Indian Journal of Science and Technology

Abstract

Objectives: Proportional increase in speed of development (known as pair speed advantage) in software product development by pair programmers when compared with single programmer has been reported in literature. There is also an indication in the literature that the software defects in relation to lines of coding (known as defect density) are reduced in the case of pair programming when compared with conventional single programming technique. Correlation studies onthe contribution of application specific expert, when paired with conventional single programmer are not to be seen much in literature. Whether the findings seen in literature would hold good for small sized software developments also? Under these background this research work aims at presenting a correlation study (presentation of results) on the defect density of five chosen small sized software developments by three different programmer strategies, namely single, pair and expert programmer pair, in correlation with pair speed advantage. Methods: The research work however doesn’t present correlation coefficients and other related statistical results, as ‘correlation’as a term, is treated only for the study of relative performances. The novelty of the work is exhibited through the isolated study on the contribution of domain or application specific expert when acted as a pair alongside a relatively inexperienced s software programmer, while the domain expert need not know software programming as such, although he/she might still be a subject/domain specialist. Finding: The experimental works elaborated in the paper, which involved three s/w developer pairs on five small projects (file sizes varied from about 300 to 800 KB) were completely carried out by the control and direction of the researcher herself, in laboratory conditions as pointed out in the paper, and no external agencies were involved as the coding on the chosen applications is small when compared with huge LOC of s/w industries. These results were not sent to any other publisher for publication. Since the objective of the research work is to do a correlative study between the efforts of programmers and domain experts, MCA students and known domain experts (namely banking staff) were deployed by the researcher. The demography presented in the paper vouches the same. Application/Improvement: The paper has clearly demonstrated the performance improvement by the expert pair combination in the reduction of application specific defects (expressed in terms of defect density similar to the term pointed out by Frank Padberg et. al. 2003), when correlated with other two pairs. The paper also has shown that there is also a marginal increase in the pair speed advantage in the case of expert pair with compared with conventional programmer pair.
Keywords: Application Specific Experts, Pair Programming, Pair Speed Advantage, Software Defect Density