In this paper we provide a brief introduction to some of the games user research activities at Microsoft. We focus on the analysis of automatically collected game data. We will show how this data can lead to insights about game usage and player progression.
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Please consider submitting to the Conference on Object-Oriented Programming, Systems, Languages, and Applications (OOPSLA 2012), part of SPLASH in Tucson, Arizona, USA. I am on the program committee. Please submit your papers by April 13, 2012. The conference will be held in the week of October 19-26, 2012.
The scope of OOPSLA includes all aspects of programming languages and software engineering, broadly construed. Papers may address any aspect of software development, including requirements, modeling, prototyping, design, implementation, generation, analysis, verification, testing, evaluation, maintenance, reuse, replacement, and retirement of software systems. Papers on tools (such as new languages, program analyses, or runtime systems) or or techniques (such as new methodologies, design processes, code organization approaches, and management techniques) designed to reduce the time, effort, and/or cost of creating software systems or improving their performance, quality and/or usability are of particular interest.
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This poster will be presented this weekend at The Future of Collaborative Software Development workshop at CSCW 2012.
Read the position paper Collaborative Software Development in Ten Years: Diversity, Tools, and Remix Culture (with Chris Bird).
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Software development is a data rich activity with many sophisticated metrics. Yet engineers often lack the tools and techniques necessary to leverage these potentially powerful information resources toward decision making. In this paper, we present the data and analysis needs of professional software engineers, which we identified among 110 developers and managers in a survey. We asked about their decision making process, their needs for artifacts and indicators, and scenarios in which they would use analytics.
The survey responses lead us to propose several guidelines for analytics tools in software development including: Engineers do not necessarily have much expertise in data analysis; thus tools should be easy to use, fast, and produce concise output. Engineers have diverse analysis needs and consider most indicators to be important; thus tools should at the same time support many different types of artifacts and many indicators. In addition, engineers want to drill down into data based on time, organizational structure, and system architecture.
Co-author: Raymond P.L. Buse (The University of Virginia)
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Fixing bugs is an important part of the software development process. An underlying aspect is the effectiveness of fixes: if a fair number of fixed bugs are reopened, it could indicate instability in the software system. To the best of our knowledge there has been on little prior work on understanding the dynamics of bug reopens. Towards that end, in this paper, we characterize when bug reports are reopened by using the Microsoft Windows operating system project as an empirical case study. Our analysis is based on a mixed-methods approach. First, we categorize the primary reasons for reopens based on a survey of 358 Microsoft employees. We then reinforce these results with a large-scale quantitative study of Windows bug reports, focusing on factors related to bug report edits and relationships between people involved in handling the bug. Finally, we build statistical models to describe the impact of various metrics on reopening bugs ranging from the reputation of the opener to how the bug was found.
Co-authors: Nachiappan Nagappan (Microsoft Research), Philip J. Guo (Stanford University), and Brendan Murphy (Microsoft Research)
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Please consider submitting to the 6th ACM/IEEE International Symposium on Empirical Software Engineering and Measurement 2012 (ESEM 2012) in Lund, Sweden. I am on the program committee. Please submit your papers by March 11, 2012 (abstracts: March 4). The conference will be held on September 19-20, 2012.
The ACM/IEEE International Symposium on Empirical Software Engineering and Measurement (ESEM) is the premier conference to present research results related to empirical software engineering. These include the discussion of: i) strengths and weaknesses of software engineering technologies and methods from an empirical viewpoint; ii) the design and analysis of empirical studies, ranging from controlled experiments to field studies and from quantitative to qualitative studies; iii) the use of data and measurement to understand, evaluate, and model software engineering phenomena. The symposium encourages the presentation of both novel work and replication studies.
ESEM provides a stimulating forum where researchers and practitioners can present and discuss recent research results on a wide range of topics, in addition to also exchanging ideas, experiences and challenging problems.
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Please consider submitting to the 20th IEEE International Requirements Engineering Conference (RE 2012) in Chicago, Illinois, USA. I am on the program committee of the industry track. Please submit your papers by March 5, 2012 (abstracts: February 27). The conference will be held on September 24-28, 2012.
TThe IEEE International Requirements Engineering Conference (RE12) is the premier international forum for researchers, educators, industrial practitioners, and students to present and discuss the most recent innovations, trends, experiences, and concerns in the field of requirements engineering.
As an industrial contributor, you will be able to highlight challenges and discuss ideas and new innovations in the field of requirements engineering with fellow practitioners and researchers alike. You will have the opportunity to share interests and expectations, and influence the development of the field. RE12 will give you the opportunity to join the global network of requirements engineering experts and industrials.
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