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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 \section{Research Design} 1 \section{Research Design}
2 \label{sec:researchdesign} 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 \textbf{RQ1.}\textit{How to introduce open source and agile best practices into 12 \textbf{RQ1.}\textit{How to introduce open source and agile best practices into
10 government-academia collaboration project?} 13 government-academia collaboration project?}
@@ -12,145 +15,112 @@ government-academia collaboration project?} @@ -12,145 +15,112 @@ government-academia collaboration project?}
12 \textbf{RQ2.}\textit{What practices would favor effective team management in 15 \textbf{RQ2.}\textit{What practices would favor effective team management in
13 government-academia collaborative project?} 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 \subsection{The case study} 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 The academic team carried out development activities in the Advanced Laboratory 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 The government team was composed of one director, one coordinator, and two IT 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
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@@ -224,3 +224,16 @@ @@ -224,3 +224,16 @@
224 organization={IEEE} 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 +