research-article

A methodological leg to stand on: lessons learned using grounded theory to study software development

Authors:

Philippe KruchtenAuthors Info & Claims

CASCON '08: Proceedings of the 2008 conference of the center for advanced studies on collaborative research: meeting of minds

Article No.: 13, Pages 166 - 178

https://doi.org/10.1145/1463788.1463806

Published: 27 October 2008 Publication History

Abstract

We are engaged in a qualitative research project to understand how people manage the process of software development. This study uses grounded theory as its method of inquiry and we have learned much about what is and what is not a grounded theory. We, like many researchers have claimed to follow grounded theory methods and even to have produced a grounded theory. In reality, we often only borrow a few grounded theory practices to categorize our data. This paper presents lessons learned about using grounded theory so that both researchers and reviewers can critically evaluate investigators' claims to be producing grounded theory.

References

[1]

A. Cockburn, "People and Methodologies in Software Development," in Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences. vol. Doctor Philosophiae Oslo: University of Oslo, 2003.

[2]

AgileAlliance, "Manifesto for Agile Software Development," 2001.

[3]

B. A. Kitchenham, S. L. Pfleeger, L. M. Pickard, P. W. Jones, D. C. Hoaglin, K. El Emam, and J. Rosenberg, "Preliminary guidelines for empirical research in software engineering," Software Engineering, IEEE Transactions on, vol. 28, pp. 721--734, 2002.

Digital Library

[4]

Z. Carmen, M. Grigori, and M. Frank, "On the success of empirical studies in the international conference on software engineering," in Proceeding of the 28th international conference on Software engineering Shanghai, China: ACM, 2006.

Digital Library

[5]

E. P. Dewayne, A. P. Adam, and G. V. Lawrence, "Empirical studies of software engineering: a roadmap," in Proceedings of the Conference on The Future of Software Engineering Limerick, Ireland: ACM, 2000.

Digital Library

[6]

C. B. Seaman, "Qualitative Methods in Emperical Studies of Software Engineering Research," IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering, vol. 25, pp. 557--572, July August 1999 1999.

Digital Library

[7]

M. Shaw, "Writing Good Software Engineering Research Papers: Minitutorial," IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering, 2003 2003.

Digital Library

[8]

R. L. Glass, I. Vessey, and V. Ramesh, "Research in software engineering: an analysis of the literature," Information and Software Technology, vol. 44, pp. 491--506, 2002.

Digital Library

[9]

J. W. Creswell, Qualitative Inquiry and Research Design: Choosing Among the Five Traditions. London: Sage Publications, 1997.

[10]

B. G. Glaser and A. Strauss, The Discovery of Grounded Theory: Strategies for Qualitative Research. Chicago, Illinois: Aldine, 1967.

[11]

A. Strauss and J. Corbin, Basics of Qualitative Research: Techniques and Procedures for Developing Grounded Theory. Second Edition: Sage Publications 1998.

[12]

K. Charmaz, Constructing Grounded Theory: A Practical Guide Through Qualitative Analysis Thousand Oaks: Sage, 2006.

[13]

W. J. Orlikowski, "CASE Tools as Organizational Change: Investigating Incremental and Radical Changes in Systems Development," MIS Quarterly, vol. 17, pp. 309--340, 09 1993.

Digital Library

[14]

M. Razavi, N. and L. Iverson, "A grounded theory of information sharing behavior in a personal learning space," in Proceedings of the 2006 20th anniversary conference on Computer supported cooperative work Banff, Alberta, Canada: ACM, 2006.

Digital Library

[15]

B. H. Hansen and K. Kautz, "Grounded Theory Applied - Studying Information Systems Development Methodologies in Practice," 2005, pp. 264b--264b.

[16]

G. Coleman and R. O'Conner, Software Process In Practice: A Grounded Theory of the Irish Software Industry vol. 4257/2006: Springer Berlin, 2006.

Digital Library

[17]

R. Baskerville and J. Pries-Heje, "Short cycle time systems development," Information Systems Journal, vol. 14, pp. 237--264, 2004.

[18]

E. Whitworth and R. Biddle, "The Social Nature of Agile Teams," in AGILE 2007, 2007, pp. 26--36.

Digital Library

[19]

G. Melnik, "Empirical Analysis of Executable Test Driven Development," in Computer Science. vol. Doctor of Philosophy Calgary: University of Calgary, 2007.

[20]

D. E. Harter, M. S. Krishnan, and S. A. Slaughter, "Effects of Process Maturity on Quality, Cycle Time, and Effort in Software Product Development," Management Science, vol. 46, pp. 451--466, 2000.

Digital Library

[21]

M. S. Krishnan, C. H. Kriebel, S. Kekre, and T. Mukhopadhyay, "An Empirical Analysis of Productivity and Quality in Software Products," Management Science, vol. 46, pp. 745--759, 2000.

Digital Library

[22]

M. Diaz and J. Sligo, "How software process improvement helped Motorola," Software, IEEE, vol. 14, pp. 75--81, 1997.

Digital Library

[23]

C. Jones, Software Assessments, Benchmarks, and Best Practices. Boston: Addison-Wesley, 2000.

Digital Library

[24]

B. Fitzgerald, "An empirical investigation into the adoption of systems development methodologies," Information & Management, vol. 34, pp. 317--328, 1998.

Digital Library

[25]

T. Dyba, N. B. Moe, and E. Arisholm, "Measuring software methodology usage: challenges of conceptualization and operationalization," 2005, p. 11 pp.

[26]

Y. Dubinsky and P. Abrahamsson, "Inaugural International Research-in-Progress Workshop on Agile Software Engineering (RWASE '07)," 2007.

[27]

P. H. Becker, "Common Pitfalls in Published Grounded Theory Research," Qual Health Res, vol. 3, pp. 254--260, May 1, 1993 1993.

[28]

B. G. Glaser, Doing Grounded Theory: Issues and Discussions. Mill Valley, California: Sociology Press, 1998.

[29]

R. S. Schreiber and P. N. Stern, Using Grounded Theory in Nursing. New York: Springer Publishing Company, 2001.

[30]

B. G. Glaser, Theoretical Sensitivity. Mill Valley, California: Sociology Press, 1978.

[31]

B. G. Glaser, Emergence vs Forcing: Basics of Grounded Theory Analysis. Mill Valley, California: Sociology Press, 1992.

[32]

K. M. Eisenhardt, "Building Theories from Case Study Research," The Academy of Management Review, vol. 14, pp. 532--550, 10 1989.

[33]

A. M. McCallin, "Designing a grounded theory study: some practicalities," Nursing in Critical Care, vol. 8, pp. 203--208, 2003.

[34]

B. G. Glaser and A. Strauss, Awareness of Dying. Chicago: Adline 1965.

[35]

E. Whitworth, "Agile Experience: Communication and Collaboration in Agile Software Development Teams," in Psychology. vol. Master of Arts Ottawa: Carleton University, 2006.

[36]

B. G. Glaser, "The Constant Comparative Method of Qualitative Analysis," Social Problems, vol. 12, pp. 436--445, Spring 1965.

[37]

D. Silverman, "The Quality of Qualitative Health Research: The Open-ended Interview and its Alternatives," Social Sciences in Health, vol. 4, pp. 104--118, 1998.

[38]

H. Blumer, Symbolic Interactionism: Perspective and Method: University of California Press, 1969.

[39]

M. Q. Patton, Qualitative Evaluation and Research Methods 2nd ed. Newbury Park, CA: Sage Publications, 1990.

[40]

C. de Souza, R. B., D. Redmiles, L.-T. Cheng, D. Millen, and J. Patterson, "How a good software practice thwarts collaboration: the multiple roles of APIs in software development," SIGSOFT Softw. Eng. Notes, vol. 29, pp. 221--230, 2004.

Digital Library

[41]

J. Morse, "Situating Grounded Theory Within Qualitative Inquiry," in Using Grounded Theory in Nursing, R. S. Schreiber and P. N. Stern, Eds. New York: Springer Publishing Company, 2001.

[42]

Y.-H. Jeon, "The application of grounded theory and symbolic interactionism," Scandinavian Journal of Caring Sciences, vol. 18, pp. 249--256, 2004.

[43]

J. Corbin and A. Strauss, "Grounded Theory Research: Procedures, Canons, and Evaluative Criteria," Qualitative Sociology, vol. 13, p. 19, 1990.

[44]

J. Milliken and R. S. Schreiber, "Can You "Do" Grounded Theory Without Symbolic Interactionism?," in Using Grounded Theory in Nursing, R. S. Schreiber and P. N. Stern, Eds. New York: Springer Publishing Company, 2001.

[45]

B. G. Glaser and J. Holton, "Remodeling Grounded Theory," in Forum Qualitative Sozialforschung / Forum: Qualitative Social Research in Nursing & Health. vol. 5, 2004.

[46]

H. S. Wilson and S. A. Hutchinson, "Methodologic Mistakes in Grounded Theory," Nursing Research, vol. 45, pp. 122--124, 1996.

[47]

R. Suddaby, "From the Editors: What Grounded Theory Is Not," Academy of Management Journal, vol. 49, pp. 633--642, 2006.

[48]

W. A. Hall, "The experience of women returning to work following the birth of their first child," Midwifery, vol. 3, pp. 187--195, 1987.

[49]

W. A. Hall and P. Callery, "Enhancing the Rigor of Grounded Theory: Incorporating Reflexivity and Relationality," Qual Health Res, vol. 11, pp. 257--272, March 1, 2001 2001.

[50]

A. M. McCallin, "Pluralistic Dialoging: A Theory of Interdiscplinary Teamwworking," in Grounded Theory Review. vol. 4, 2004.

[51]

M. Sandelowski, "Whatever happened to qualitative description?," Research in Nursing & Health, vol. 23, pp. 334--340, 2000.

[52]

M. T. K. Tan and W. Hall, "Beyond Theoretical and Methodological Pluralism in Interpretive IS Research: The Example of Symbolic Interactionist Ethnography," Communications of the Association for Information Systems, vol. 19, pp. 589--610, 2007.

[53]

J. Q. Benoliel, "Grounded Theory and Nursing Knowledge," Qual Health Res, vol. 6, pp. 406--428, August 1, 1996 1996.

Cited By

Navas GYagüe A(2023)A New Way of Cataloging Research through Grounded TheoryApplied Sciences10.3390/app1310588913:10(5889)Online publication date: 10-May-2023
https://doi.org/10.3390/app13105889
Khan AAkbar MAhmad AFahmideh MShameem MLahtinen VWaseem MMikkonen T(2023)Agile Practices for Quantum Software Development: Practitioners’ Perspectives2023 IEEE International Conference on Quantum Software (QSW)10.1109/QSW59989.2023.00012(9-20)Online publication date: Jul-2023
https://doi.org/10.1109/QSW59989.2023.00012
Ardo ABass JGaber T(2023)Implications of regulatory policy for building secure agile software in Nigeria: A grounded theoryTHE ELECTRONIC JOURNAL OF INFORMATION SYSTEMS IN DEVELOPING COUNTRIES10.1002/isd2.1228589:6Online publication date: 18-Jun-2023
https://doi.org/10.1002/isd2.12285
Show More Cited By

Index Terms

A methodological leg to stand on: lessons learned using grounded theory to study software development

Recommendations

Towards an integrated methodological framework for understanding embodiment in HCI
CHI EA '14: CHI '14 Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems

The third wave in HCI reveals how embodiment matters in post-WIMP computing systems. Yet it is still unclear what methods provide effective insight into the nature of embodiment in HCI in relation to both design and use. This paper presents work in ...
Stand and Deliver: Why I Hate Stand-Up Meetings: Stand-up meetings are an important component of the ’whole team’, which is one of the fundamental practices of extreme programming (XP).
Power Management

According to the Extreme Programming Web site, the stand-up meeting is one part of the rules and practices of extreme programming: “Communication among the entire team is the purpose of the stand-up meeting. They should take place every morning in order ...
Methodological Issues in Assessing Sociocultural Learning
HICSS '01: Proceedings of the 34th Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences ( HICSS-34)-Volume 8 - Volume 8

While research findings regarding learning are somewhat mixed, early indications are encouraging and suggest sociocultural learning is useful in improving student learning under certain situations. It is suggested that more closely linking research to ...

Comments

Information & Contributors

Information

Published In

cover image ACM Other conferences

CASCON '08: Proceedings of the 2008 conference of the center for advanced studies on collaborative research: meeting of minds

October 2008

357 pages

ISBN:9781450378826

DOI:10.1145/1463788

Conference Chairs:
Joanna Ng
Head of the Centre for Advanced Studies
,
Christian Couturier
National Research Council Canada
,
Editors:
Marsha Chechik
University of Toronto
,
Mark Vigder
National Research Council Canada
,
Darlene Stewart
National Research Council Canada
,
Program Chairs:
Mark Vigder
National Research Council Canada
,
Marsh Chechik
University of Toronto

Copyright © 2008 ACM.

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

Sponsors

IBM Toronto Software Lab
IBM Centers for Advanced Studies (CAS)

Publisher

Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 27 October 2008

Permissions

Request permissions for this article.

Request Permissions

Check for updates

Qualifiers

Research-article

Acceptance Rates

Overall Acceptance Rate 24 of 90 submissions, 27%

Contributors

Other Metrics

View Article Metrics

Bibliometrics & Citations

Bibliometrics

Article Metrics

38
Total Citations
View Citations
747
Total Downloads

Downloads (Last 12 months)10
Downloads (Last 6 weeks)1

Reflects downloads up to 09 Nov 2024

Other Metrics

View Author Metrics

Citations

Cited By

Navas GYagüe A(2023)A New Way of Cataloging Research through Grounded TheoryApplied Sciences10.3390/app1310588913:10(5889)Online publication date: 10-May-2023
https://doi.org/10.3390/app13105889
Khan AAkbar MAhmad AFahmideh MShameem MLahtinen VWaseem MMikkonen T(2023)Agile Practices for Quantum Software Development: Practitioners’ Perspectives2023 IEEE International Conference on Quantum Software (QSW)10.1109/QSW59989.2023.00012(9-20)Online publication date: Jul-2023
https://doi.org/10.1109/QSW59989.2023.00012
Ardo ABass JGaber T(2023)Implications of regulatory policy for building secure agile software in Nigeria: A grounded theoryTHE ELECTRONIC JOURNAL OF INFORMATION SYSTEMS IN DEVELOPING COUNTRIES10.1002/isd2.1228589:6Online publication date: 18-Jun-2023
https://doi.org/10.1002/isd2.12285
Jung SBuruk OHamari J(2022)Psychedelic VR Experience: An Exploratory Study on Cosmic FlowProceedings of the 25th International Academic Mindtrek Conference10.1145/3569219.3569391(23-30)Online publication date: 16-Nov-2022
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3569219.3569391
Nurwidyantoro AShahin MChaudron MHussain WShams RPerera HOliver GWhittle J(2022)Human values in software development artefactsInformation and Software Technology10.1016/j.infsof.2021.106731141:COnline publication date: 1-Jan-2022
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1016/j.infsof.2021.106731
Isomöttönen V(2021)Demolishing the fear of theory to liberate higher education discourse and practiceTeaching in Higher Education10.1080/13562517.2021.191866028:7(1583-1599)Online publication date: 28-Apr-2021
https://doi.org/10.1080/13562517.2021.1918660
Spiegler SHeinecke CWagner S(2021)An empirical study on changing leadership in agile teamsEmpirical Software Engineering10.1007/s10664-021-09949-526:3Online publication date: 22-Mar-2021
https://doi.org/10.1007/s10664-021-09949-5
Anastassiu MSantos G(2020)Resistance to Change in Software Process Improvement - An Investigation of Causes, Effects and ConductsProceedings of the XIX Brazilian Symposium on Software Quality10.1145/3439961.3439982(1-11)Online publication date: 1-Dec-2020
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3439961.3439982
Motta Rde Oliveira KTravassos G(2019)A conceptual perspective on interoperability in context-aware software systemsInformation and Software Technology10.1016/j.infsof.2019.07.001114(231-257)Online publication date: Oct-2019
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.infsof.2019.07.001
Haq AMagoulas GJamal AMajeed ASloan D(2018)Users’ perceptions of e-learning environments and services effectivenessJournal of Enterprise Information Management10.1108/JEIM-03-2016-007431:1(89-111)Online publication date: 12-Feb-2018
https://doi.org/10.1108/JEIM-03-2016-0074
Show More Cited By

View Options

Get Access

Login options

Check if you have access through your login credentials or your institution to get full access on this article.

Full Access

Get this Publication

View options

PDF

View or Download as a PDF file.

eReader

View online with eReader.

Media

Figures

Other

Tables

View Table of Contents