Reusing software engineering knowledge from developer communication

Abstract

Software development requires many different types of knowledge, such as knowledge about software development processes, practices and techniques, and about the domain of an application. Software, developers often share knowledge in informal communication channels (e.g., instant messaging tools, e-mails, or online forums). Considering that this informal communication contains knowledge that may be potentially relevant for other developers and given that this knowledge is not necessarily captured and formally documented for reuse, in this work we propose (a) exploring whether developer communication (via instant messaging) is a suitable source of reusable software engineering knowledge; (b) investigating how to identify that knowledge using data mining; (c) and analysing through action research how to present it to developers in a useful way for reuse. The envisioned theories and solutions approaches will analyze existing software development data captured in communication, rather than data that were captured and stored specifically to be reused.