user involvement in computer software development

(A case of error reporting system)
Ms. Perez was g i v i ng a Powe rPo i n t p r e s e n tation
This story entails an example of a user’s experience and response to a new method for collecting information on software application errors. To maintain a certain level of quality and ensure customer satisfaction, software firms spend approximately 50% to 75% of the total software development cost on debugging, testing, and verification activities. Despite such efforts, it is not uncommon for a software application to contain errors after the final version is released. To better manage the software development process in the long run firms are involving the users in software improvement initiatives by soliciting error information, while they are using the software application. The information collected through an error reporting system (ERS) plays an important role in uncovering bugs and prioritizing future development work. Considering that about 20% of bugs cause 80% of the errors,10 gathering information on application errors can substantially improve software firms’ productivity and improve the quality of their products. High quality software applications can benefit the software users individually and also help improve the image of the software community as a whole. Thus, understanding the emerging error reporting systems (ERS) and why users adopt them are important issues that require examination. Such an analysis can help the software companies in learning how to design better ERS and educate the users about ERS and its utilities. Error Reporting Systems Traditional error reporting methods follow a passive approach, wherein the users are required to directly contact the software company or to transmit error information via a third party vendor (such as CERT/CC, SecurityForcus). CERT/CC acts as a mediator to collect such information and delivers it to the software companies. In general, software firms are given a limited time to fix errors and provide patches to its users before CERT/CC releases the error information to the public domain. Such a situation occasionally pressures
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to her potential clients in the hope of landing a big contract. She was presenting a new advertising campaign for a mutual fund company and had spent three months with her team on perfecting the proposal. Everything seemed to be going well when suddenly a small window screen popped up informing her that an error had occurred and asked if she would wish to send an error report. She clicked the send button and the application on her laptop shut down, disrupting the flow of her presentation and making her look unprofessional.
contributed articles
doi: 10.1145/ 1562164.1562194
by Achita (Mi) Saeed
Examining User Involvement in Continuous Software Development
se pt e mb e r 2 0 0 9 | vo l. 52 | n o. 9 | c om m u n ic at ion s of t h e acm
contributed articles
the software companies to release their patches prematurely. A more proactive approach involves the use of ERS. It is a pioneer system that enables the users of software applications to send error related information, when they are using a software application. ERS, also known as Online Crashing Analysis, is a relatively new functionality integrated into many system platforms (such as Windows XP and Vista, Mozilla, and Mac).11 Different platforms use different techniques, which vary in the degree of automation of the ERS. For instance, the ERS used by the GNOME platform requests its users to fully describe the incidents. Other systems have a higher degree of automation, where the ERS automatically collects the information and prompts the user to send the error report.11 Although ERS can increase the potential for companies to under invest in quality control processes, anecdotal evidence suggests that information collected through the ERS has been put to good use. Windows XP SP1 team, for instance, was able to fix approximately 29% of all Windows XP errors based on information collected through the ERS.12 Further, ERS has been instrumental in fixing problems found in beta version of Windows Vista and MS office 2007.12 The release of Windows Vista and Office 2007 was delayed because Microsoft took the inputs from beta users seriously.7,12 The growing popularity of ERS is also visible in new computer products such as Dell desktop and laptop computers. Dell Computer Inc. is using a system similar to ERS to collect software incompatibilities information and information about hardware problems. ERS properties in Windows XP and Vista can be configured by accessing system properties, clicking on the advanced tab (XP)/ advance system setting (Vista), and then selecting errorreporting tab (XP)/ system startup and recovery settings (Vista). dwwin.exe (an operating system utility) creates a crash report, when an error occurs. Subsequently the utility triggers a popup window, prompting the users to send the error report. Windows error reporting system is a part of the Windows Quality Online Service (Winqual) program, which focuses on hardware and software that bears the designed