Using a qualitative research method for building a software maintenance methodology

Abstract

This article explains our experience of using Action Research to develop a software maintenance methodology involving two organizations: a group of university researchers and a software services organization. The concept of ‘methodology’ comprises a wide set of elements whose identification, definition and integration is not a trivial task, due to the magnitude of the project and to the different nature of the organizations. The use of Action Research was a key factor in the progress of the research and has been essential in the adoption of the methodology within the software services organization. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Action research as a model for industry-academia collaboration in the software engineering context

“…[29]). We recommend to utilize multiple researchers in the process to note down as much information as possible, and after each interactive session/action cycle the observations should be discussed immediately after that, given that the memories of relevant events are fresh.…”

“…Eight studies (cf. [32,31,5,29,17,18,21,5]) could be classified as genuine action research (cf. [9]).…”

“…Polo et al [29] present an participatory action research study building a software maintenance process for a software organization. Paolo et al classify their action research as participatory (cf.…”

Optimising agile development practices for the maintenance operation: nine heuristics

“…Since we have argued that there are significant differences between development and maintenance engineering, we do not assume that the tools and techniques associated with agile development will necessarily produce good results in maintenance (Polo et al 2002). The agile maintenance studies are generally positive in tone and highlight advantages: agile methods help speed up the process (Choudhari and Suman 2010) and improve communication between members of the maintenance team (Rudzki et al 2009).…”

Exploring software maintenance process characteristics by using inductive thematic analysis

“…In addition, due to the complexity of software maintenance tasks, many of development techniques, tools, models and processes cannot be directly applied in maintenance [21]. Anquetil et al [1] stated that the fundamental problem in software maintenance is the lack of various types of knowledge, which is usually only in heads of software engineers.…”