Developers' eyes on the changes of apps: An exploratory study on app changelogs

Chong Wang; Ju Li; Peng Liang; Maya Daneva; Marten Sinderen

doi:10.1109/REW.2019.00042

Developers' eyes on the changes of apps: An exploratory study on app changelogs

Chong Wang, Ju Li, Peng Liang, Maya Daneva, Marten Sinderen

Services, Cybersecurity & Safety

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Conference contribution › Academic › peer-review

4 Citations (Scopus)

8 Downloads (Pure)

Abstract

Release planning for mobile apps has only recently become an area of active research. As a result, little is known about the types of requirements that app developers pay the most attention to when releasing an app. This research uses the changelogs of apps to shed light on this. We report the results of an exploratory study in which we analyzed the requirements that dominate the changes of apps, according to a set of 3000 changelogs collected from 120 apps from three categories in the Apple App Store: Travel, Social networking, and Books. We analyzed the changelogs in terms of functional and non-functional requirements, from a developers' perspective. Our results suggest that developers' releases are by far more concerned with non-functional requirements than with functional requirements. We also found that usability and maintainability are the most frequently mentioned non-functional requirements (NFRs) in the changelogs. Surprisingly, reliability requirements formed only a fraction of the total number of NFRs addressed in all changelogs of apps in the three selected App Store categories.

Original language	English
Title of host publication	2019 IEEE 27th International Requirements Engineering Conference Workshops, REW 2019
Subtitle of host publication	Proceedings
Place of Publication	Piscataway, NJ
Publisher	IEEE
Pages	207-212
Number of pages	6
ISBN (Electronic)	978-1-7281-5165-6
ISBN (Print)	978-1-7281-5166-3
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1109/REW.2019.00042
Publication status	Published - 19 Dec 2019
Event	27th IEEE International Requirements Engineering Conference Workshops, REW 2019 - Jeju Island, Korea, Republic of Duration: 23 Sep 2019 → 27 Sep 2019 Conference number: 27

Conference

Conference	27th IEEE International Requirements Engineering Conference Workshops, REW 2019
Abbreviated title	REW
Country/Territory	Korea, Republic of
City	Jeju Island
Period	23/09/19 → 27/09/19

Keywords

App store
Changelogs
Empirical study
Non-functional requirements
Release planning
Requirements engineering

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10.1109/REW.2019.00042

Wang2019developersFinal published version, 594 KBLicence: Taverne

Cite this

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title = "Developers' eyes on the changes of apps: An exploratory study on app changelogs",

abstract = "Release planning for mobile apps has only recently become an area of active research. As a result, little is known about the types of requirements that app developers pay the most attention to when releasing an app. This research uses the changelogs of apps to shed light on this. We report the results of an exploratory study in which we analyzed the requirements that dominate the changes of apps, according to a set of 3000 changelogs collected from 120 apps from three categories in the Apple App Store: Travel, Social networking, and Books. We analyzed the changelogs in terms of functional and non-functional requirements, from a developers' perspective. Our results suggest that developers' releases are by far more concerned with non-functional requirements than with functional requirements. We also found that usability and maintainability are the most frequently mentioned non-functional requirements (NFRs) in the changelogs. Surprisingly, reliability requirements formed only a fraction of the total number of NFRs addressed in all changelogs of apps in the three selected App Store categories.",

keywords = "App store, Changelogs, Empirical study, Non-functional requirements, Release planning, Requirements engineering",

author = "Chong Wang and Ju Li and Peng Liang and Maya Daneva and Marten Sinderen",

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doi = "10.1109/REW.2019.00042",

language = "English",

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pages = "207--212",

booktitle = "2019 IEEE 27th International Requirements Engineering Conference Workshops, REW 2019",

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}

Wang, C, Li, J, Liang, P, Daneva, M & Sinderen, M 2019, Developers' eyes on the changes of apps: An exploratory study on app changelogs. in 2019 IEEE 27th International Requirements Engineering Conference Workshops, REW 2019: Proceedings., 8933541, IEEE, Piscataway, NJ, pp. 207-212, 27th IEEE International Requirements Engineering Conference Workshops, REW 2019, Jeju Island, Korea, Republic of, 23/09/19. https://doi.org/10.1109/REW.2019.00042

Developers' eyes on the changes of apps : An exploratory study on app changelogs. / Wang, Chong; Li, Ju; Liang, Peng et al.

2019 IEEE 27th International Requirements Engineering Conference Workshops, REW 2019: Proceedings. Piscataway, NJ : IEEE, 2019. p. 207-212 8933541.

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Conference contribution › Academic › peer-review

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AU - Sinderen, Marten

N1 - Conference code: 27

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N2 - Release planning for mobile apps has only recently become an area of active research. As a result, little is known about the types of requirements that app developers pay the most attention to when releasing an app. This research uses the changelogs of apps to shed light on this. We report the results of an exploratory study in which we analyzed the requirements that dominate the changes of apps, according to a set of 3000 changelogs collected from 120 apps from three categories in the Apple App Store: Travel, Social networking, and Books. We analyzed the changelogs in terms of functional and non-functional requirements, from a developers' perspective. Our results suggest that developers' releases are by far more concerned with non-functional requirements than with functional requirements. We also found that usability and maintainability are the most frequently mentioned non-functional requirements (NFRs) in the changelogs. Surprisingly, reliability requirements formed only a fraction of the total number of NFRs addressed in all changelogs of apps in the three selected App Store categories.

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Developers' eyes on the changes of apps: An exploratory study on app changelogs

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