Ask or tell: An empirical study on modeling challenges from LabVIEW community

Systems engineering is fundamental to the performance, functionality, and value of modern systems and products. Systems model development and the usage of modeling tools in systems engineering can be complex. Systems engineering is concerned not only with the modeling process but many other aspects of development, such as hardware, data, and modeling tools. Because systems modeling practitioners are versatile and have expertise in specifying, building, maintaining, and supporting technical infrastructure, the modeling practices and challenges vary. We conducted an empirical study from a systems modeler’s perspective to better understand the challenges posed to systems engineers in the LabVIEW community. Our inspection consists of two investigations. First, with the help of machine learning techniques, we mined online discussion forum posts to identify what questions engineers ask regarding modeling challenges. The result shows that the most challenging part is related to coding practice in the development. Inspired by this discovery, we conducted another empirical study. We surveyed systems engineers in the LabVIEW community using an online questionnaire to recognize what system engineers tell regarding coding challenges in their development practice. Our paper also provided some observations and concrete suggestions to both systems engineers and tool developers on how to improve system model quality and facilitate the modeling process when using LabVIEW.