Sofija Hotomski | University of Zurich, Switzerland (original) (raw)
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Papers by Sofija Hotomski
Abnahmetests angepasst werden können, wenn sich ihre zugehörigen Anforderungen ändern. Mit solche... more Abnahmetests angepasst werden können, wenn sich ihre zugehörigen Anforderungen ändern. Mit solchen Empfehlungen erleichtert unser Ansatz die Anpassung der Abnahmetests an die geänderten Anforderungen. Zusätzlich bietet unser Ansatz E-Mails und Warnungen, die die Anforderungs-und Testingenieure an Abweichungen in den Unterlagen erinnern und so das Risiko von nicht oder falsch kommunizierbaren Änderungen reduzieren. Diese Dissertation liefert mehrere wissenschaftliche Beiträge: erstens, Erkenntnisse über das Management von Anforderungen und Abnahmetests in der Industrie; zweitens, die prototypische Implementierung des GuideGen Werkzeugs; und drittens, zwei empirische Evaluationen-eine quantitative und eine qualitative. Alle Studien verwenden reale Daten aus der Industrie. Die Ergebnisse der ersten Forschungsstudie zeigen, dass Abnahmetests nicht regelmäßig durchgeführt werden, was gelegentlich zu verwirrenden Merkmalen und Fehlern führt. Die zweite Studie zeigt, dass unser Ansatz eine nützliche Hilfestellung für die Pflege von Abnahmetests und deren Konsistenthaltung mit veränderten Anforderungen bietet. Das Benachrichtigungssystem erleichtert die Kommunikation der Änderungen zwischen verschiedenen Interessengruppen und dient als gute Erinnerung an notwendige Anpassungen. In den beiden Evaluationsstudien haben eine Reihe von Teilnehmern betont, dass GuideGen ein praktisch nützliches Werkzeug ist, das die Erhaltung der Konsistenz zwischen Anforderungen und Abnahmetests sowie die Kommunikation von Anforderungsänderungen erleichtert.
Proceedings of the Evaluation and Assessment in Software Engineering, 2020
Factors such as app stores or platform choices heavily affect functional and non-functional mobil... more Factors such as app stores or platform choices heavily affect functional and non-functional mobile app requirements. We surveyed 45 companies and interviewed ten experts to explore how factors that impact mobile app requirements are understood by requirements engineers in the mobile app industry. We observed the lack of knowledge in several areas. For instance, we observed that all practitioners were aware of data privacy concerns, however, they did not know that certain third-party libraries, usage aggregators, or advertising libraries also occasionally leak sensitive user data. Similarly, certain functional requirements may not be implementable in the absence of a third-party library that is either banned from an app store for policy violations or lacks features, for instance, missing desired features in ARKit library for iOS made practitioners turn to Android. We conclude that requirements engineers should have adequate technical experience with mobile app development as well as ...
This contribution was originally published as: SoĄja Hotomski, Martin Glinz (2019). GuideGen: An ... more This contribution was originally published as: SoĄja Hotomski, Martin Glinz (2019). GuideGen: An Approach for Keeping Requirements and Acceptance Tests Aligned via Automatically Generated Guidance. Information and Software Technology 110:17Ű38.
Proceedings of the 40th International Conference on Software Engineering Companion Proceeedings - ICSE '18, 2018
When changes in requirements occur, their associated tests must be adapted accordingly in order t... more When changes in requirements occur, their associated tests must be adapted accordingly in order to maintain the quality of the evolving system. In practice, inconsistencies in requirements and acceptance tests-together with poor communication of changes-lead to software quality problems, unintended costs and project delays. We are developing GuideGen, a tool that helps requirements engineers, testers and other involved parties keep requirements and acceptance tests aligned. When requirements change, GuideGen analyzes the changes, automatically generates guidance on how to adapt the affected acceptance tests, and sends this information to subscribed parties. GuideGen also flags all non-aligned acceptance tests, thus keeping stakeholders aware of mismatches between requirements and acceptance tests. We evaluated GuideGen with data from three companies. For 262 non-trivial changes of requirements, the suggestions generated by GuideGen were correct in more than 80 percent of the cases for agile requirements and about 67 percent for traditional ones.
2017 IEEE 25th International Requirements Engineering Conference Workshops (REW), Sep 1, 2017
Keeping requirements and acceptance test documents aligned and up-to-date plays an important role... more Keeping requirements and acceptance test documents aligned and up-to-date plays an important role in the success of software projects. In practice, these documents are not always aligned with each other, nor with the actual system behaviour. A previous study showed that even when requirements are updated, acceptance tests might stay outdated, which often leads to quality problems and unintended costs. In order to keep the requirements and test documents in a consistent state, we are developing an approach that automatically generates guidance on how to change impacted acceptance tests when changes in requirements occur. In this paper, we briefly present our approach and a prototype tool that implements it. A preliminary evaluation of our approach yielded encouraging results.
2018 IEEE 26th International Requirements Engineering Conference (RE)
Software requirements constantly change, thus impacting all other artifacts of an evolving system... more Software requirements constantly change, thus impacting all other artifacts of an evolving system. In order to keep the system in a consistent state, changes in requirements should be documented and applied accordingly to all affected artifacts, including acceptance tests. In practice, however, changes in requirements are not always documented nor applied to the affected acceptance tests. This is mostly due to poor communication, lack of time or work overload, and eventually leads to project delays, unintended costs and unsatisfied customers. GuideGen is a tool-supported approach for keeping requirements and acceptance tests aligned. When a requirement is changed, GuideGen automatically generates guidance in natural language on how to modify impacted acceptance tests and communicates this information to the concerned parties. In this paper, we evaluate GuideGen in terms of its perceived usefulness for practitioners and its applicability to real software projects. The evaluation was conducted via interviews with 23 industrial practitioners from ten companies based in Europe. The results indicate that GuideGen is a useful approach that facilitates requirements change management and the communication of changes between requirements and test engineers. The participants also identified potential for improvement, in particular for using GuideGen in large projects.
2016 IEEE 24th International Requirements Engineering Conference (RE), 2016
With the emergence and spread of agile processes, the practices of writing and maintaining docume... more With the emergence and spread of agile processes, the practices of writing and maintaining documentation have drastically changed in the last decade. In this work, we performed a qualitative study to explore the current practices for managing two related types of software documentation: requirements and acceptance tests. We interviewed twenty practitioners from seventeen business units in fifteen companies to investigate the companies' practices for writing, maintaining and linking requirements and acceptance test documentation. The study yields interesting and partially unexpected results. For example, we had expected that tests would be more extensively documented than requirements, while we found a strong linear correlation between the number of requirements and tests in our sample. We also found that technical people are usually not involved in the requirements engineering activities, which often results in misunderstood or underestimated requirements. Acceptance tests are written, in many cases, based on requirements that are not necessarily detailed enough. Also, acceptance tests are not regularly maintained, which occasionally results in confusing features and bugs.
Abnahmetests angepasst werden können, wenn sich ihre zugehörigen Anforderungen ändern. Mit solche... more Abnahmetests angepasst werden können, wenn sich ihre zugehörigen Anforderungen ändern. Mit solchen Empfehlungen erleichtert unser Ansatz die Anpassung der Abnahmetests an die geänderten Anforderungen. Zusätzlich bietet unser Ansatz E-Mails und Warnungen, die die Anforderungs-und Testingenieure an Abweichungen in den Unterlagen erinnern und so das Risiko von nicht oder falsch kommunizierbaren Änderungen reduzieren. Diese Dissertation liefert mehrere wissenschaftliche Beiträge: erstens, Erkenntnisse über das Management von Anforderungen und Abnahmetests in der Industrie; zweitens, die prototypische Implementierung des GuideGen Werkzeugs; und drittens, zwei empirische Evaluationen-eine quantitative und eine qualitative. Alle Studien verwenden reale Daten aus der Industrie. Die Ergebnisse der ersten Forschungsstudie zeigen, dass Abnahmetests nicht regelmäßig durchgeführt werden, was gelegentlich zu verwirrenden Merkmalen und Fehlern führt. Die zweite Studie zeigt, dass unser Ansatz eine nützliche Hilfestellung für die Pflege von Abnahmetests und deren Konsistenthaltung mit veränderten Anforderungen bietet. Das Benachrichtigungssystem erleichtert die Kommunikation der Änderungen zwischen verschiedenen Interessengruppen und dient als gute Erinnerung an notwendige Anpassungen. In den beiden Evaluationsstudien haben eine Reihe von Teilnehmern betont, dass GuideGen ein praktisch nützliches Werkzeug ist, das die Erhaltung der Konsistenz zwischen Anforderungen und Abnahmetests sowie die Kommunikation von Anforderungsänderungen erleichtert.
Proceedings of the Evaluation and Assessment in Software Engineering, 2020
Factors such as app stores or platform choices heavily affect functional and non-functional mobil... more Factors such as app stores or platform choices heavily affect functional and non-functional mobile app requirements. We surveyed 45 companies and interviewed ten experts to explore how factors that impact mobile app requirements are understood by requirements engineers in the mobile app industry. We observed the lack of knowledge in several areas. For instance, we observed that all practitioners were aware of data privacy concerns, however, they did not know that certain third-party libraries, usage aggregators, or advertising libraries also occasionally leak sensitive user data. Similarly, certain functional requirements may not be implementable in the absence of a third-party library that is either banned from an app store for policy violations or lacks features, for instance, missing desired features in ARKit library for iOS made practitioners turn to Android. We conclude that requirements engineers should have adequate technical experience with mobile app development as well as ...
This contribution was originally published as: SoĄja Hotomski, Martin Glinz (2019). GuideGen: An ... more This contribution was originally published as: SoĄja Hotomski, Martin Glinz (2019). GuideGen: An Approach for Keeping Requirements and Acceptance Tests Aligned via Automatically Generated Guidance. Information and Software Technology 110:17Ű38.
Proceedings of the 40th International Conference on Software Engineering Companion Proceeedings - ICSE '18, 2018
When changes in requirements occur, their associated tests must be adapted accordingly in order t... more When changes in requirements occur, their associated tests must be adapted accordingly in order to maintain the quality of the evolving system. In practice, inconsistencies in requirements and acceptance tests-together with poor communication of changes-lead to software quality problems, unintended costs and project delays. We are developing GuideGen, a tool that helps requirements engineers, testers and other involved parties keep requirements and acceptance tests aligned. When requirements change, GuideGen analyzes the changes, automatically generates guidance on how to adapt the affected acceptance tests, and sends this information to subscribed parties. GuideGen also flags all non-aligned acceptance tests, thus keeping stakeholders aware of mismatches between requirements and acceptance tests. We evaluated GuideGen with data from three companies. For 262 non-trivial changes of requirements, the suggestions generated by GuideGen were correct in more than 80 percent of the cases for agile requirements and about 67 percent for traditional ones.
2017 IEEE 25th International Requirements Engineering Conference Workshops (REW), Sep 1, 2017
Keeping requirements and acceptance test documents aligned and up-to-date plays an important role... more Keeping requirements and acceptance test documents aligned and up-to-date plays an important role in the success of software projects. In practice, these documents are not always aligned with each other, nor with the actual system behaviour. A previous study showed that even when requirements are updated, acceptance tests might stay outdated, which often leads to quality problems and unintended costs. In order to keep the requirements and test documents in a consistent state, we are developing an approach that automatically generates guidance on how to change impacted acceptance tests when changes in requirements occur. In this paper, we briefly present our approach and a prototype tool that implements it. A preliminary evaluation of our approach yielded encouraging results.
2018 IEEE 26th International Requirements Engineering Conference (RE)
Software requirements constantly change, thus impacting all other artifacts of an evolving system... more Software requirements constantly change, thus impacting all other artifacts of an evolving system. In order to keep the system in a consistent state, changes in requirements should be documented and applied accordingly to all affected artifacts, including acceptance tests. In practice, however, changes in requirements are not always documented nor applied to the affected acceptance tests. This is mostly due to poor communication, lack of time or work overload, and eventually leads to project delays, unintended costs and unsatisfied customers. GuideGen is a tool-supported approach for keeping requirements and acceptance tests aligned. When a requirement is changed, GuideGen automatically generates guidance in natural language on how to modify impacted acceptance tests and communicates this information to the concerned parties. In this paper, we evaluate GuideGen in terms of its perceived usefulness for practitioners and its applicability to real software projects. The evaluation was conducted via interviews with 23 industrial practitioners from ten companies based in Europe. The results indicate that GuideGen is a useful approach that facilitates requirements change management and the communication of changes between requirements and test engineers. The participants also identified potential for improvement, in particular for using GuideGen in large projects.
2016 IEEE 24th International Requirements Engineering Conference (RE), 2016
With the emergence and spread of agile processes, the practices of writing and maintaining docume... more With the emergence and spread of agile processes, the practices of writing and maintaining documentation have drastically changed in the last decade. In this work, we performed a qualitative study to explore the current practices for managing two related types of software documentation: requirements and acceptance tests. We interviewed twenty practitioners from seventeen business units in fifteen companies to investigate the companies' practices for writing, maintaining and linking requirements and acceptance test documentation. The study yields interesting and partially unexpected results. For example, we had expected that tests would be more extensively documented than requirements, while we found a strong linear correlation between the number of requirements and tests in our sample. We also found that technical people are usually not involved in the requirements engineering activities, which often results in misunderstood or underestimated requirements. Acceptance tests are written, in many cases, based on requirements that are not necessarily detailed enough. Also, acceptance tests are not regularly maintained, which occasionally results in confusing features and bugs.