Abstract
Context
Software engineering is a social and collaborative activity. Communicating and sharing knowledge between software developers requires much effort. Hence, the quality of communication plays an important role in influencing project success. To better understand the effect of communication on project success, more in-depth empirical studies investigating this phenomenon are needed.
Objective
We investigate the effect of using a graphical versus textual design description on co-located software design communication.
Method
Therefore, we conducted a family of experiments involving a mix of 240 software engineering students from four universities. We examined how different design representations (i.e., graphical vs. textual) affect the ability to Explain, Understand, Recall, and Actively Communicate knowledge.
Results
We found that the graphical design description is better than the textual in promoting Active Discussion between developers and improving the Recall of design details. Furthermore, compared to its unaltered version, a well-organized and motivated textual design description–that is used for the same amount of time–enhances the recall of design details and increases the amount of active discussions at the cost of reducing the perceived quality of explaining.
Software engineering is a social and collaborative activity. Communicating and sharing knowledge between software developers requires much effort. Hence, the quality of communication plays an important role in influencing project success. To better understand the effect of communication on project success, more in-depth empirical studies investigating this phenomenon are needed.
Objective
We investigate the effect of using a graphical versus textual design description on co-located software design communication.
Method
Therefore, we conducted a family of experiments involving a mix of 240 software engineering students from four universities. We examined how different design representations (i.e., graphical vs. textual) affect the ability to Explain, Understand, Recall, and Actively Communicate knowledge.
Results
We found that the graphical design description is better than the textual in promoting Active Discussion between developers and improving the Recall of design details. Furthermore, compared to its unaltered version, a well-organized and motivated textual design description–that is used for the same amount of time–enhances the recall of design details and increases the amount of active discussions at the cost of reducing the perceived quality of explaining.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 4427-4471 |
| Number of pages | 45 |
| Journal | Empirical Software Engineering |
| Volume | 25 |
| Issue number | 6 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 1 Nov 2020 |
| Externally published | Yes |
Bibliographical note
DBLP's bibliographic metadata records provided through http://dblp.org/search/publ/api are distributed under a Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication. Although the bibliographic metadata records are provided consistent with CC0 1.0 Dedication, the content described by the metadata records is not. Content may be subject to copyright, rights of privacy, rights of publicity and other restrictions.Keywords
- Communication
- Family of experiments
- Graphical representation
- Knowledge sharing
- Software design
- Software engineering
- Software modeling
- Textual representation
- UML