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Post-completion error in software development

Published: 14 May 2016 Publication History

Abstract

Post-completion errors have been observed in a variety of tasks by psychologists, but there is a lack of empirical studies in software engineering. This paper investigates whether post-completion errors occur in software development and the likelihood that software developers commit this error when a post-completion scenario is presented. An experimental study was conducted in the context of a programming contest. In the experiment, a programming task specification that contained a post-completion sub-task requirement was presented to the subjects. The results showed that 41.82% of the subjects committed the post-completion error in the same way---forgetting to design and implement a software requirement which is supposed to be the last sub-task and is not necessary for the completion of the main sub-task. This percentage of subjects committing the post-completion error was significantly higher than that of subjects committing other errors. This study has confirmed that post-completion error occurs in software development and, moreover, different software developers tend to commit this error in the same way with a high likelihood at the location where a post-completion scenario is presented. Strategies are proposed to prevent post-completion errors in software development.

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  • (2024)Human Error Scenario Analysis of Software Defects2024 IEEE 35th International Symposium on Software Reliability Engineering Workshops (ISSREW)10.1109/ISSREW63542.2024.00091(279-286)Online publication date: 28-Oct-2024
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  • (2023)Requirements‐related fault prevention during the transformation from formal specifications to programsIET Software10.1049/sfw2.1212617:3(316-332)Online publication date: 15-May-2023
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cover image ACM Conferences
CHASE '16: Proceedings of the 9th International Workshop on Cooperative and Human Aspects of Software Engineering
May 2016
142 pages
ISBN:9781450341554
DOI:10.1145/2897586
Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than the author(s) must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected].

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Publication History

Published: 14 May 2016

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Author Tags

  1. common-cause failure
  2. human errors in software engineering
  3. post-completion errors
  4. programming errors
  5. software development
  6. software psychology

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Cited By

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  • (2024)Human Error Scenario Analysis of Software Defects2024 IEEE 35th International Symposium on Software Reliability Engineering Workshops (ISSREW)10.1109/ISSREW63542.2024.00091(279-286)Online publication date: 28-Oct-2024
  • (2023)HEDF: A Method for Early Forecasting Software Defects Based on Human Error MechanismsIEEE Access10.1109/ACCESS.2023.323449011(3626-3652)Online publication date: 2023
  • (2023)Requirements‐related fault prevention during the transformation from formal specifications to programsIET Software10.1049/sfw2.1212617:3(316-332)Online publication date: 15-May-2023
  • (2023)A Cognitive Framework for Modeling Coincident Software Faults: An Experimental StudyComputer Safety, Reliability, and Security10.1007/978-3-031-40923-3_4(41-54)Online publication date: 11-Sep-2023
  • (2022)How Software Developers Mitigate Their Errors When Developing CodeIEEE Transactions on Software Engineering10.1109/TSE.2020.304055448:6(1853-1867)Online publication date: 1-Jun-2022
  • (2022)A New Code Review Method based on Human Errors2022 IEEE 22nd International Conference on Software Quality, Reliability and Security (QRS)10.1109/QRS57517.2022.00041(321-332)Online publication date: Dec-2022
  • (2021)Targeted Code Inspection based on Human Errors2021 IEEE International Symposium on Software Reliability Engineering Workshops (ISSREW)10.1109/ISSREW53611.2021.00076(274-275)Online publication date: Oct-2021
  • (2021)Software Requirement Criteria based on Human Errors2021 IEEE International Symposium on Software Reliability Engineering Workshops (ISSREW)10.1109/ISSREW53611.2021.00047(77-82)Online publication date: Oct-2021
  • (2020)Reducing Software Developer Human Errors by Improving Situation AwarenessIEEE Software10.1109/MS.2020.301422337:6(32-37)Online publication date: Nov-2020
  • (2017)Human Error Analysis in Software EngineeringTheory and Application on Cognitive Factors and Risk Management - New Trends and Procedures10.5772/intechopen.68392Online publication date: 21-Jun-2017
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