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To Memorize or to Document: A Survey of Developers’ Views on Knowledge Availability

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Product-Focused Software Process Improvement (PROFES 2023)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNCS,volume 14483))

Abstract

When developing, maintaining, or evolving a system, developers need different types of knowledge (e.g., domain, processes, architecture). They may have memorized (but potentially not documented) the knowledge they perceive important, while they need to recover knowledge that they could not memorize. Previous research has focused on knowledge recovery, but not on what knowledge developers consider important to memorize or document. We address this gap by reporting a survey among 37 participants in which we investigated developers’ perspectives on different types of knowledge. Our results indicate that the developers consider certain types of knowledge more important than others, particularly with respect to memorizing them—while all of them should be documented, using specific means. Such insights help researchers and practitioners understand developers’ knowledge and documentation needs within processes, thereby guiding practices and new techniques.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.8391861.

  2. 2.

    https://www.sunet.se/services/samarbete/enkatverktyg.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Eindhoven University of Technology, Eindhoven, The Netherlands

    Jacob Krüger

  2. University of Rostock, Rostock, Germany

    Regina Hebig

Authors
  1. Jacob Krüger
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  2. Regina Hebig
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Jacob Krüger .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. FHV Vorarlberg University of Applied Science, Dornbirn, Austria

    Regine Kadgien

  2. Fraunhofer Institute for Experimental Software Engineering, Kaiserslautern, Germany

    Andreas Jedlitschka

  3. FHV Vorarlberg University of Applied Science, Dornbirn, Austria

    Andrea Janes

  4. University of Oulu, Oulu, Finland

    Valentina Lenarduzzi

  5. University of Oulu, Oulu, Finland

    Xiaozhou Li

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Krüger, J., Hebig, R. (2024). To Memorize or to Document: A Survey of Developers’ Views on Knowledge Availability. In: Kadgien, R., Jedlitschka, A., Janes, A., Lenarduzzi, V., Li, X. (eds) Product-Focused Software Process Improvement. PROFES 2023. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 14483. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-49266-2_3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-49266-2_3

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-031-49265-5

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-031-49266-2

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

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