An approach to explore sequential interactions in cognitive activities of software engineering

Abstract

Context:: The study of cognitive aspects around software activities can provide valuable insights to improve software engineering practices. Objective: This paper presents an approach based on distributed cognition and sequential analysis to explore cognitive activities in the software development context by analyzing the interactions between software practitioners and the resources used to support them. Method: We conducted nine laboratory-based observation sessions to record qualitative audio/video data of interactions between the study participants and at-hand resources during the planning and managing of software analytics tasks. Results: The interaction strategies of the resources model included 21 emergent actions, and the sequential analysis revealed two different patterns of interaction over time. Conclusion: Our approach has been useful for evaluating how well an artifact works to support a team in software analytics activities. Furthermore, it can be applied to explore and discover interaction patterns in different software activities.