computer science

Social software engineering

Social software engineering is a computer science topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Social software engineering rather than just read about it. In short: Social software engineering (SSE) is a branch of software engineering that is concerned with the social aspects of software development and the developed software. SSE focuses on the socialness of both software engineering and developed software.

Key takeaways

Social software engineering belongs to computer science; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Social software engineering to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Social software engineering from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Social software engineering (SSE) is a branch of software engineering that is concerned with the social aspects of software development and the developed software. SSE focuses on the socialness of both software engineering and developed software. On the one hand, the consideration of social factors in software engineering activities, processes and CASE tools is deemed to be useful to improve the quality of both development process and produced software. Examples include the role of situational awareness and multi-cultural factors in collaborative software development. On the other hand, the dynamicity of the social contexts in which software could operate (e.g., in a cloud environment) calls for engineering social adaptability as a runtime iterative activity. Examples include approaches which enable software to gather users' quality feedback and use it to adapt autonomously or semi-autonomously. SSE studies and builds socially-oriented tools to support collaboration and knowledge sharing in software engineering. SSE also investigates the adaptability of software to the dynamic social contexts in which it could operate and the involvement of clients and end-users in shaping software adaptation decisions at runtime. Social context includes norms, culture, roles and responsibilities, stakeholder's goals and interdependencies, end-users perception of the quality and appropriateness of each software behaviour, etc. The participants of the 1st International Workshop on Social Software Engineering and Applications (SoSEA 2008) proposed the following characterization:

Community-centered: Software is produced and consumed by and/or for a community rather than focusing on individuals Collaboration/collectiveness: Exploiting the collaborative and collective capacity of human beings Companionship/relationship: Making explicit the various associations among people Human/social activities: Software is designed consciously to support human activities and to address social problems Social inclusion: Software should enable social inclusion enforcing links and trust in communities Thus, SSE can be defined as "the application of processes, methods, and tools to enable community-driven creation, management, deployment, and use of software in online environments". One of the main observations in the field of SSE is that the concepts, principles, and technologies made for social software applications are applicable to software development itself as software engineering is inherently a social activity. SSE is not limited to specific activities of software development. Accordingly, tools have been proposed supporting different parts of SSE, for instance, social system design or social requirements engineering. Consequently vertical market software, such as software development tools, engineering tools, marketing tools or software that helps users in a decision-making process can profit from social components. Such vertical social software differentiates strongly in its user-base from traditional social software such as Yammer.

References

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Social software engineering

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Social software engineering claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In computer science, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Social software engineering before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Social software engineering ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Social software engineering

In research: Social software engineering appears in computer science research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Social software engineering in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Social software engineering is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics Software engineering, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Social software engineering outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Social software engineering in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Social software engineering means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Social software engineering out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Social software engineering in simple terms?

Why does Social software engineering matter?

Because it connects several computer science ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Social software engineering?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Social software engineering.