The DOI matches its Crossref record; 1 of the 1 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.
How software engineers use documentation: the state of the practice
Abstract
Software engineering is a human task, and as such we must study what software engineers do and think. Understanding the normative practice of software engineering is the first step toward developing realistic solutions to better facilitate the engineering process. We conducted three studies using several data-gathering approaches to elucidate the patterns by which software engineers (SEs) use and update documentation. Our objective is to more accurately comprehend and model documentation use, usefulness, and maintenance, thus enabling better decision making and tool design by developers and project managers. Our results confirm the widely held belief that SEs typically do not update documentation as timely or completely as software process personnel and managers advocate. However, the results also reveal that out-of-date software documentation remains useful in many circumstances.
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Citations
Cites
The relevance of software documentation, tools and technologies: a survey
Forward, A., & Lethbridge, T. C. (2002) · Proceedings of the 2002 ACM symposium on Document engineering · doi:10.1145/585058.585065 · Cited by 268
Self-citation
Cited by
Coleman, G., & O’Connor, R. (2007) · Information and Software Technology · doi:10.1016/j.infsof.2007.02.011 · Cited by 204
Improving automated source code summarization via an eye-tracking study of programmers
Rodeghero, P., McMillan, C., McBurney, P. W., Bosch, N., & D'Mello, S. (2014) · Proceedings of the 36th International Conference on Software Engineering · doi:10.1145/2568225.2568247 · Cited by 198
On the Comprehension of Program Comprehension
Maalej, W., Tiarks, R., Roehm, T., & Koschke, R. (2014) · ACM Transactions on Software Engineering and Methodology · doi:10.1145/2622669 · Cited by 180
Cost, benefits and quality of software development documentation: A systematic mapping
Zhi, J., Garousi-Yusifoğlu, V., Sun, B., Garousi, G., Shahnewaz, S., & Ruhe, G. (2015) · Journal of Systems and Software · doi:10.1016/j.jss.2014.09.042 · Cited by 112
Knowledge-based approaches in software documentation: A systematic literature review
Ding, W., Liang, P., Tang, A., & van Vliet, H. (2014) · Information and Software Technology · doi:10.1016/j.infsof.2014.01.008 · Cited by 107
Metadata
- Authors
- Lethbridge, T. C., Singer, J., & Forward, A.
- Venue
- IEEE Software
- Published
- 2003-11
- Volume
- 20
- Issue
- 6
- Pages
- 35-39
- ISSN
- 0740-7459 (ISSN-L)
- OpenAlex
- W1989526951
- Cited by
- 343
- References
- 1
- FWCI
- 14.98
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
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Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).
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