The Software Engineering Observatory

University of Sheffield, Sheffield, UK
26th January 2009 11:00 to 17:00

The aims of the workshop are:

1. To provide an overview of the Software Engineering Observatory, who we are, and what we do.
2. To enable other researchers to access our extensive archive of data gathered from numerous software projects over a number of years.
3. To allow our colleagues to discuss matters of interest to them and to establish cooperation between different research groups and between industry and academia. To this end we are happy to receive proposals for discussion topics and brief papers from participants: deadline 15th of December 2008.

We will publish all accepted papers as a departmental report, and will investigate the possibility of publishing selected revised papers elsewhere.

Expected Audience

We expect three communities in particular to contribute to and benefit from the workshop:

1. Other researchers who are either currently or have in the past carried out empirical software engineering or related research.
2. Educators who might themselves have a data source (in the form of student team development projects) who could use it in a similar way to ourselves for research.
3. Those from industry who are interested in how the results of empirical studies can be applied in a non-academic context and who may be interested in providing an industrial context for such studies.

If you would like to come, please register by emailing Alice.Smith@dcs.shef.ac.uk with your name, email address and affiliation. Details of the program and accommodation will be available on our website http://observatory.group.shef.ac.uk/workshop2009. We will not be charging for the workshop but we will be unable pay for transport or accommodation costs of attendees.

Software Engineering Observatory Hands On
University of Sheffield, Sheffield, UK
27th January 2009 10:00 to 17:00

On the 27th there will be an opportunity to examine the archive, calculate metrics and discuss with the researchers how you could use the data to explore your own research. The archive contains the source code, executables, and team information for 140 projects with some containing more information than others. This session would also be of particular interest to anybody starting empirical research including PhD students as we will be happy to discuss our research methods in depth. If there are any topics you would particularly like to explore we would welcome proposals for the program, please submit a one page proposal about how you would like to use the data before the 15th of December 2008 so that we can gauge interest. Bursaries may be available for some PhD students who submit proposals.

If you would like to come, please register by emailing Alice.Smith@dcs.shef.ac.uk with your name, email address and affiliation. Details of the program and accommodation will be available on our website http://observatory.group.shef.ac.uk/workshop2009. We will not be charging for the 'hands on' but we will be unable pay for transport or accommodation costs of attendees.

Background

The Software Engineering Observatory is a multi-disciplinary effort involving scholars from the Dept of Computer Science and Institute of Work Psychology. Its aim is to understand the processes that make for good software engineering practice, and how these need to combine human and technical factors. The software developers are students, both undergraduate and postgraduate and up to 20 group projects are undertaken each year. Thus, researchers can investigate how software developers work in teams, deal with industrial clients and handle the plethora of problems that arise in group projects with tight time-scales.

Please forward this email to any colleagues that you think would be interested, we apologise in advance if you receive duplicate emails.

For further information please contact Alice.Smith@dcs.shef.ac.uk reguarding attendance, and c.thomson@dcs.shef.ac.uk reguarding the archive or queries about papers.