Autonomy Is an Acquired Taste: Exploring Developer Preferences for GitHub Bots.
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| Title: | Autonomy Is an Acquired Taste: Exploring Developer Preferences for GitHub Bots. |
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| Authors: | Ghorbani, Amir1 amirrezaghorbani@uvic.ca, Cassee, Nathan2 n.w.cassee@tue.nl, Robinson, Derek1 drobinson@uvic.ca, Alami, Adam3 adal@cs.aau.dk, Ernst, Neil A.1 nernst@uvic.ca, Serebrenik, Alexander2 a.serebrenik@tue.nl, Wąsowski, Andrzej4 wasowski@itu.dk |
| Source: | ICSE: International Conference on Software Engineering. 2023, p1405-1417. 13p. |
| Subjects: | Github Inc., Computer software, Computer software development, Project management, Empirical research |
| Abstract: | Software bots fulfill an important role in collective software development, and their adoption by developers promises increased productivity. Past research has identified that bots that communicate too often can irritate developers, which affects the utility of the bot. However, it is not clear what other properties of human-bot collaboration affect developers' preferences, or what impact these properties might have. The main idea of this paper is to explore characteristics affecting developer preferences for interactions between humans and bots, in the context of GitHub pull requests. We carried out an exploratory sequential study with interviews and a subsequent vignette-based survey. We find developers generally prefer bots that are personable but show little autonomy, however, more experienced developers tend to prefer more autonomous bots. Based on this empirical evidence, we recommend bot developers increase configuration options for bots so that individual developers and projects can configure bots to best align with their own preferences and project cultures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] |
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| Database: | Engineering Source |
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| Abstract: | Software bots fulfill an important role in collective software development, and their adoption by developers promises increased productivity. Past research has identified that bots that communicate too often can irritate developers, which affects the utility of the bot. However, it is not clear what other properties of human-bot collaboration affect developers' preferences, or what impact these properties might have. The main idea of this paper is to explore characteristics affecting developer preferences for interactions between humans and bots, in the context of GitHub pull requests. We carried out an exploratory sequential study with interviews and a subsequent vignette-based survey. We find developers generally prefer bots that are personable but show little autonomy, however, more experienced developers tend to prefer more autonomous bots. Based on this empirical evidence, we recommend bot developers increase configuration options for bots so that individual developers and projects can configure bots to best align with their own preferences and project cultures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] |
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| DOI: | 10.1109/ICSE48619.2023.00123 |
