Pandemic startup software engineering: An experience report on the development of a COVID-19 certificate verification system

IF 3.7 2区计算机科学 Q1 COMPUTER SCIENCE, SOFTWARE ENGINEERING

Journal of Systems and Software Pub Date : 2024-05-23 DOI:10.1016/j.jss.2024.112106

Richard May , Niklas Baron , Jacob Krüger , Thomas Leich

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引用次数: 0

Abstract

The COVID-19 virus has caused a global pandemic that has heavily impacted daily life. Rapid advances in testing and vaccinating led to an additional use case besides the well-known contact-tracing apps: certificate-verification systems. Verification systems are often commissioned by local authorities to enable more public life, and are often developed by smaller organizations or startups. So, the development of verification systems differs from other software projects, featuring interesting and unique properties. In this article, we present an experience report on the development of one verification system by a German startup, focusing on three properties: working in a pandemic, developing a product for handling a pandemic, and the startup context. To this end, we surveyed nine startup developers and analyzed the results with two experts from the startup. We found that the developers focused on fast delivery to cope with the time pressure of releasing the verification system, which is why some phases of typical development processes were hardly carried out. As a result, while the verification system is successful, we also identified negative effects of the properties (e.g., programming mistakes, well-being). We discuss our findings to guide researchers and practitioners in preparing for software engineering in future emergencies.

Editor’s note: Open Science material was validated by the Journal of Systems and Software Open Science Board.

查看原文本刊更多论文

大流行病启动软件工程：开发 COVID-19 证书验证系统的经验报告

COVID-19 病毒引发了全球大流行，对日常生活造成了严重影响。除了众所周知的接触追踪应用程序外，检测和疫苗接种方面的快速进步还催生了另一种用例：证书验证系统。验证系统通常由地方政府委托开发，目的是让更多人能够参与公共生活，通常由较小的组织或初创公司开发。因此，验证系统的开发不同于其他软件项目，具有有趣而独特的特性。在本文中，我们将介绍一家德国初创企业开发一个验证系统的经验报告，重点关注三个特性：在大流行病中工作、开发处理大流行病的产品以及初创企业的背景。为此，我们对九家初创企业的开发人员进行了调查，并与初创企业的两位专家对调查结果进行了分析。我们发现，开发人员注重快速交付，以应对发布验证系统的时间压力，这就是典型开发流程中某些阶段几乎没有进行的原因。因此，在验证系统取得成功的同时，我们也发现了属性的负面影响（如编程错误、福利）。我们讨论我们的发现，以指导研究人员和从业人员为未来紧急情况下的软件工程做好准备。编者注：开放科学材料已通过《系统与软件期刊》开放科学委员会的验证。

本文章由计算机程序翻译，如有差异，请以英文原文为准。

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来源期刊

Journal of Systems and Software 工程技术-计算机：理论方法

CiteScore

8.60

自引率

5.70%

发文量

193

审稿时长

16 weeks

期刊介绍： The Journal of Systems and Software publishes papers covering all aspects of software engineering and related hardware-software-systems issues. All articles should include a validation of the idea presented, e.g. through case studies, experiments, or systematic comparisons with other approaches already in practice. Topics of interest include, but are not limited to: • Methods and tools for, and empirical studies on, software requirements, design, architecture, verification and validation, maintenance and evolution • Agile, model-driven, service-oriented, open source and global software development • Approaches for mobile, multiprocessing, real-time, distributed, cloud-based, dependable and virtualized systems • Human factors and management concerns of software development • Data management and big data issues of software systems • Metrics and evaluation, data mining of software development resources • Business and economic aspects of software development processes The journal welcomes state-of-the-art surveys and reports of practical experience for all of these topics.