Investigating the suitability of web X.Y features for software engineering – Towards an empirical survey

Abstract

Today, software engineers strongly rely on information while they perform development activities in the different software engineering (SE) phases. The results of a previous survey showed that most information is required during the phases of requirements engineering (RE), design, programming, and project management. Web X.Y features (i.e., concepts and technologies) facilitate collaboration and communication with distributed individuals and help to cope with the immense amount of information by simplifying the organization, integration, and reuse of information scattered across diverse content sources. After presenting the features of the different Web X.Y generations (i.e., Web 2.0, Web 2.5, and Web 3.0), we propose a weighted mapping for the relevancy of these Web X.Y features regarding their support for the four SE phases with the highest need for information. Based on this subjective mapping, a set of research questions and hypotheses is derived that form the basis of an empirical survey. The goal of this survey is to investigate the potential of Web X.Y features for SE.