Paper Info
Title
Task Interruptions in Requirements Engineering: Reality Versus Perceptions!
Abstract
Task switching and interruptions are a daily reality in software development projects: developers switch between Requirements Engineering (RE), coding, testing, daily meetings, and other tasks. Task switching may increase productivity through increased information flow and effective time management. However, it might also cause a cognitive load to reorient the primary task, which accounts for the decrease in developers' productivity and increases in errors. This cognitive load is even greater in cases of cognitively demanding tasks as the ones typical for RE activities. In this paper, to compare the reality of task switching in RE with the perception of developers, we conducted two studies: (i) a case study analysis on 5,076 recorded tasks of 19 developers and (ii) a survey of 25 developers. The results of our retrospective analysis show that in ALL of the cases that the disruptiveness of RE interruptions is statistically different from other software development tasks, RE related tasks are more vulnerable to interruptions compared to other task types. Moreover, we found that context switching, the priority of the interrupting task, and the interruption source and timing are key factors that impact RE interruptions. We also provided a set of RE task switching patterns along with recommendations for both practitioners and researchers. While the results of our retrospective analysis show that self-interruptions are more disruptive than external interruptions, developers have different perceptions about the disruptiveness of various sources of interruptions.
Year
DOI
Venue
2017
10.1109/RE.2017.75
2017 IEEE 25th International Requirements Engineering Conference (RE)
Keywords
DocType
Volume
Requirements Engineering,Task Interruptions,Multitasking,Task Switching,Empirical Software Engineering
Conference
abs/1707.00794
ISSN
ISBN
Citations 
2332-6441
978-1-5386-3192-8
4
PageRank 
References 
Authors
0.50
20
3
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Zahra Shakeri Hossein Abad1346.57
Guenther Ruhe2658.85
Mike Bauer361.23