research-article

QUESt: new practices to represent hypotheses in experiment-driven software development

Authors:

Jorge Melegati,

Xiaofeng WangAuthors Info & Claims

IWSiB 2019: Proceedings of the 2nd ACM SIGSOFT International Workshop on Software-Intensive Business: Start-ups, Platforms, and Ecosystems

Pages 13 - 18

https://doi.org/10.1145/3340481.3342732

Published: 26 August 2019 Publication History

Abstract

Recent studies have proposed the use of experiments to guide software development in order to build features that users really want. In this context, product assumptions should be taken as hypotheses to be tested through experiments. User stories (US) are broadly used in the agile context but current guidelines to write them, like INVEST (Independent, Negotiable, Valuable, Estimable, Small and Testable), are not suitable in a experiment-driven context. In this paper, we present the first cycle of a design science research to tackle this problem. We proposed QUESt, a quality guideline recommending US to have a Questioning sense, be Updatable, Evaluable and Straightforward, and a new template to write user stories. To evaluate these new artifacts, we performed a think-aloud evaluation with software development practitioners. Although the results do not confirm the artifacts effectiveness, they indicate that they have value and should be tested within a comprehensive framework complemented by other practices.

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Cited By

Silva KMelegati JSilveira FWang XFerreira MGuerra E(2025)ArchHypo: Managing Software Architecture Uncertainty Using Hypotheses EngineeringIEEE Transactions on Software Engineering10.1109/TSE.2024.352047751:2(430-448)Online publication date: 1-Feb-2025
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1109/TSE.2024.3520477
Silva KAdolfo LCoppe ASilveira FFerreira MGuerra E(2024)Patterns for Using Hypothesis Engineering to Manage Architectural UncertaintiesProceedings of the 29th European Conference on Pattern Languages of Programs, People, and Practices10.1145/3698322.3698333(1-8)Online publication date: 3-Jul-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3698322.3698333
Silva KMelegati JWang XFerreira MGuerra E(2024)Using Hypotheses to Manage Technical Uncertainty and Architecture Evolution in a Software Start-upIEEE Software10.1109/MS.2024.338362841:4(7-13)Online publication date: 4-Jun-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1109/MS.2024.3383628
Show More Cited By

Index Terms

QUESt: new practices to represent hypotheses in experiment-driven software development
1. Software and its engineering
  1. Software creation and management
    1. Designing software
      1. Requirements analysis
    2. Software development process management
      1. Software development methods
        Agile software development

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cover image ACM Conferences

IWSiB 2019: Proceedings of the 2nd ACM SIGSOFT International Workshop on Software-Intensive Business: Start-ups, Platforms, and Ecosystems

August 2019

59 pages

ISBN:9781450368544

DOI:10.1145/3340481

Copyright © 2019 ACM.

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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Published: 26 August 2019

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ESEC/FSE '19: 27th ACM Joint European Software Engineering Conference and Symposium on the Foundations of Software Engineering

August 26, 2019

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Cited By

Silva KMelegati JSilveira FWang XFerreira MGuerra E(2025)ArchHypo: Managing Software Architecture Uncertainty Using Hypotheses EngineeringIEEE Transactions on Software Engineering10.1109/TSE.2024.352047751:2(430-448)Online publication date: 1-Feb-2025
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1109/TSE.2024.3520477
Silva KAdolfo LCoppe ASilveira FFerreira MGuerra E(2024)Patterns for Using Hypothesis Engineering to Manage Architectural UncertaintiesProceedings of the 29th European Conference on Pattern Languages of Programs, People, and Practices10.1145/3698322.3698333(1-8)Online publication date: 3-Jul-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3698322.3698333
Silva KMelegati JWang XFerreira MGuerra E(2024)Using Hypotheses to Manage Technical Uncertainty and Architecture Evolution in a Software Start-upIEEE Software10.1109/MS.2024.338362841:4(7-13)Online publication date: 4-Jun-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1109/MS.2024.3383628
Amna APoels G(2022)Systematic Literature Mapping of User Story ResearchIEEE Access10.1109/ACCESS.2022.317374510(51723-51746)Online publication date: 2022
https://doi.org/10.1109/ACCESS.2022.3173745
Amna APoels G(2022)Ambiguity in user storiesInformation and Software Technology10.1016/j.infsof.2022.106824145:COnline publication date: 1-May-2022
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1016/j.infsof.2022.106824
dos Reis Jdos Santos ADuarte EGonçalves Fde França BBonacin RBaranauskas M(2021)User Stories and the Socially-Aware Design Towards the OpenDesign PlatformEnterprise Information Systems10.1007/978-3-030-75418-1_33(730-752)Online publication date: 1-May-2021
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-75418-1_33
Smolander KGrünbacher PHyrynsalmi SJansen S(2020)ACM SIGSOFT International Workshop on Software-Intensive BusinessACM SIGSOFT Software Engineering Notes10.1145/3375572.337557745:1(18-20)Online publication date: 22-Jan-2020
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3375572.3375577
Gottschalk SYigitbas EEngels G(2020)Model-Based Hypothesis Engineering for Supporting Adaptation to Uncertain Customer NeedsBusiness Modeling and Software Design10.1007/978-3-030-52306-0_18(276-286)Online publication date: 7-Jul-2020
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-52306-0_18
Melegati JDumas MPfahl DApel SRusso A(2019)Improving requirements engineering practices to support experimentation in software startupsProceedings of the 2019 27th ACM Joint Meeting on European Software Engineering Conference and Symposium on the Foundations of Software Engineering10.1145/3338906.3341465(1172-1175)Online publication date: 12-Aug-2019
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3338906.3341465

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