence, i.e., using previous experiences and information from different sources, even own previous experiences. A hindering factor to such reuse of previous experiences is that these decisions are highly context-dependent and it is difficult to identify when previous experiences come from sufficiently similar contexts to be useful in a current setting. Conversely, when documenting a decision (as a decision experience), it is difficult to know which context factors will be most beneficial when reusing the experience in the future. An interview study is performed to identify a list of context factors that are perceived to be most important by practitioners when using experiences to support decision-making for component sourcing, using a specific scenario with alternative sources of experiences. We observed that the further away (from a company or an interviewee) the experience evidence is, as is the case for online experiences, the more context factors are perceived as important by practitioners to make use of the experience. Furthermore, we discuss and identify further research to make this type of decision-making more evidence-based. With this interview study, which focuses on which context factors are perceived as important by practitioners when reusing previous knowledge on software component reuse, we contribute with a listing of factors perceived to be important when reusing experiences from other prior decision-making cases of selecting among software components options. image

Background: Modern Code Review (MCR) is a key component for delivering high-quality software and sharing knowledge among developers. Effective reviews require an in-depth understanding of the code and demand from the reviewers to contextualize the change from different perspectives.

Aim: While there is a plethora of research on solutions that support developers to understand changed code, we have observed that many provide only narrow, specialized insights and very few aggregate information in a meaningful manner. Therefore, we aim to provide a vision of improving code understanding in MCR.

Method: We classified 53 research papers suggesting proposals to improve MCR code understanding. We use this classification, the needs expressed by code reviewers from previous research, and the information we have not found in the literature for extrapolation.

Results: We identified four major types of support systems and suggest an environment for contextualized code reviews. Furthermore, we illustrate with a set of scenarios how such an environment would improve the effectiveness of code reviews.

Conclusions: Current research focuses mostly on providing narrow support for developers. We outline a vision for how MCR can be improved by using context and reducing the cognitive load on developers. We hope our vision can foster future advancements in development environments. 

Context: Software reuse costs and benefits have been investigated in several primary studies, which have been aggregated in multiple secondary studies as well. However, existing secondary studies on software reuse have not critically appraised the evidence in primary studies. Moreover, there has been relatively less focus on how software reuse costs and benefits were measured in the primary studies, and the aggregated evidence focuses more on software reuse benefits than reuse costs. Objective: This study aims to cover the gaps mentioned in the context above by synthesizing and critically appraising the evidence reported on software reuse costs and benefits from industrial cases. Method: We used a systematic literature review (SLR) to conduct this study. The results of this SLR are based on a final set of 30 primary studies. Results: We identified nine software reuse benefits and six software reuse costs, in which better quality and improved productivity were investigated the most. The primary studies mostly used defect-based and development time-based metrics to measure reuse benefits and costs. Regarding the reuse practices, the results show that software product lines, verbatim reuse, and systematic reuse were the top investigated ones, contributing to more reuse benefits. The quality assessment of the primary studies showed that most of them are either of low (20%) or moderate (67%) quality. Conclusion: Based on the number and quality of the studies, we conclude that the strength of evidence for better quality and improved productivity as reuse benefits is high. There is a need to conduct more high quality studies to investigate, not only other reuse costs and benefits, but also how relatively new reuse-related practices, such as InnerSource and microservices architecture, impact software reuse. © 2024 The Author(s)

Kubernetes is a free, open-source container orchestration system for deploying and managing Docker containers that host microservices. Kubernetes cluster logs help in determining the reason for the failure. However, as systems become more complex, identifying failure reasons manually becomes more difficult and time-consuming. This study aims to identify effective and efficient classification algorithms to automatically determine the failure reason. We compare five classification algorithms, Support Vector Machines, K-Nearest Neighbors, Random Forest, Gradient Boosting Classifier, and Multilayer Perceptron. Our results indicate that Random Forest produces good accuracy while requiring fewer computational resources than other algorithms. © 2023 Owner/Author.

Background: Modern Code Review (MCR) is a lightweight alternative to traditional code inspections. While secondary studies on MCR exist, it is uanknown whether the research community has targeted themes that practitioners consider important.Objectives: The objectives are to provide an overview of MCR research, analyze the practitioners' opinions on the importance of MCR research, investigate the alignment between research and practice, and propose future MCR research avenues.Method: We conducted a systematic mapping study to survey state of the art until and including 2021, employed the Q-Methodology to analyze the practitioners' perception of the relevance of MCR research, and analyzed the primary studies' research impact.Results: We analyzed 244 primary studies, resulting in five themes. As a result of the 1,300 survey data points, we found that the respondents are positive about research investigating the impact of MCR on product quality and MCR process properties. In contrast, they are negative about human factor- and support systems-related research.Conclusion: These results indicate a misalignment between the state of the art and the themes deemed important by most survey respondents. Researchers should focus on solutions that can improve the state of MCR practice. We provide an MCR research agenda that can potentially increase the impact of MCR research. © 2023 Copyright held by the owner/author(s).

Background: InnerSource consists of the use of open source development techniques within the corporation. It helps improve software reuse through increased transparency and inter-team collaboration. Companies need to understand their context and specific needs before deciding to adopt any specific InnerSource practices since they cannot apply all InnerSource practices at once. Aim: This study aims to support the case company in assessing its readiness for adopting InnerSource practices to improve its internal reuse, identify and prioritize the improvement areas, and identify suitable solutions. Method: We performed a case study using a questionnaire and a workshop to check the current and desired status of adopting InnerSource practices and collect potential solutions. Results: The study participants identified that the company needs to prioritize the improvements related to the discoverability, communication channels, and ownership of the reusable assets. In addition, they identified certain InnerSource practices as solutions for the prioritized improvement areas, such as better structured repositories for storing and searching the reusable assets and standardized documentation of the reusable assets. Conclusion: The questionnaire instrument aids the case company in identifying the improvement areas related to InnerSource and reuse practices. InnerSource practices could improve the development and maintenance of reusable assets. Keywords: InnerSource, software reuse, readiness © 2023 Owner/Author.

This article presents an ecosystem that Ericsson developed to systematically practice large-scale reuse of microservices in a cloud-native context. We discuss how various ecosystem aspects, such as its continuous delivery mechanism, marketplace, and automated checking of design rules, facilitated the development and reuse of microservices across Ericsson. We also share lessons learned while developing the ecosystem including the initiatives related to the adoption of InnerSource practices for sustaining the ecosystem. 

Context: Software testing requires substantial effort in maintaining GUI test scripts, leading to rework or waste. Therefore, it is important to identify the factors leading to waste in GUI-based automation testing. Objective: To identify testability requirements and factors associated with waste from literature and practice. Methods: We conducted a literature review to identify the state of knowledge and a two-phased interview with practitioners to capture their subjective opinions and gather their views on the state of knowledge. Results: We identified 16 testability requirements and 14 factors associated with waste in GUI test automation. We classified each of them into SUT-related, test-process-related, test-tool-related, human and organizational, environment and cross-cutting. Conclusions: Our results indicate that the generic testability requirements identified in the literature are also valid for GUI automation testing. Our study identifies new findings in addition to the existing literature. © 2022 Owner/Author.

Background: Empirical studies involving human participants need to follow procedures to avoid causing harm to the subjects. However, it is not always clear how researchers should report these procedures. Aim: This study investigates how researchers report ethical issues in the software engineering journal publications, particularly informed consent, confidentiality, and anonymity. Method: We conducted a literature review to understand the reporting of ethical issues in software engineering journals. In addition, in a workshop, we discussed the importance of reporting the different ethical issues. Results: The results indicate that 49 out of 95 studies reported some ethical issues. Only six studies discussed all three ethical issues. The subjects were mainly informed about the study purpose and procedure. There are limited discussions on how the subjects were informed about the risks involved in the study. Studies reported on how authors ensured confidentiality have also discussed anonymity in most cases. The results of the workshop discussion indicate that reporting ethical issues is important to improve the reliability of the research results. We propose a checklist based on the literature review, which we validated through a workshop. Conclusion: The checklist proposed in this paper is a step towards enhancing ethical reporting in software engineering research.

Background: Software practice is evolving with changing technologies and practices such as InnerSource, DevOps, and microservices. It is important to investigate the impact of contemporary software engineering (SE) practices on software reuse.Aim: This study aims to characterize software reuse in contemporary SE practices and investigate its implications in terms of costs, benefits, challenges, and potential improvements in a medium-sized company.Method: We performed an exploratory case study by conducting interviews, group discussions, and reviewing company documentation to investigate software reuse in the context of contemporary SE practices in the case company.Results: The results indicate that the development for reuse in contemporary SE practices incurs additional coordination, among other costs. Development with reuse led to relatively fewer additional costs and resulted in several benefits such as better product quality and less development and delivery time. Ownership of reusable assets is challenging in contemporary SE practice. InnerSource practices may help mitigate the top perceived challenges: discoverability and ownership of the reusable assets, knowledge sharing and reuse measurement.Conclusion: Reuse in contemporary SE practices is not without additional costs and challenges. However, the practitioners perceive costs as investments that benefit the company in the long run.