ICSE 2024
Fri 12 - Sun 21 April 2024 Lisbon, Portugal
Wed 17 Apr 2024 16:30 - 16:45 at Glicínia Quartin - Human and Social 3 Chair(s): Tamara Lopez

A fundamental component of the Agile process—widely used in both software engineering courses and industry—is the \emph{retrospective}, or \emph{retro}, in which teams come together at the end of a sprint to reflect on their teams’ performance. We conducted an empirical study to explore three research questions concerning retros in undergraduate team projects: (1) What do students reflect on? (2) What is the quality of their reflections? (3) How do teams’ retros vary in terms of content and quality? Our study analyzed a corpus of 963 statements documented in the retros of 32 undergraduate software teams (\textit{n} = 182 students) enrolled in four software engineering courses at two North American universities. A content analysis revealed that teams reflected most often on their work, communication, and collaboration practices. Nearly a third of teams’ reflections focused on their general work practices, while nearly half focused on specific areas of the software development lifecycle—most prominently, pull requests, issues, and coding/testing/debugging. An analysis of the quality of teams’ retros reflections showed that only 13% provided justification for a strategy to be stopped, continued, or started. An analysis of team-by-team results indicated significant differences in teams’ retro content and quality. We compare these results to previous studies of retros in academia and industry, and consider their implications for software engineering education.

Wed 17 Apr

Displayed time zone: Lisbon change

16:00 - 17:30
16:00
15m
Talk
GenderMag Improves Discoverability in the Field, Especially for WomenACM SIGSOFT Distinguished Paper Award
Research Track
Emerson Murphy-Hill Google, Alberto Elizondo Google, Ambar Murillo Google, Marian Harbach Google, Bogdan Vasilescu Carnegie Mellon University, Delphine Carlson Google, Florian Dessloch Google
Link to publication Pre-print
16:15
15m
Talk
Unraveling the Drivers of Sense of Belonging in Software Delivery Teams: Insights from a Large-Scale Survey
Research Track
Bianca Trinkenreich Colorado State University, Marco Gerosa Northern Arizona University, Igor Steinmacher Northern Arizona University
Pre-print
16:30
15m
Talk
An Empirical Study of the Content and Quality of Sprint Retrospectives in Undergraduate Team Software Projects
Software Engineering Education and Training
Chris Hundhausen Oregon State University, USA, Phillip Conrad University of California, Santa Barbara, Ahsun Tariq Oregon State University, Surya Pugal UC Santa Barbara, Brian Zamora Flores UC Santa Barbara
16:45
15m
Talk
Girls Rocking the Code: Gender-dependent Stereotypes, Engagement & Comprehension in Music Programming
Software Engineering Education and Training
Isabella Graßl University of Passau, Gordon Fraser University of Passau
17:00
15m
Talk
Dealing With Cultural Dispersion: a Novel Theoretical Framework for Software Engineering Research and Practice
Software Engineering in Society
Stefano Lambiase University of Salerno, Gemma Catolino University of Salerno, Bice Della Piana University of Salerno, Filomena Ferrucci University of Salerno, Fabio Palomba University of Salerno
Pre-print Media Attached
17:15
7m
Talk
Programming by Example Made Easy
Journal-first Papers
Jiarong Wu , Lili Wei McGill University, Yanyan Jiang Nanjing University, Shing-Chi Cheung Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Luyao Ren Peking University, Chang Xu Nanjing University