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Assessing the effects of introducing a new software development process: a methodological description

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Abstract

In this article, we report from a 22-months long action research study in which we evaluate the usefulness of a set of software development tools in an industrial setting, a small software company. We focus on how developers in the industry use and adopt these tools, what expectations they have on them, how the tools can be improved, and how the adoption process itself can be improved. We describe these change processes from a methodological perspective, how we monitored the processes, how we reviewed the outcomes, and the strategies that we applied. We show how the processes evolved, intermediate results, and the steps that were taken along the way based on the outcomes. We believe that the described study may inspire other tool-developers and/or researchers to organize similar studies to further our understanding of the complex processes involved in the adoption of software development tools in industry.

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Correspondence to Laura M. Castro.

Additional information

This research has been partially supported by EU FP7 Collaborative Project ProTest Grant Number 215868, and MICIN TIN201020959.

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Nilsson, A., Castro, L.M., Rivas, S. et al. Assessing the effects of introducing a new software development process: a methodological description. Int J Softw Tools Technol Transfer 17, 1–16 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10009-013-0275-0

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