A survey on software quality practice -Pilot study in the Walloon region

Javier Perez, Tom Mens, Service de Génie Logiciel, Université de Mons

Flora Kamseu, Naji Habra, PRECISE lab, FUNDP

Presented at SATToSE seminarUniversity of Koblenz, August 2012

SATTOSE 2012

Context

• Portefeuille TIC – ERDF project lead by CETIC (2007-2013)

• CEIQS: Center of expertise in engineering and quality of systems

– aimed at developing a portfolio of innovative techniques allowing local companies to master the diversity, complexity, quality and rapid evolution of information systems

• workpackage QUALGEN– collaboration between FUNDP and UMONS since 2010

– Supported by Wallonia

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Objectives

• Explore how quality-related software development practice is being performed in industry

• Compare this across different regions and countries

• Relates this to what is being taught in academia– Is there a gap between teaching and industry

needs?– What good methodologies, practices, tools are

not being used and why?

About the survey

• Online survey carried out in Walloon region– Using LimeSurvey, from 29/5 till 30/6 2012– Companies involved in software development or

software maintenance

• Addressed topics– Use of processes during software development and

maintenance– Use of software quality measurement and improvement– Use of quality models and quality standards– Use of testing– Organisational support of development teams

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Structure of the questionnaire

• Introductory questions (6)– Details of respondent and company

• General development questions (5)– Perspective on dev. practices carried out by company

• Structural software quality (5)• Software testing and maintenance (5)• Quality models and quality standards (5)• Organisational support of development teams (5)

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Respondents – Number

– Initial mailing sent out to 145 companies

– 71 responses out of 188 contacted respondents• Response rate 37,8%

– Responses from 47 different companies• Multiple responses from same companies were

aggregated into a single one

– Incomplete responses were ignored

– 44 fully completed questionnaires kept for analysis• Corresponds to 62% of received responses

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Respondents - Origin

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Mainly from Wallonia and Brussels (the target of our pilot study)

Respondents – Company size

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Good balance between company size (number of employees) of respondents

Respondents – Training Level

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Many at master+engineer level (18+17) and bachelor (20) levelFew or none with PhD (10+26), other degree (10+16) or no degree (3+27)

Process – Dev. process support

• Use of a well-defined and well-documented development process? 45,5%– No: 19– Yes: 20 (agile or scrum, Prince 2, RUP, ISO

certification, proprietary)– Don’t know: 5

• Use of agile practices or methods? 63,6%– No: 12– Yes: 28 (17 mention SCRUM, 2 mention Prince2)– Don’t know: 4

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Process - change or configuration management process

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Use of change or configuration management process is highly popular 73,8% (31/42)

Process - perceived importance factors for software project success

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• Rated from (1) not important to (5) essential

Average : 4 4,2

Process - Creation and modification of software artefacts

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Are arch. descr. (36,4%) and design models (39,5%) being evolved?

Tools - Use of integrated platform for

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Version control (97,6%) and bug tracking (92,7%) well establishedPlatforms for continuous integration (57,1%), configuration (55,6%) and testing (60,5%) a bit less

Tools - Programming languages used

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OO languages most popular (Java, C#, C++), followed by scripting languages. SQL and Cobol legacy also remains important.

Tools - Development environments used

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Dichotomy between Java and .Net visible at IDE level.Many others but much less frequently used.

Tools - support for design models, documentation and code synchro• Very basic

– Visio (10), Word (8), Sparx Enterprise Architect (5), Doxygen (3), StarUML (2), Confluence (2) and many others

– Little use of UML modeling tools

• Little or no support for model-code synchronisation

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Quality - Use of design patterns

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Use of design patterns is highly popular 72,7% (32/44)

Quality - Use of qualityimprovement techniques

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Often or continuously

36,6% (15/41)

42,9% (18/42)

35,7% (15/42)

58,5% (24/41)

Only moderately popular (35,7%<x<43%) except for refactoring (58,5%)

Use of quality support continued

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Poor support for quality (no quality tools, processes or models)

36,8% (14/38)

32,4% (12/37)

19,4% (7/36)

Popularity of quality improvement techniques

• Most popular Version control 97,6% and bug tracking 92,7% platforms Change and configuration management: 73,8% Design patterns: 72,7% Refactoring: 58,5%

• Less popular Design improvement (e.g. code smell reduction): 42,9% Bad quality detection tools: 36,8% Metrics and visualisation tools: 35,7% Dynamic analysis tools (profiling etc.): 36,6% Quality support or improvement process: 32,4%

• Unpopular Use of a quality model: 19,4%

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Reuse of libraries, components and platforms

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Reuse is highly successful 86% from own company 75% from open source 60% from other companies (excluding “don’t know” results)

Testing - Use of test process

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Testing is done by nearly all respondents (97,7%), buttest process used by only 46,5% of the respondents

Testing – development time spent

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Testing - tool support

• Very varied– Mostly unit testing frameworks (8)– Others: Mantis (4), HP Quality Center (4),

Selenium (3), Hudson (2), Jenkins (2), Quick Test Pro (2), and many more

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Preliminary conclusions

• Wide range of respondents, from very small to big companies, using many different programming languages and development environments

• Strong points– All respondents believe that quality assurance and

testing are very important for project success– Wide use of testing (97,7%), agile practices (63,6%),

design patterns (72,9%) and refactoring (56,5%)– High level of reuse of components/libraries/platforms

(60% to 86% depending on source of reuse)

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Preliminary conclusions

• Weak points– Mitigated success of processes

• development processes (45,5%), test processes (46,5%), quality support/improvement process (32,4%), quality models (19,4%)

• Exception: change management process (73,8%)

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Preliminary conclusions

• Weak points– Mitigated success of static and dynamic code analysis

tools for detecting quality issues, visualisation, computing metrics, profiling, etc… (popularity between 35% and 43%)

– Does not reflect the highperceived importance ofquality assurance forsoftware project success

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What’s next?• Analyse results in more detail

– Correlate results to company size and training level• Are bigger companies more process-driven and smaller

ones more agile? Does training level play a role?

• Report on the results• Repeat the study in other countries

– Identify regional or national trends– Compare differences and commonalities– We need your help here!

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studies

Collaborative study

• Research 2.0– Carry out follow-up / more narrow studies– Carry out this study as a collaborative

community effort?

• Store / share / reuse our data with others– Which format/platform/… to use?

• Have a working session on this topic during SATTOSE/SOTESOLA?

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