A field study of the software design process for large systems
Communications of the ACM
Cost estimation of software intensive projects: a survey of current practices
ICSE '91 Proceedings of the 13th international conference on Software engineering
The structure of activity during design meetings
Design rationale
Software development cost estimation approaches – A survey
Annals of Software Engineering
An experiment on software project size and effort estimation
ISESE '03 Proceedings of the 2003 International Symposium on Empirical Software Engineering
A Review of Surveys on Software Effort Estimation
ISESE '03 Proceedings of the 2003 International Symposium on Empirical Software Engineering
Group Processes in Software Effort Estimation
Empirical Software Engineering
An Ethnographic Study of XP Practice
Empirical Software Engineering
International Journal of Human-Computer Studies - Special issue: Empirical studies of software engineering
Agile Estimating and Planning
An Empirical Study of Using Planning Poker for User Story Estimation
AGILE '06 Proceedings of the conference on AGILE 2006
Editorial: For the Special issue on Qualitative Software Engineering Research
Information and Software Technology
Ethnographically-informed empirical studies of software practice
Information and Software Technology
Revealing actual documentation usage in software maintenance through war stories
Information and Software Technology
A Systematic Review of Software Development Cost Estimation Studies
IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering
Using planning poker for combining expert estimates in software projects
Journal of Systems and Software
The role of physical artefacts in agile software development: Two complementary perspectives
Interacting with Computers
Software Engineering
Software Engineering as Cooperative Work
Computer Supported Cooperative Work
Perceived productivity threats in large agile development projects
Proceedings of the 2010 ACM-IEEE International Symposium on Empirical Software Engineering and Measurement
A review of studies on expert estimation of software development effort
Journal of Systems and Software
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Context: Software effort estimation is a core task regarding planning, budgeting and controlling software development projects. However, providing accurate effort estimates is challenging. Estimation work is increasingly group based, and to support it, there is a need to reveal how work practices are carried out as collaborative efforts. Objective: This paper examines the use of concepts in software effort estimation by analysing group work as communicative practice. The objective is to improve our understanding of how software professionals invoke different types of knowledge when talking, reasoning and reaching a decision on a software effort estimate. Method: Estimation meetings in the industry where planning poker was used as the estimation method have been video recorded and analysed by means of the interaction analysis technique, focusing on the communicative and collaborative aspects of the group work. Results: The user story mediates the types of resources and knowledge needed to solve the task. Concepts from the knowledge domain are used to frame the task and allow the participants to reach consensus, sufficient to take the next step in the problem-solving activity. Individual knowledge seems to be the dominating orientation when it comes to specifying the work needed for solving the tasks. Conclusion: The step from reasoning to decision-making has been called the ''magic step'' in software effort estimation. We argue that the magic step is found in the analysis of the social interaction in which the concepts used are anchored in the knowledge domain of software engineering and in the historical experiences of the participants and subsequently become activated. We propose that by taking a socio-cultural perspective on concepts in activities, the ways in which software professionals reach a decision can be unpacked. The paper contributes to an understanding of the role of concepts in group work and of software effort estimation as a specific work practice.