Gunnar Rye Bergersen

• Feldt, robert; Zimmermann, Thomas; Bergersen, Gunnar R.; Falessi, Davide; Jedlitschka, Andreas; Juristo, Natalia; Münch, Jürgen; Oivo, Markku; Runeson, Per; Shepperd, Martin; Sjøberg, Dag & Turhan, Burak (2018). Four commentaries on the use of students and professionals in empirical software engineering experiments. Empirical Software Engineering.  ISSN 1382-3256.  23(6), s 3801- 3820 . doi: 10.1007/s10664-018-9655-0 Show summary

  The relative pros and cons of using students or practitioners in experiments in empirical software engineering have been discussed for a long time and continue to be an important topic. Following the recent publication of “Empirical software engineering experts on the use of students and professionals in experiments” by Falessi, Juristo, Wohlin, Turhan, Münch, Jedlitschka, and Oivo (EMSE, February 2018) we received a commentary by Sjøberg and Bergersen. Given that the topic is of great methodological interest to the community and requires nuanced treatment, we invited two editorial board members, Martin Shepperd and Per Runeson, respectively, to provide additional views

• Lindsjørn, Yngve; Bergersen, Gunnar R.; Dingsøyr, Torgeir & Sjøberg, Dag (2018). Teamwork Quality and Team Performance: Exploring Differences Between Small and Large Agile Projects, In Juan Garbajosa; Xiaofeng Wang & Ademar Aguiar (ed.),  Agile Processes in Software Engineering and Extreme Programming, 19th International Conference, XP 2018, Proceedings.  Springer.  ISBN 978-3-319-91601-9.  Artikkel.  s 267 - 274 Full text in Research Archive. Show summary

  Agile principles were originally developed for small projects but are now widely used in larger projects with hundreds of developers. Teamwork quality is essential in any development work, but how does teamwork quality differ in small and large agile projects? We report from an explorative survey with 64 agile teams and 320 team members and team leaders, from 31 teams in small projects and 33 teams in large projects. For small projects, teamwork quality was considered by both team members and team leaders to primarily affect product quality. For large projects, the effect of teamwork quality on product quality was positive when it was rated by team members but was negative when rated by team leaders. At a finer granularity, the six dimensions of teamwork quality that we investigated affected team performance differently in small and large projects. These findings question to what extent findings from previous studies on teamwork in agile development in small projects apply to large projects.

• Stray, Viktoria; Moe, Nils Brede & Bergersen, Gunnar R. (2017). Are Daily Stand-up Meetings Valuable? A Survey of Developers in Software Teams, In Hubert Baumeister; Horst Lichter & Matthias Riebisch (ed.),  Agile Processes in Software Engineering and Extreme Programming, 18th International Conference, XP 2017, Cologne, Germany, May 22-26, 2017, Proceedings.  Springer.  ISBN 978-3-319-57633-6.  kapittel 19.  s 274 - 281 Full text in Research Archive. Show summary

  The daily stand-up meeting is a widely used practice. However, what is more uncertain is how valuable the practice is to team members. We invited professional developers of a programming forum to a survey and obtained 221 responses. Results show that the daily stand-up meeting was used by 87% of those who employ agile methods. We found that even though the respondents on average were neutral towards the practice, the majority were either positive or negative. Junior developers were most positive and senior developers and members of large teams most negative. We argue that the value of the practice should be evaluated according to the team needs. Further, more work is needed to understand why senior developers do not perceive the meetings as valuable and how to apply the practice successfully in large teams.

• Dybå, Tore; Bergersen, Gunnar R. & Sjøberg, Dag (2016). Evidence-Based Software Engineering, In Tim Menzies; Laurie Williams & Thomas D. Zimmermann (ed.),  Perspectives on Data Science for Software Engineering.  Elsevier.  ISBN 9780128042069.  kapittel.  s 149 - 153 Show summary

  A decade ago, Kitchenham, Dybå and Jørgensen coined the term and provided the foundations for evidence-based software engineering (EBSE). A trilogy of papers was written for researchers, practitioners, and educators. They suggested that practitioners consider EBSE as a mechanism to support and improve their technology adoption decisions, and that researchers should use systematic literature reviews as a methodology for performing unbiased aggregation of empirical results. This spurred significant international activity, and a renewed focus on research methods and theory, and on the future of empirical methods in SE research.

• Lindsjørn, Yngve; Sjøberg, Dag; Dingsøyr, Torgeir; Bergersen, Gunnar R. & Dybå, Tore (2016). Teamwork Quality and Project Success in Software Development: A Survey of Agile Development Teams. Journal of Systems and Software.  ISSN 0164-1212.  122, s 274- 286 . doi: 10.1016/j.jss.2016.09.028 Full text in Research Archive. Show summary

  Small, self-directed teams are central in agile development. This article investigates the effect of team- work quality on team performance, learning and work satisfaction in agile software teams, and whether this effect differs from that of traditional software teams. A survey was administered to 477 respondents from 71 agile software teams in 26 companies and analyzed using structural equation modeling. A posi- tive effect of teamwork quality on team performance was found when team members and team leaders rated team performance. In contrast, a negligible effect was found when product owners rated team per- formance. The effect of teamwork quality on team members ́learning and work satisfaction was strongly positive, but was only rated by the team members. Despite claims of the importance of teamwork in ag- ile teams, this study did not find teamwork quality to be higher than in a similar survey on traditional teams. The effect of teamwork quality on team performance was only marginally greater for the agile teams than for the traditional teams.

• Sjøberg, Dag; Bergersen, Gunnar R. & Dybå, Tore (2016). Why Theory Matters, In Tim Menzies; Laurie Williams & Thomas D. Zimmermann (ed.),  Perspectives on Data Science for Software Engineering.  Elsevier.  ISBN 9780128042069.  -.  s 29 - 33 Show summary

  It is relatively easy to generate and acquire much data from software engineering activities. The challenge is to obtain meaning from the data that represents something true, rather than spurious. To increase knowledge and insight, more theories should be built and used.

• Bergersen, Gunnar R.; Sjøberg, Dag & Dybå, Tore (2014). Construction and Validation of an Instrument for Measuring Programming Skill. IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering.  ISSN 0098-5589.  40(12), s 1163- 1184 . doi: 10.1109/TSE.2014.2348997 Show summary

  Skilled workers are crucial to the success of software development. The current practice in research and industry for assessing programming skills is mostly to use proxy variables of skill, such as education, experience, and multiple-choice knowledge tests. There is as yet no valid and efficient way to measure programming skill. The aim of this research is to develop a valid instrument that measures programming skill by inferring skill directly from the performance on programming tasks. Over two days, 65 professional developers from eight countries solved 19 Java programming tasks. Based on the developers' performance, the Rasch measurement model was used to construct the instrument. The instrument was found to have satisfactory (internal) psychometric properties and correlated with external variables in compliance with theoretical expectations. Such an instrument has many implications for practice, for example, in job recruitment and project allocation.

• Bergersen, Gunnar R. & Sjøberg, Dag (2012). Evaluating Methods and Technologies in Software Engineering with Respect to Developers’ Skill Level, In Emilia Mendes & Marcela Genero (ed.),  Proceedings, 16th International Conference on Evaluation and Assessment in Software Engineering.  IET Research Journals.  ISBN 978-1-84919-541-6.  Main track.  s 101 - 110
• Bergersen, Gunnar & Gustafsson, Jan-Eric (2011). Programming Skill, Knowledge, and Working Memory Among Professional Software Developers from an Investment Theory Perspective. Journal of Individual Differences.  ISSN 1614-0001.  32(4), s 201- 209 . doi: 10.1027/1614-0001/a000052
• Bergersen, Gunnar; Hannay, Jo Erskine; Sjøberg, Dag; Dybå, Tore & Karahasanovic, Amela (2011). Inferring Skill from Tests of Programming Performance: Combining Time and Quality, In  Proceedings of International Symposium on Empirical Software Engineering and Measurement (ESEM).  IEEE conference proceedings.  ISBN 978-1-4577-2203-5.  Session 14.  s 305 - 314 Show summary

  The skills of software developers are important to the success of software projects. Also, when studying the general effect of a tool or method, it is important to control for individual differences in skill. However, the way skill is assessed is often ad hoc, or based on unvalidated methods. According to established test theory, validated tests of skill should infer skill levels from well-defined performance measures on multiple, small, representative tasks. In this respect, we show how time and quality, which are often analyzed separately, can be combined as task performance and subsequently be aggregated as an approximation of skill. Our results show significant positive correlations between our proposed measures of skill and other variables, such as seniority, lines of code written, and self-evaluated expertise. The method for combining time and quality is a promising first step to measuring programming skill in both industry and research settings.

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• Bergersen, Gunnar R. (2017). Cross-border software development of health information system: A case study on project between India and Pakistan based on open source software.
• Bergersen, Gunnar R. (2017). State of the art in skill testing of developers.
• Brombach, Harald & Bergersen, Gunnar R. (2017, 16. mars). Mange programmerere misliker tavleintervjuer. Men fungerer de?. [Tidsskrift].  Digi.no.
• Sabir, Uzma; Sahay, Sundeep & Bergersen, Gunnar R. (2017). Cross-border software development of health information system: A case study on project between India and Pakistan based on open source software.
• Bergersen, Gunnar R. (2016). Data science—A subjective introduction to a large topic.
• Bergersen, Gunnar R. (2016). Ready for the 21st century jobs? Increasing realism, relevance, and rigour in the assessment of programming skills. Show summary

  A natural consequence of the sharp growth of available data in today’s society is that programming skills are increasingly becoming more important for many types of jobs. This talk starts with outlining results from a collaboration with professor Jan-Eric Gustafsson on summative evaluations of professional developers in the global ICT industry. Through backwards tracing, I attempt to outline the steps needed to achieve more realistic, relevant, and rigorous formative assessments of programming students in the future.

• Bergersen, Gunnar R. (2016). Why companies fail at evaluating developers.
• Tobiassen, Markus; Bergersen, Gunnar R. & Sjøberg, Dag (2016, 05. mai). Ser butikk i it-flauser.  Dagens Næringsliv.
• Bergersen, Gunnar R. (2015). Evaluering av utviklere og leverandører ved bruk av realistiske programmeringsoppgaver: Resultater fra forskningen. Show summary

  Bruken av realistiske programmeringsoppgaver til å evaluere utvikleres evner til å utvikle IT-løsninger er mye anvendt internasjonalt, men ikke i Norge. Presentasjonen tar utgangspunkt i hva som er kjent om individuelle ferdigheter innen programmering og relaterer dette til gruppe- og leverandørevalueringer. Gunnar Bergersen er daglig leder i Technebies og forsker ved Universitetet i Oslo. I Technebies har han de tre siste årene jobbet med evaluering av utviklere innen outsourcing. Technebies er basert på forsking utført ved Simula Research Laboratory og Universitetet i Oslo siden 2005 og er spesialisert på bruken av høyrealistiske programmeringsoppgaver i en evalueringssammenheng.

• Bergersen, Gunnar R.; Sjøberg, Dag & Dybå, Tore (2015). Measuring programming skill. Series of dissertations submitted to the Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences, University of Oslo.. 1669.
• Bergersen, Gunnar (2010). Combining time and correctness in the scoring of performance on items.
• Bergersen, Gunnar & Hannay, Jo E. (2010). Detecting learning and fatigue effects by inspection of person-item residuals.

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