SoftwareProcess.es About Projects

Recurrent Behaviour

Is there recurrent behaviour in software development? Well take a look at these plots!

Click here for ICSE NIER Paper.

Here are my 2009 ICSE NIER / ICSE 2009 NIER TRACK slides: slides made with tuxpaint

Poster explanation: pdf svg

Future Work Slides: pdf

ICSE Abstract

Mining Recurrent Activities: Fourier Analysis of Change Events (Presentation and Poster) Contact: Abram Hindle

Authors: Abram Hindle, Unversity of Waterloo, Canada Michael W. Godfrey, Unversity of Waterloo, Canada Richard C. Holt, Unversity of Waterloo, Canada

Abstract: Within the field of software repository mining, it is common-practice to extract change-events from source control systems and then abstract these events to allow for different analyses. One approach is to apply time-series analysis by aggregating these events into signals. Time-series analysis requires that researchers specify a period of study, usually ``natural periods such as days, months, and years are chosen. As yet there has been no research to validate that these assumptions are reasonable. We address this by applying Fourier analysis to discover the ``natural periodicities of software development. Fourier analysis can detect and determine the periodicity of repeating events. A Fourier transform represents a signal as a linear combination of sine-waves that suggest how much activity occurs at certain frequencies. If behaviors of different frequencies are mixed into one signal, they can be separated. Thus Fourier transforms can help us identify significant development process sub-signals within software projects.