© Dittrich October 15 1 Empirical Software Engineering – What can Ethnography Contribute Yvonne Dittrich IT-University of Copenhagen Software Development.

© Dittrich Apr 19, 2023 1

Empirical Software Engineering

– What can Ethnography Contribute

Yvonne Dittrich

IT-University of Copenhagen

Software Development Group


Who is Yvonne Dittrich?

• M Sc in Computer Science: – interdisciplinary M Sc Thesis

• PhD in Software Engineering (Hamburg): – Relating software engineering and language philosophy– First experiences with empirical methods

• Blekinge Institute of Technology (Sweden): – Learning from Ethnologists– Use Oriented Design and Development of Software.– Developing a qualitative empirical research approach.

• IT University of Copenhagen (Denmark)

Applying one of the ethnographic principles: Making the author’s position in the field visible in the report!


Experience with Ethnographically Inspired Research:

• Smaller studies often as Master Theses. Among others: Understanding the role of project models and plans & Distributed Development

• End User Tailoring. • E-government • Interaction Design for Mobile Software • Evolvable Software Products • Development of Enterprise Resource Planning

Systems


Roadmap

• What ethnography is about• Why ethnography is hard• The role of theory in ethnography• Ethnographical software engineering

research: Why is it difficult?• Cooperative Method Development


What is happening

©Rönkkö


©Rönkkö

What we need to observe to

understand what is

happening.

(And what the members

know.)


Ethnography: to Understand a Foreign Culture

• Culture ... the characteristic features of a civilisation including its beliefs, its artistic and material products, and its social institutions. ... [Webster’s New Encyclopedic Dictionary 1993]

• Understanding a culture through Explaining how its observable manifestations make sense.

• Through long term encounter: Participatory Observation.

• Using yourself as an instrument: Observation of Participation


Why it is hard

• Access: negotiating the researcher’s role in the other culture.

• Going Native - but Coming Back• How do encounter and perception relate to

the role you take on and your are ascribed.• Reflexivity!!! • Field Notes are not only used to document

encounters.


What about Theory?

Different theoretical underpinnings provide different interpretational patterns and concepts for understanding what is observed:– Actor Network Theory– Ethnomethodology– Articulation work, communities of practice, brokers

and boundary objects– Structuration theory– Naturalist paradigms


Ethnography of Software Engineering

Software Engineering as Cooperative Work• Artificial Intelligence as Craftwork.• On occurred practices in software engineering.• The user as a Scenic Feature.• Multi Organisational Middleware Development• ...

Why is it difficult to research software engineering?• Software engineering is a highly skilled practice• Software is not visible as such• Software development is coordinated via ‘texts’ only


Ethnography in Software Engineering Research

• A study on maintenance work.• Ethnography on agile development.• Configuration Management• Research on distributed development

(DeSouza, Singer, and more)• Our projects • ...

But it’s often not only ethnography.


Why Ethnography is Difficult to Apply in Software Engineering

• Researching ‘up’.• Engineering is not only about understanding but

about deploying the understanding for improvement.• It is not only the research community that expects

improvements: We expect that ourselves, as well as the people we research with.

• We get involved with ethics in a different sense than pure social scientists.

... And what about publishing Ethnography in SE?...


Methods and ethics get intertwined:

• Who are our ‘members’?• How do we relate to the hierarchy within the

organisation, we study?• On what do we base the innovation of

methods that we propose.


How to handle the specific situation

• Keeping your hands off the improvement.• Researching problems where a consensus

between different organisational actors can be found. (Coordination in Distributed Development)

• Handling the improvement in an accountable manner.


Our take on it: Cooperative Method Development

1. Action research consisting:– Understanding– Deliberating Change– Implementing and Evaluating Improvements

2. Ethnomethodological and Ethnographical Inspired fieldwork.

3. Focusing on Shop Floor Software Development Practices.

4. Taking the Practitioners Perspective when improving the practice.

5. Deliberating change with the Practitioners involved.


Our experience:

1. Action research can be complemented with Design Research.

2. Complementing with techniques that make software development visible.

3. Focus on shop floor development practice rendered contextual influences visible.

4. Taking practitioner’s point of vies countered research bias

5. Supporting the deliberation with ‘Qualitative Experiments’.


What can ethnography contribute?

• Understanding which factors influence ... – the usability of methods,– the deployment of methods, and– the suitability of design

• Understanding not only the short comings, but also how and why things work out.

• Understanding how methods and tools influence – the development practice,– the design, and– the use of software These aspects are often

black boxed by SE research!


What I did not talk about

• Quality assurance of ethnographic research• How much participation is enough?• Publishing qualitative research• ...


References on EthnographyButton, G. and Dourish, P. 1996. Technomethodology: paradoxes and possibilities. CHI '96.

ACM, New York, NY, 19-26.Denzin, K.D., Lincoln, Y.S. 2000. Handbook of Qualitative Research. Sage Publications.Dittrich, Y. 2002. Doing empirical research on software development: finding a path between

understanding, intervention, and method development. In Social Thinking: Software Practice, Y. Dittrich, C. Floyd, and R. Klischewski, Eds. MIT Press, 243-262.

Dittrich, Y., John, M., Singer, J., Tessem, B. 2007. Editorial for the special issue on qualitative software engineering research. Inf Softw Technol 49(6):531–539.

Dittrich, Y., Rönkkö, K., Eriksson, J., Hansson, C., Lindeberg, O. 2008. Cooperative Method Development. Combining qualitative empirical research with method, technique and process improvement. Empirical Software Engineering Online First.

Forsythe, D. E. 1999. ’’It‘s Just a Matter of Common Sense‘‘: Ethnography as Invisible Work. Comput. Supported Coop. Work 8, 1-2 (Feb. 1999), 127-145.

Hammersley, M. and Atkinson, P. 2005. Ethnography Principles and Practices. Routledge, London.

Harper, R. 2000. The organisation in ethnography: a discussion of ethnographic fieldwork programs. Comput Support Coop Work 9:239–264

Rönkkö, K., Dittrich, Y., Lindeberg, O. 2002. “Bad practice” or ‘‘bad methods”—are software engineering and ethno-graphic discourses incompatible? ISESE’02, 204–210.

Rönkkö, K. 2005. Making methods work in software engineering: method deployment as a social achievement. Doctoral thesis, dissertation series no. 2005:04, School of Engineering, Blekinge Institute of Technology

Suchman, L, 1995. “Making Work Visible” Comm. Of the ACM 38, 9, 56-64.


Studies referred toButton, G., Sharrock, W. 1994. Occasioned practices in the work of software engineers. In Requirements Engineering: Social and

Technical Issues, M. Jirotka and J. A. Goguen, Eds. Academic Press Professional, San Diego, CA, 217-240.Dittrich, Y., Lindeberg, O. 2004. How use-oriented development can take place, Information and Software Technology 46, 9, 603-617.Grinter, R. E. 2003. Recomposition: Coordinating a Web of Software Dependencies. Comput. Supported Coop. Work 12, 3, 297-327. Hansson C, Dittrich Y, Randall D (2004) Agile processes enhancing user participation for small providers of off-the-shelf software. XP

2004.Hutchins, E. 1994. Cognition in the Wild. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA. Newman, S. 1998. Here, There, and Nowhere at All: Distribution, Negotiation, and Virtuality in Postmodern Ethnography and

Engineering. Knowledge and Society 11, 235-267.Robinson, H., Segal, J., and Sharp, H. 2007. Ethnographically-informed empirical studies of software practice. Inf. Softw. Technol. 49, 6,

540-551.Rönkkö, K., Dittrich, Y., Randall, D. 2005. When plans do not work out: how plans are used in software development projects. J Comput

Support Coop Work 5(14):433–468Sharrock, W., Anderson, R. 1994. “The User as Scenic Feature of the Design Space” in Design Studies 15,1, 5-18.Singer, J., Lethbridge, T., Vinson, N., and Anquetil, N. 1997. An examination of software engineering work practices. In Proceedings of

the 1997 Conference of the Centre For Advanced Studies on Collaborative Research. J. H. Johnson, Ed. IBM Centre for Advanced Studies Conference. IBM Press, 21.

Suchman, L. Trigg, R., Artificial intelligence as craftwork. In: Chaiklin, S., Lave, J. (Eds.), Understanding Practices - Perspectives on Activity and Context, Cambridge University Press, NY. pp. 144-178.

Unphon, H., Dittrich, Y. 2008. Organisation matters: how the organisation of software development influences the introduction of a product line architecture. Accepted for the IASTED International Conference on Software Engineering.


Not in the reference list:

• Further publications on the studies I was part of: for references see Dittrich et al. 2008

• Action research:for references see Dittrich et al. 2008

• Ethnography in Design – see – Anderson, R. (1997) 'Work, Ethnography, and System

Design', in Encyclopedia of Microcomputing, editors Kent, A. and Williams, J., Marcel Dekker, New York, 20, pp. 159-183.

– Search for ‘CSCW, ethnography, design’.

© Dittrich October 15 1 Empirical Software Engineering – What can Ethnography Contribute Yvonne Dittrich IT-University of Copenhagen Software Development.

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