ICSE 2024
Fri 12 - Sun 21 April 2024 Lisbon, Portugal
Fri 19 Apr 2024 14:45 - 15:00 at Luis de Freitas Branco - Human and Social 7 Chair(s): Igor Steinmacher

Building software, like building almost anything, requires people to understand a common goal and work together towards it. In large software companies, a VP or Director will have an idea or goal and it is often the job of middle management to distill that lofty, general idea into manageable, finite units of work. How do organizations do this hard work of setting and measuring progress towards goals? To understand this question, we undertook a mixed methods approach to studying goal setting, management dissemination of goals, goal tracking and ultimately software delivery at a large multi-national software company.

Semi-structured interviews with 47 participants were analyzed and used to develop a survey which was deployed to a multi-national team of over 4,000 engineers. The 512 responses were analyzed using thematic analysis, linear regressions and hypothesis testing, and found that tracking, measuring and setting goals is hard work, regardless of tools used. Middle management seems to be a critical component of the translation of lofty goals to actionable work items. In addition, attitudes and beliefs of engineers are critical to the success of any goal setting framework. Based on this research, we make recommendations on how to improve the goal setting and OKR process in software organizations: invest in the data pipeline, increase transparency, improve communication, promote learning communities, and a structured roll out of OKRs.

Fri 19 Apr

Displayed time zone: Lisbon change

14:00 - 15:30
14:00
15m
Talk
“I tend to view ads almost like a pestilence”: On the Accessibility Implications of Mobile Ads for Blind Users
Research Track
Ziyao He University of California, Irvine, Syed Fatiul Huq University of California, Irvine, Sam Malek University of California at Irvine
14:15
15m
Talk
Constructive Code Review: Managing the Impact of Interpersonal Conflicts in Practice
Software Engineering in Practice
Pavlina Wurzel Goncalves University of Zurich, Joao S. V. Goncalves University of Zurich, Alberto Bacchelli University of Zurich
14:30
15m
Talk
Motivating Open Source Collaborations Through Social Network Evaluation: A Gamification Practice from Alibaba
Software Engineering in Practice
Shengyu Zhao Tongji University, Xiaoya Xia East China Normal University, Brian Fitzgerald Lero - The Irish Software Research Centre and University of Limerick, Xiaozhou Li University of Oulu, Valentina Lenarduzzi University of Oulu, Davide Taibi University of Oulu and Tampere University , Rong Wang Alibaba Group, will wang , Chunqi Tian Yongji University
14:45
15m
Talk
Objectives and Key Results in Software Teams: Challenges, Opportunities and Impact on Development
Software Engineering in Practice
Jenna L. Butler Microsoft Research, Thomas Zimmermann Microsoft Research, Christian Bird Microsoft Research
15:00
7m
Talk
Dealing with Data Challenges when Delivering Data-Intensive Software Solutions
Journal-first Papers
Ulrike Maria Graetsch , Hourieh Khalajzadeh Deakin University, Australia, Rashina Hoda Monash University, Mojtaba Shahin RMIT University, John Grundy Monash University
Link to publication DOI Pre-print
15:07
7m
Talk
What’s (Not) Working in Programmer User Studies?
Journal-first Papers
Matthew C. Davis Carnegie Mellon University, Emad Aghayi , Thomas LaToza George Mason University, Xiaoyin Wang University of Texas at San Antonio, Brad A. Myers Carnegie Mellon University, Joshua Sunshine Carnegie Mellon University
Link to publication DOI
15:14
7m
Talk
Confirmation Bias and Time Pressure: A Family of Experiments in Software Testing
Journal-first Papers
Iflaah Salman Lappeenranta-Lahti University of Technology (LUT), Burak Turhan University of Oulu, Robert Ramač Faculty of Technical Sciences, University of Novi Sad, Vladimir Mandić Faculty of Technical Sciences, University of Novi Sad