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Authored by Paulo Meireles
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Exists in master and in 2 other branches oss_2018, rework_case_study

[oss2018] Reviewing Research Design: Paulo's basead on Siqueira's version

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oss2018/content/03-methods.tex
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1 1 \section{Research Design}
2 2 \label{sec:researchdesign}
3 3  
4   -The focus of this paper is investigating practical ways to conciliate cultural
5   -differences in software development processes between government and academia,
6   -without modifying their internal processes. Our analysis was guided by the
7   -following research questions:
  4 +% TODO (by Siqueira): Tenho a impressão de que esse parágrafo cairia bem no último parágrafo
  5 +% da introdução. Pelo menos a ideia dele uma vez que resume bem o trabalho
  6 +In this paper, we studied practical alternatives to harmonize different
  7 +software development processes. We are interested in the relationship between
  8 +government and academia from the project management perspective, without the
  9 +enforcement of changing the internal processes. We present two research
  10 +questions that guided our work:
8 11  
9 12 \textbf{RQ1.}\textit{How to introduce open source and agile best practices into
10 13 government-academia collaboration project?}
... ... @@ -12,145 +15,112 @@ government-academia collaboration project?}
12 15 \textbf{RQ2.}\textit{What practices would favor effective team management in
13 16 government-academia collaborative project?}
14 17  
15   -To answer these questions, we use as a case study the evolution project of the
16   -SPB portal \cite{meirelles2017spb}, a government-academia collaborative
17   -development based on open source software integration. We designed two surveys
18   -and an interview to the different roles performed by the project
19   -participants and we collected public data from the project development
20   -environment. Our research approach is detailed in the following subsections.
  18 +To answer these questions, we use as a case study research method. We selected
  19 +as a case the evolution of the Brazilian Public Software portal (SPB)
  20 +\cite{meirelles2017spb}, a government-academia collaborative project based on
  21 +FLOSS projects. To validate our answers, we picked three different points of
  22 +views: developers, government agent, and data collected from the project
  23 +repository.
21 24  
22 25 \subsection{The case study}
23 26  
24   -%TODO:
25   -%Apresentar melhor a SPB plataforma aqui para preparar a discussão dos resultados (usar modelo IEEE Software)
26   -
27   -%TODO por parágrafo
28   -%five existing open source software (substitutir software por systems)
29   -%systems-of-sytems software (Colab) (substitutir software por framework)
30   -
31   -The project to evolve the Brazilian Public Software Portal was a partnership
32   -between government and academia held between 2014 and 2016
33   -\cite{meirelles2017spb}. To solve maintenance problems and fill design-reality
34   -gaps in the portal, the Ministry of Planning (MPOG) joined the University of
35   -Brasília (UnB) and the University of São Paulo (USP) to develop a platform
36   -based on the integration and evolution of five existing open source
37   -software. This environment was a novelty in the context of the Brazilian
38   -government, due to the technologies employed and its diverse features,
39   -including social networking (Noosfero), mailing lists (MailMan), version
40   -control system (GitLab), and source code quality monitoring (Mezuro), all
41   -integrated using a system-of-systems software (Colab) \cite{meirelles2017spb}.
42   -
43   -%Não usar empirical practices => best practices
44   -%undergraduate students => undergraduate interns
45   -%Colocar no discurso direto: The project hired 6 IT profectionals, and 2 designers.
  27 +The project to evolve the SPB portal was a partnership between government and
  28 +academia held between 2014 and 2016 \cite{meirelles2017spb}. The old version of
  29 +SPB suffers from maintenance problems and design-reality gaps. In this sense,
  30 +Ministry of Planning (MPOG) decided to join the University of Brasília (UnB)
  31 +and the University of São Paulo (USP) to develop a new platform based existing
  32 +FLOSS projects. However, it was required to integrate multiple software in the
  33 +same system in the way that end-user has a unified experience between the
  34 +tools.
  35 +
  36 +In short, the SPB portal evolved into a Collaborative Development Environment
  37 +(CDE) \cite{booch2003}. It was a novelty in the context of the Brazilian
  38 +government, due to the technologies employed and its diverse features. The
  39 +project includes social networking, mailing lists, version control system, and
  40 +source code quality monitoring. All of this software is integrated using a
  41 +system-of-systems framework \cite{meirelles2017spb}.
46 42  
47 43 The academic team carried out development activities in the Advanced Laboratory
48   -of Production, Research and Innovation in Software Engineering (LAPPIS) at UnB.
49   -The project management and development process in this laboratory are usually
50   -executed adopting empirical practices from open source communities and agile
51   -methodologies. For this project, a total of 42 undergraduate students and two
52   -professors participated in the development team. Six IT professionals were also
53   -hired as senior developers due to their experiences in open source projects and
54   -two designers specialized in User eXperience.
55   -
56   -%(Melhorar a frase) Although they were responsible... Sugestão de sequência: theses government servants did not develop software. Their responsability was contracting...
  44 +of Production, Research, and Innovation in Software Engineering (LAPPIS) at
  45 +UnB. The laboratory born from a professor that is part of Brazillian FLOSS
  46 +community and another one that spreads out agile values. Thus, naturally,
  47 +LAPPIS embrace the best practices of both ecosystems. For this project, the
  48 +laboratory had a total of 42 undergraduate interns, and two professors engaged
  49 +in the development team. Finally, the project hired six senior developers with
  50 +significant experience with FLOSS communities, and two designers specialized in
  51 +User Experience (UX).
57 52  
58 53 The government team was composed of one director, one coordinator, and two IT
59   -analysts from MPOG. Although they were responsible for the
60   -execution of this collaboration, their department generally does not execute
61   -development of ministry's software projects, since its responsibility is
62   -contracting and homologating software development services, following
63   -traditional management approaches, such as the RUP, CMMI, and PMBOK.
64   -
65   -%Met in person to manage...
66   -%To improve the project management process we have adopted and evolute a set of empirical practices based on open source ecosystems and agile methodologies, establishing an empirical management model.
67   -%Melhorar frase como um todo tirando o 'we' (diferenciar autor (we) do coordenador do projeto): To improve the project management process we have adopted and evolved a set of empirical practices based on open source ecosystems and agile methodologies, establishing an empirical management model.
68   -%Sugestão de conteúdo para finalizar a última frase
69   -%"Ao longo do projeto, os seus responsáveis foram experimentando e testando práticas coletadas do OSS de forma intuitiva e não-sistemática. Neste paper tentamos analisar e sistematizar essas melhores práticas."
70   -The leaders of these two aforementioned teams periodically met in person for
71   -the purpose of managing the project progress, discussing strategic and
72   -technical goals. Initially, these meetings took place at the ministry's
73   -headquarters and, usually, only directors and professors participated. The
74   -management of the development team was concentrated in the academic side and
75   -was organized in biweekly sprints and 4-month releases. With the progress of
76   -the project, this workflow proved to be inefficient. Conflicts between the
77   -internal management processes and differences in pace and goals of each
78   -institution were compromising the platform development. To improve the project
79   -management process we have adopted and evolute a set of empirical practices
80   -based on open source ecosystems and agile methodologies, establishing an empirical
81   -management model.
82   -
83   -\subsection{Survey and data collection}
84   -
85   -%UnB undergraduate interns
86   -%Online questionnaire (Não usar survey, usar sempre questionnaire)
87   -%We also interviewed
88   -%The questions are classified into categories
89   -%tirar "in the context of government and project;"
90   -
91   -We divided the UnB development team into two groups of target participants
92   -according to their roles during the project: \textit{UnB Interns} and
93   -\textit{Senior Developers}. For each group, we designed an online survey with
94   -topics related to project organization, development process, communication and
95   -relationship between members, acquired knowledge, and experience with open
96   -source projects. We interviewed also two \textit{MPOG analysts} who directly
97   -interacted with the development team and project development process. The
98   -interview questions could be classified into four parts: Professional profile;
99   -Organization, communication and development methodologies in the context of
100   -government and project; Satisfaction with the developed platform; Lessons
101   -learned.
102   -
103   -%UnB interns (undergraduate students) => interns
104   -%their average age [in september 2017] are...
105   -%arredondar as casas das porcentagem, nada depois da virgula 43,2% => 43%
106   -%falar as porcentagens sobre a profissão de todos inclusive teacher and public servants
107   -%link to online questionnaire throught e-mail
108   -
109   -We sent the link to the online survey through emails to 42 UnB interns
110   -(undergraduate students), who participated in any time of the project as
111   -developer receiving a scholarship. We received a total of 37 responses. Their
112   -average age is 25 years old and 91.9\% of them are male. Currently, 35.1\%
113   -continue at the university as undergraduate or graduate students, 18.9\% work as
114   -a developer in a small company and 18.9\% in medium or large companies, 10.8\%
115   -are entrepreneurs, 8.1\% are unemployed and the others work as teachers or
116   -civil servants. 43.2\% said the SPB project was their first experience with
117   -open source software.
118   -
119   -%We also invited the 8 seniors developers to filling the oline questionnaire and all of them did.
120   -%They average age are
121   -
122   -We also sent the link to the online survey through emails to eight senior
123   -developers (IT professionals). All of them answered the questionnaire.
124   -Their average age is 32 years old and 87.5\% are male. They have an average of
125   -11 years of experience in the IT market, and currently, 62.5\% of respondents
126   -are company employees, 37.5\% are freelance developers, 25\% are master's
127   -degree students and 25\% entrepreneurs. They have worked on average in 5
128   -companies and participated in 4 to 80 projects. They participated in this
129   -collaborative project between 7 to 24 months. 85.7\% of them had some
130   -experience with free software before the SPB project.
131   -
132   -
133   -Two MPOG IT analysts were interviewed separately. Each interview took an
134   -average of 2 hours with 28 open questions. They are more than 30 years old and
135   -have been government employees for more than 7 years. Only one of them
136   -continues working in the same ministry. For both, this collaborative project
137   -was their first experience of government-academia development collaboration.
138   -
139   -%We collected from the repository manager all open issues and commits.
140   -%We collected from the main project repository all the issues and commits.
141   -%The number of comment authors
142   -%In the main project repository
143   -
144   -Finally, we quantitatively analyze data about the development of the project,
145   -publicly available on the SPB platform. We collected from the repository
146   -manager tool of the platform all open issues and commits related to the main
147   -repository of the platform, that is, the development repositories of the
148   -integrated software were not considered. For issues, we collected project
149   -name, author of the issue, opening date, issue title, and the number of comments.
150   -We also collected information about total open issues, the total commits,
151   -different authors of issues, the number of different authors of issues, the number of
152   -comments, authors of comments, the number of authors other than comments. During
153   -the period from April 2015 to June 2016, 879 issues were opened by 59 distinct
154   -authors with a total of 4,658 comments and 64 distinct commentators. The
155   -development team made 3,256 commits in the repository provided by SPB platform.
156   -
  54 +analysts from MPOG. They were responsible for contracts and managed the
  55 +collaboration, which means they do not produce software. Analysts following
  56 +traditional management approaches (e.g., RUP, CMMI, and PMBOK) for a new
  57 +contract and homologating software services.
  58 +
  59 +The leaders of LAPPIS and MPOG periodically met in person to manage the project
  60 +progress, discussing strategic issues and technical goals. Initially, these
  61 +meetings took place at the Ministry's headquarters and, usually, only directors
  62 +and professors participated. On the academic side, the management of the
  63 +development teams often spends two weeks per sprint and release a new version
  64 +each 4-month. During the project progress, this workflow proved to be
  65 +inefficient. Conflicts between the internal management processes and
  66 +differences in pace and goals of each institution were compromising the
  67 +platform development.
  68 +
  69 +Professors with senior developers' collaboration adopted, incrementally, a set
  70 +of best practices based on FLOSS ecosystems and agile values to improve the
  71 +project management process and reduce the conflict between the government and
  72 +academia. Throughout the project, the LAPPIS team built an experimental
  73 +management model to harmonize the different cultures. The development leaders
  74 +made decisions in a non-systematic way to promote the usage of these best
  75 +practices. In this paper, we analyze and codify these decisions and its
  76 +benefits.
  77 +
  78 +\subsection{Survey, Interview and Data Collection}
  79 +
  80 +We divided the development team into two groups of participants according to
  81 +their roles during the project: UnB undergraduate interns and senior
  82 +developers. For each set of members, we designed an online questionnaire with
  83 +topics related to (1) project organization, (2) development process, (3)
  84 +communication and relationship between members, (4) acquired knowledge and (5)
  85 +experience with FLOSS projects. We also interviewed two MPOG analysts who
  86 +directly interacted with the development team and project development process.
  87 +The interview questions had four parts: (1) Professional profile;(2)
  88 +Organization, communication and development methodologies (3) Satisfaction with
  89 +the developed platform; (4) Lessons learned.
  90 +
  91 +We sent the link to the online questionnaire to 42 interns, all of them worked
  92 +at any period of the project as a developer and received a scholarship. We
  93 +received a total of 37 responses. At the time of the project, their average age
  94 +was 22 years old, and 92\% of them are male. Currently, 35\% continue at the
  95 +university as undergraduate or graduate students, 19\% work as a developer in a
  96 +small company and 19\% in medium or large enterprises, 11\% are entrepreneurs,
  97 +8\% are unemployed, 5\% are teachers, and 3\% are public servants. About of the
  98 +interns, 43\% said the SPB project was their first experience with FLOSS
  99 +projects.
  100 +
  101 +We also invited the eight IT professionals to fill the online questionnaire,
  102 +and all of them did. Their average age was 30 years old in 2015, and 87\% are
  103 +male. On average they have 11 years of experience in the IT market. Currently,
  104 +62\% of the interviewed have a formal job, 37\% are freelance developers, 25\%
  105 +are master's degree students, and 25\% are entrepreneurs. On average they
  106 +worked in 5 different companies and participated in 4 to 80 projects. They
  107 +joined in this collaborative project between 7 to 24 months, and 86\% of them
  108 +had some experience with FLOSS before the SPB project.
  109 +
  110 +We interviewed two MPOG analysts separately. Each interview took an average of
  111 +2 hours with 28 open questions. They are over 30 years old, and they have more
  112 +than seven years of experience working in the government. Only one of them
  113 +continues working in the same ministry. Both of the analysts said this
  114 +collaborative project was their first experience of government-academia
  115 +development collaboration.
  116 +
  117 +Finally, we analyzed, quantitatively, data about the project development,
  118 +publicly available on the SPB platform. We collected data from the central
  119 +project repository all the issues and commits. Regarding the issues, we
  120 +obtained the total of them, project name, authors, opening date, title, and the
  121 +number of comments. We also get information about the total commits, different
  122 +authors per issues, the number of comments, authors of comments, the number of
  123 +comment authors. During the period from April 2015 to June 2016, 59 distinct
  124 +authors opened 879 issues from a total of 4,658 comments and 64 different
  125 +commentators. The development team made 3,256 commits in the central project
  126 +repository.
... ...
oss2018/spb-oss-2018.bib
  Diff comments   View file @029a425
... ... @@ -224,3 +224,16 @@
224 224 organization={IEEE}
225 225 }
226 226  
  227 +@incollection{booch2003,
  228 +title = "Collaborative Development Environments",
  229 +series = "Advances in Computers",
  230 +publisher = "Elsevier",
  231 +volume = "59",
  232 +pages = "1 - 27",
  233 +year = "2003",
  234 +issn = "0065-2458",
  235 +doi = "https://doi.org/10.1016/S0065-2458(03)59001-5",
  236 +url = "http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0065245803590015",
  237 +author = "Grady Booch and Alan W. Brown"
  238 +}
  239 +
... ...