Tool-supported unobtrusive evaluation of software engineering process conformance

Software engineers face the dilemma of verifying process conformance and having the Hawthorne effect distorting the results or not doing it and as a consequence not being able to know if the proposed process is actually carried out. We addressed this issue by classifying and proposing the use of some approaches based on unobtrusive observation. These approaches include cognitive labs, remote monitoring and metrics collection. In addition, a tool supporting the application of perspective based reading (PER) for requirements inspection has been used and is also presented to exemplify metrics collection. Among other features, PBR Tool unobtrusively collects metrics in order to monitor if the reading technique is faithfully applied. Two studies evaluating the feasibility of such a tool are also reported.