Evaluating coding behavior in software development processes: a process mining approach

Process mining is a family of techniques that aim at analyzing business process execution data recorded in event logs. Conformance checking is a branch of this discipline embracing approaches for verifying whether the behavior of a process, as recorded in a log, is in line with some expected behavior provided in the form of a process model. In the literature, process mining techniques have already been used to study software development processes starting from logs derived from version management systems or from document management systems. In this paper, we use conformance checking to test coding behaviors starting from event logs generated from IDE usage. Understanding how developers carry out coding activities and what hurdles they usually face should provide useful tips for improving and supporting software development processes. In particular, through conformance checking, we can compare different process executions, and identify behavioral similarities and differences. In our experimentation, we evaluated the activities performed by 40 novice developers performing coding activities in 5 development sessions. We assessed the developers to distinguish the ones obtaining the best performance. We then compared the behavior extracted from this group of developers with the others. The results show different IDE usage patterns for developers with different skills and performance.