Developer experience · Empirical instrumentation/method study

Enabling the Study of Software Development Behavior With Cross-Tool Logs

IEEE Software · 2020

Ciera Jaspan, Matt Jorde, Carolyn Egelman, Collin Green, Ben Holtz, Edward Smith, Maggie Hodges, Andrea Knight, Liz Kammer, Jill Dicker, Caitlin Sadowski, James Lin, Lan Cheng, Mark Canning, Emerson Murphy-Hill

Original paper ↗

Summary

Shows how cross-tool logs can provide a richer view of software-development behavior than any single tool log.

For your marketing

Possible founder application

Unify IDE, repository, review, build, and issue data before interpreting engineering productivity.

Reported result

What the study found

Shows how cross-tool logs can provide a richer view of software-development behavior than any single tool log.

Research question

What the authors investigated

How does the study’s stated design explain its reported outcome in this setting?

Design

Empirical instrumentation/method study

Sample and setting

Software-development organizations using multiple engineering tools; abstract-only

Scope and transfer

Limitations to keep in view

Abstract-only evidence limits deployment details and validation scope.

Research sources

abstract_only

Study strength

3.5/5 Abstract-level evidence is useful for framing questions; verify full methods before transfer.

How this was assessed

The 1–5 evidence-check score is a practical reading aid, not a formal peer review or a probability that a conclusion is true. It combines design strength (2 points), sample reporting (1), comparison/control clarity (1), and how much of the paper could be checked (1). Access affects how confidently this directory can assess a study, not the study's underlying quality. Blinding is reported separately because it is not relevant to every design.

Design transparency · 2/2

Based on the reported study design in the retrieved source.

Sample and setting · 1/1

The sample context is stated; a numerical count is preserved only when reported.

Outcome clarity · 1/1

The finding is summarized from publisher or article metadata.

Access for checking · 0.5/1

Only abstract or bibliographic access was confirmed.

Double-blind? The retrieved publisher record does not establish whether participants or outcome assessors were blinded.

Read the paper