Getting the whole story: an experience report on analyzing data elicited using the war stories procedure

  • Authors:

  • Susan Elliott Sim;Thomas A. Alspaugh

  • Affiliations:

  • Department of Informatics, University of California, Irvine, USA 92697;Department of Computer Science, Georgetown University, Washington, USA 20057

  • Venue:
  • Empirical Software Engineering
  • Year:
  • 2011

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Abstract

When analyzing data elicited using the "war stories" technique, previously introduced by Lutters and Seaman (Inf Softw Technol 49(6):576---587, 2007), we encountered unexpected challenges in applying standard qualitative analysis techniques. After reviewing the literature on stories and storytelling, we realized that a richer analysis would be possible if we accorded more respect to the data's structure and nature as stories, rather than treating our participants' utterances simply as textual data. We report on five lessons learned regarding how we can better analyze war stories as stories: 1) war stories tend to be about exceptional situations; 2) war stories tend to be diverse and resistant to being combined into a single grand narrative; 3) the humanities can be a valuable resource for analyzing war stories; 4) war stories are not just text, they are also performances; and 5) war stories are not just data, they are also instructive and evocative.