Post-Completion Error in Software Development

Abstract

Post-completion errors have been observed in a variety of tasks by psychologists, but there is a lack of empirical studies in software engineering. This paper investigates whether post-completion errors occur in software development and the likelihood that software developers commit this error when a post-completion scenario is presented. An experimental study was conducted in the context of a programming contest. In the experiment, a programming task specification that contained a post-completion sub-task requirement was presented to the subjects. The results showed that 41.82% of the subjects committed the post-completion error in the same way¬—forgetting to design and implement a software requirement which is supposed to be the last sub-task and is not necessary for the completion of the main sub-task. This percentage of subjects committing the post-completion error was significantly higher than that of subjects committing other errors. This study has confirmed that post-completion error occurs in software development and, moreover, different software developers tend to commit this error in the same way with a high likelihood at the location where a post-completion scenario is presented. Strategies are proposed to prevent post-completion errors in software development.