Title :
Obstacles to Comprehension in Usage Based Reading
Author :
Cooper, David J A ; Von Konsky, Brian R. ; Robey, Michael C. ; McMeekin, David A.
Author_Institution :
Dept. of Comput., Curtin Univ. of Technol., Perth, WA
Abstract :
Usage based reading (UBR) is a recent approach to object oriented software inspections. Like other scenario based reading (SBR) techniques it proposes a prescriptive reading procedure. However, the impact of such procedures upon comprehension is not well known, and consideration has not been given to established software cognition theories. This paper describes a study examining software comprehension in UBR inspections. Participants traced the events of a UML sequence diagram through Java source code while thinking aloud. An electronic interface collected real-time data, allowing the identification of "points of interest", which were categorised according to issues affecting participants\´ performance. Together with indicators of participants\´ cognitive processes, this suggests that adherence to UBR scenarios is non-trivial. While UBR can detect more critical defects, we argue that a re-think of its prescriptive nature, including the use of cognition support, is required before it can become a practical reading technique.
Keywords :
Java; Unified Modeling Language; object-oriented programming; program verification; Java source code; UML sequence diagram; Unified Modeling Language; electronic interface; object oriented software inspection; scenario based reading; software comprehension; usage based reading; Australia; Best practices; Cognition; Inspection; Java; Software engineering; Unified modeling language;
Conference_Titel :
Software Engineering Conference, 2007. ASWEC 2007. 18th Australian
Conference_Location :
Melbourne, Vic.
Print_ISBN :
0-7695-2778-7
DOI :
10.1109/ASWEC.2007.34