Abstract
Spreadsheets are widely used in industry. Spreadsheets also suffer from typical software engineering issues. Previous research shows that they contain code smells, lack documentation and tests, and have a long live span during which they are transferred multiple times among users. These transfers highlight the importance of spreadsheet comprehension. Therefore, in this paper, we analyze the effect of the organization of formulas on spreadsheet comprehension. To that end, we conduct a controlled experiment with 107 spreadsheet users, divided into two groups. One group receives a model where the formulas are organized such that all related components are grouped closely together, while the other group receives a model where the components are spread far and wide across the spreadsheet. All subjects perform the same set of comprehension tasks on their spreadsheet. The results indicate that the way formulas are located relative to each other in a spreadsheet, influences the performance of the subjects in their ability to comprehend and adapt the spreadsheet. Especially for the comprehension tasks, the subjects perform better on the model where the formulas were grouped closely together. For the adaptation tasks, we found that the length of the calculation chain influences the performance of the subjects more than the location of the formulas itself.
Original language | English |
---|---|
Title of host publication | 2017 IEEE 25th International Conference on Program Comprehension (ICPC) |
Subtitle of host publication | Proceedings |
Editors | R. Bilof |
Place of Publication | Piscataway, NJ |
Publisher | IEEE |
Pages | 286-296 |
Number of pages | 11 |
ISBN (Electronic) | 978-1-5386-0535-6 |
ISBN (Print) | 978-1-5386-0536-3 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - 28 Jun 2017 |
Event | ICPC 2017: 25th IEEE International Conference on Program Comprehension - Buenos Aires, Argentina Duration: 22 May 2017 → 23 May 2017 Conference number: 25 http://icpc2017.unibas.it/ |
Conference
Conference | ICPC 2017 |
---|---|
Country/Territory | Argentina |
City | Buenos Aires |
Period | 22/05/17 → 23/05/17 |
Other | Co-located with the 39th International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE 2017) |
Internet address |
Keywords
- comprehension
- controlled experiment
- delocalized plans
- end user programming
- Feature Envy
- locality
- maintenance
- spreadsheets