Richard May , Niklas Baron , Jacob Krüger , Thomas Leich
{"title":"Pandemic startup software engineering: An experience report on the development of a COVID-19 certificate verification system","authors":"Richard May , Niklas Baron , Jacob Krüger , Thomas Leich","doi":"10.1016/j.jss.2024.112106","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>The COVID-19 virus has caused a global pandemic that has heavily impacted daily life. Rapid advances in testing and vaccinating led to an additional use case besides the well-known contact-tracing apps: certificate-verification systems. Verification systems are often commissioned by local authorities to enable more public life, and are often developed by smaller organizations or startups. So, the development of verification systems differs from other software projects, featuring interesting and unique properties. In this article, we present an experience report on the development of one verification system by a German startup, focusing on three properties: working in a pandemic, developing a product for handling a pandemic, and the startup context. To this end, we surveyed nine startup developers and analyzed the results with two experts from the startup. We found that the developers focused on fast delivery to cope with the time pressure of releasing the verification system, which is why some phases of typical development processes were hardly carried out. As a result, while the verification system is successful, we also identified negative effects of the properties (e.g., programming mistakes, well-being). We discuss our findings to guide researchers and practitioners in preparing for software engineering in future emergencies.</p><p><em>Editor’s note: Open Science material was validated by the Journal of Systems and Software Open Science Board</em>.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":51099,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Systems and Software","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":3.7000,"publicationDate":"2024-05-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0164121224001511/pdfft?md5=f96991edc7b8443c9ddcb553c4e26044&pid=1-s2.0-S0164121224001511-main.pdf","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Journal of Systems and Software","FirstCategoryId":"94","ListUrlMain":"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0164121224001511","RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"计算机科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q1","JCRName":"COMPUTER SCIENCE, SOFTWARE ENGINEERING","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
The COVID-19 virus has caused a global pandemic that has heavily impacted daily life. Rapid advances in testing and vaccinating led to an additional use case besides the well-known contact-tracing apps: certificate-verification systems. Verification systems are often commissioned by local authorities to enable more public life, and are often developed by smaller organizations or startups. So, the development of verification systems differs from other software projects, featuring interesting and unique properties. In this article, we present an experience report on the development of one verification system by a German startup, focusing on three properties: working in a pandemic, developing a product for handling a pandemic, and the startup context. To this end, we surveyed nine startup developers and analyzed the results with two experts from the startup. We found that the developers focused on fast delivery to cope with the time pressure of releasing the verification system, which is why some phases of typical development processes were hardly carried out. As a result, while the verification system is successful, we also identified negative effects of the properties (e.g., programming mistakes, well-being). We discuss our findings to guide researchers and practitioners in preparing for software engineering in future emergencies.
Editor’s note: Open Science material was validated by the Journal of Systems and Software Open Science Board.
期刊介绍:
The Journal of Systems and Software publishes papers covering all aspects of software engineering and related hardware-software-systems issues. All articles should include a validation of the idea presented, e.g. through case studies, experiments, or systematic comparisons with other approaches already in practice. Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:
• Methods and tools for, and empirical studies on, software requirements, design, architecture, verification and validation, maintenance and evolution
• Agile, model-driven, service-oriented, open source and global software development
• Approaches for mobile, multiprocessing, real-time, distributed, cloud-based, dependable and virtualized systems
• Human factors and management concerns of software development
• Data management and big data issues of software systems
• Metrics and evaluation, data mining of software development resources
• Business and economic aspects of software development processes
The journal welcomes state-of-the-art surveys and reports of practical experience for all of these topics.