Author:
Khan Arif Ali,Khan Javed Ali,Akbar Muhammad Azeem,Zhou Peng,Fahmideh Mahdi
Abstract
Abstract
Context
Software practitioners adopt approaches like DevOps, Scrum, and Waterfall for high-quality software development. However, limited research has been conducted on exploring software development approaches concerning practitioners’ discussions on Q &A forums.
Objective
We conducted an empirical study to analyze developers’ discussions on Q &A forums to gain insights into software development approaches in practice.
Method
We analyzed 13,903 developers’ posts across Stack Overflow (SO), Software Engineering Stack Exchange (SESE), and Project Management Stack Exchange (PMSE) forums. A mixed method approach, consisting of the topic modeling technique (i.e., Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA)) and qualitative analysis, is used to identify frequently discussed topics of software development approaches, trends (popular, difficult topics), and the challenges faced by practitioners in adopting different software development approaches.
Findings
We identified 15 frequently mentioned software development approaches topics on Q &A sites and observed an increase in trends for the top-3 most difficult topics requiring more attention. Finally, our study identified 49 challenges faced by practitioners while deploying various software development approaches, and we subsequently created a thematic map to represent these findings.
Conclusions
The study findings serve as a useful resource for practitioners to overcome challenges, stay informed about current trends, and ultimately improve the quality of software products they develop.
Publisher
Springer Science and Business Media LLC
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