Browsing by Author "Yilmaz, Murat"

Now showing 1 - 20 of 39

Citation - WoS: 31
Citation - Scopus: 40
A 3D virtual environment for training soccer referees
(Elsevier Science Bv, 2019) Güleç, Ulaş; Gulec, Ulas; Yilmaz, Murat; Yılmaz, Murat; Isler, Veysi; O'Connor, Rory V.; Clarke, Paul M.; 47439; Bilgisayar Mühendisliği; Yazılım Mühendisliği
Emerging digital technologies are being used in many ways by and in particular virtual environments provide new opportunities to gain experience on real-world phenomena without having to live the actual real-world experiences. In this study, a quantitative research approach supported by expert validation interviews was conducted to determine the availability of virtual environments in the training of soccer referees. The aim is to design a virtual environment for training purposes, representing a real-life soccer stadium to allow the referees to manage matches in an atmosphere similar to the real stadium atmosphere. At this point, the referees have a chance to reduce the number of errors that they make in real life by experiencing difficult decisions that they encounter during the actual match via using the virtual stadium. In addition, the decisions and reactions of the referees during the virtual match were observed with the number of different fans in the virtual stadium to understand whether the virtual stadium created a real stadium atmosphere for the referees. For this evaluation, Presence Questionnaire (PQ) and Immersive Tendencies Questionnaire (ITQ) were applied to the referees to measure their involvement levels. In addition, a semi-structure interview technique was utilized in order to understand participants' opinions about the system. These interviews show that the referees have a positive attitude towards the system since they can experience the events occurred in the match as a first person instead of watching them from camera as a third person. The findings of current study suggest that virtual environments can be used as a training tool to increase the experience levels of the soccer referees since they have an opportunity to decide about the positions without facing the real-world risks.
Citation - WoS: 15
Citation - Scopus: 18
A Gamification Approach to Improve the Software Development Process by Exploring the Personality of Software Practitioners
(Springer-verlag Berlin, 2016) Yilmaz, Mert; Yılmaz, Murat; Yilmaz, Murat; O'Connor, Rory V.; Clarke, Paul; Yazılım Mühendisliği
Although there are various kinds of processes designed to manage the complexities of software development, it is still a challenging endeavor. Recently, a significant number of researchers have started to investigate social problems such as incompatibilities with respect to personality that is likely to be encountered in all stages of the software development process. However, there is no computer-based artifact to reveal the personality types of software practitioners. To bridge this gap, a virtual 3D assessment environment is developed with the ability to immerse individuals similar to a realistic model of the assessment. The interactive questionnaire is based on previous interactive personality assessment framework, which was specifically designed for software engineers. Based on the developed tool, a study was conducted on software practitioners. The data gathered via a survey study from software practitioners is analyzed to observe the difference between the results of paper-based and interactive versions of the same assessment. The analysis of this research states that there is a significant difference between the results of participant's survey scores. Overall, these results indicate that proposed tool is relevant to help software professionals to improve the software development process when personality types are in consideration.
Citation - WoS: 7
Citation - Scopus: 10
A literature survey: Is it necessary to develop a new software development methodology for virtual reality projects?
(Graz Univ Technolgoy, inst information Systems Computer Media-iicm, 2017) Güleç, Ulaş; Gulec, Ulas; Yilmaz, Murat; Yılmaz, Murat; Isler, Veysi; 47439; Bilgisayar Mühendisliği; Yazılım Mühendisliği
Software development is a complex human endeavour with high failure rates. Although a variety of software development methodologies have been proposed to improve the software development process, there is no universal model for all software development organizations. Virtual reality (VR) is an emerging trend especially for the gaming industry, which should prepare itself for VR development. The goal of this study is to explore potential software development activities and determine whether designing a new software development methodology for VR projects is an important topic for software development organizations working on VR software development. For this purpose, a literature survey has been completed and 71 academic studies have been examined in detail. This study shows that no work is being conducted in the field of developing a new methodology for VR projects. However, the study does show that there are similar endeavours in the field of human computer interaction (HCI), such as game development methodology.
Citation - WoS: 9
Citation - Scopus: 15
A serious game for improving the decision making skills and knowledge levels of Turkish football referees according to the laws of the game
(Springer international Publishing Ag, 2016) Güleç, Ulaş; Gulec, Ulas; Yilmaz, Murat; Yılmaz, Murat; 47439; Bilgisayar Mühendisliği; Yazılım Mühendisliği
Digital game-based learning environments provide emerging opportunities to overcome learning barriers by combining newly developed technologies and traditional game design. This study proposes a quantitative research approach supported by expert validation interviews to designing a game-based learning framework. The goal is to improve the learning experience and decision-making skills of soccer referees in Turkey. A serious game was developed and tested on a group of referees (N = 54). The assessment results of these referees were compared with two sample t-test and the Wilcoxon signed-ranked test for both the experimental group and the control group. The findings of the current study confirmed that a game-based learning environment has greater merit over the paper-based alternatives.
Citation - WoS: 12
Citation - Scopus: 17
A Systematic Investigation into the Use of Game Elements in the Context of Software Business Landscapes: A Systematic Literature Review
(Springer-verlag Berlin, 2017) Olgun, Serhan; Yılmaz, Murat; Yilmaz, Murat; Clarke, Paul M.; O'Connor, Rory V.; Yazılım Mühendisliği
The software development process is a set of socio-technical activities to produce software artifacts in which humans play a crucial role. Since it is a people centric activity, factors such as user motivation, engagement, communication and collaboration might constrain these activities. Therefore, software business organizations stand to benefit from adopting different tools and methods in order to overcome these obstacles and to improve their software business processes. Research has been made to increase software quality and enhance the software development process. Alongside these studies, innovative techniques and concepts are beneficial. As a solution, the notion of gamification (i.e. employing game elements in non-gaming contexts) has been introduced to enhance the software development process and overcome the challenges mostly related to human factors. However, the applicability of game elements in the context of software business landscapes is still a controversial issue and not totally proven as of yet. Numerous studies have been conducted to examine the benefits of gamification and how game elements affect the software development process. Thus, in this paper, a systematic literature review was conducted in order to investigate the application of game elements both in research and industrial levels of software development and as well as in software business landscapes.
Citation - WoS: 2
Citation - Scopus: 0
Adopting Augmented Reality for the Purpose of Software Development Process Training and Improvement: An Exploration
(Springer international Publishing Ag, 2018) Ohri, Ipek; Yılmaz, Murat; Oge, Irem; Orkun, Bora; Yilmaz, Murat; Tuzun, Eray; Clarke, Paul; O'Connor, Rory V.; Yazılım Mühendisliği
Augmented reality (AR) is a technological field of study that bridges the physical and digital world together with a view to improving user experience. AR holds great potential to change the delivery of software services or software process improvement by utilizing a specific set of components. The purpose of this exploratory study is to propose an integration framework to support AR for improving the onboarding process, notably in introducing new hires to the development process while performing their daily tasks. In addition, it also aims to enhance the software development workflow process using AR. Similar to a GPS device that can guide you from point A to point B, our goal is to create software artifacts like navigation components where software teams may benefit from digitally enhanced working conditions provided using AR. After conducting a review in the literature, we confirmed that there is lack of studies about the combination of augmented reality with software engineering disciplines for onboarding. In this paper, we formalized our approach based on the benefits of AR. Ultimately; we propose an AR-based preliminary model for improving the software development process.
Citation - WoS: 10
Citation - Scopus: 12
Adopting Virtual Reality as a Medium for Software Development Process Education
(Assoc Computing Machinery, 2018) Güleç, Ulaş; Gulec, Ulas; Yilmaz, Murat; Yılmaz, Murat; Isler, Veysi; O'Connor, Rory, V; Clarke, Paul; 47439; Bilgisayar Mühendisliği; Yazılım Mühendisliği
Software development is a complex process of collaborative endeavour which requires hands-on experience starting from requirement analysis through to software testing and ultimately demands continuous maintenance so as to mitigate risks and uncertainty. Therefore, training experienced software practitioners is a challenging task. To address this gap, we propose an interactive virtual reality training environment for software practitioners to gain virtual experience based on the tasks of software development. The goal is to transport participants to a virtual software development organization where they experience simulated development process problems and conflicting situations, where they will interact virtually with distinctive personalities, roles and characters borrowed from real software development organizations. This PhD in progress paper investigates the literature and proposes a novel approach where participants can acquire important new process knowledge. Our preliminary observations suggest that a complementary VR-based training tool is likely to improve the experience of novice software developers and ultimately it has a great potential for training activities in software development organizations.
Citation - WoS: 69
Citation - Scopus: 98
An examination of personality traits and how they impact on software development teams
(Elsevier, 2017) Yilmaz, Murat; Yılmaz, Murat; O'Connor, Rory V.; Colomo-Palacios, Ricardo; Clarke, Paul; 55248; Yazılım Mühendisliği
Context Research has shown that a significant number of software projects fail due to social issues such as team or personality conflicts. However, only a limited number of empirical studies have been undertaken to understand the impact of individuals' personalities on software team configurations. These studies suffer from an important limitation as they lack a systematic and rigorous method to relate personality traits of software practitioners and software team structures. Objective: Based on an interactive personality profiling approach, the goal of this study is to reveal the personality traits of software practitioners with an aim to explore effective software team structures. Method: To explore the importance of individuals' personalities on software teams, we employed a two-step empirical approach. Firstly, to assess the personality traits of software practitioners, we developed a context-specific survey instrument, which was conducted on 216 participants from a middle-sized soft ware company. Secondly, we propose a novel team personality illustration method to visualize team structures. Results: Study results indicated that effective team structures support teams with higher emotional stability, agreeableness, extroversion, and conscientiousness personality traits. Conclusion: Furthermore, empirical results of the current study show that extroversion trait was more predominant than previously suggested in the literature, which was especially more observable among agile software development teams. (C) 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
Citation - WoS: 24
Citation - Scopus: 34
An Investigation of Software Development Process Terminology
(Springer-verlag Berlin, 2016) Clarke, Paul; Mesquida, Antoni-Lluis; Ekert, Damjan; Ekstrom, J. J.; Gornostaja, Tatjana; Jovanovic, Milos; Yilmaz, Murat
The practice of software development has evolved considerably in recent decades, with new programming technologies, the affordability of hardware, pervasive internet access and mobile computing all contributing to the emergence of new software development processes. The newer process initiatives, which include those which are sometimes referred to as agile or lean methods, have brought with them new terms, which sometimes reflect the introduction of novel concepts. Other times, new terms correspond to long established concepts that have been repackaged. The net position is that we have a proliferation of language and term usage in the software development process domain, a problem which has implications for assessors and assessment frameworks, and for the broader community. In this paper, we explore this problem, finding that it is worthy of further research. Plus, we identify a technique suited to addressing this concern: the establishment of a canonical software process ontological model.
Citation - WoS: 8
Citation - Scopus: 15
Applying Blockchain to Improve the Integrity of the Software Development Process
(Springer international Publishing Ag, 2019) Yılmaz, Murat; Yilmaz, Murat; Tasel, Serdar; Güleç, Ulaş; Tuzun, Eray; Gulec, Ulas; O'Connor, Rory V.; Clarke, Paul M.; 55346; Yazılım Mühendisliği; Bilgisayar Mühendisliği
Software development is a complex endeavor that encompasses application and implementation layers with functional (refers to what is done) and non-functional (how is done) aspects. The efforts to scale agile software development practices are not wholly able to address issues such as integrity, which is a crucial non-functional aspect of the software development process. However, if we consider most software failures are Byzantine failures (i.e., where components may fail and there is imperfect information on which a component has failed.) that might impair the operation but do not completely disable the production line. In this paper, we assume software practitioners who cause defects as Byzantine participants and claim that most software failures can be mitigated by viewing software development as the Byzantine Generals Problem. Consequently, we propose a test-driven incentive mechanism based on a blockchain concept to orchestrate the software development process where production is controlled by a similar infrastructure based on the working principles of blockchain. We discuss the model that integrates blockchain with the software development process, and provide some recommendations for future work to address the issues while orchestrating software production.
Citation - WoS: 6
Citation - Scopus: 6
Auction-Based Serious Game for Bug Tracking
(Wiley, 2019) Usfekes, Cagdas; Tuzun, Eray; Yilmaz, Murat; Macit, Yagup; Clarke, Paul
Today, one of the challenges in software engineering is utilising application lifecycle management (ALM) tools effectively in software development. In particular, it is hard for software developers to engage with the work items that are appointed to themselves in these ALM tools. In this study, the authors have focused on bug tracking in ALM where one of the most important metrics is mean time to resolution that is the average time to fix a reported bug. To improve this metric, they developed a serious game application based on an auction-based reward mechanism. The ultimate aim of this approach is to create an incentive structure for software practitioners to find and resolved bugs that are auctioned where participants are encouraged to solve and test more bugs in less time and improve quality of software development in a competitive environment. They conduct hypothesis tests by performing a Monte Carlo simulation. The preliminary results of this research support the idea that using a gamification approach for an issue tracking system enhances the productivity and decreases mean time to resolution.
Citation - WoS: 10
Citation - Scopus: 13
Cengo: A Web-Based Serious Game To Increase the Programming Knowledge Levels of Computer Engineering Students
(Springer international Publishing Ag, 2019) Güleç, Ulaş; Gulec, Ulas; Yilmaz, Murat; Yılmaz, Murat; Yalcin, Alihan Dogus; O'Connor, Rory V.; Clarke, Paul M.; Bilgisayar Mühendisliği; Yazılım Mühendisliği
In recent years there has been an increased use of serious games to help increase the level of knowledge and experience of individuals working in different domains. In particular serious games for educational purposes have been used in many domains including software engineering and computer science [1]. Hence, this study proposes a quantitative research approach to increase the programming knowledge levels of the first-year undergraduate students at computer engineering departments. For this aim, a responsive web platform was developed to teach the syntax and logic of the C programming language by using game elements. This environment provided students with an ability to independently investigate the C programming language continuously since the platform is always accessible. To better understand the effectiveness of the designed environment, 10 first-year computer engineering students were selected as a pilot experimental group. According to the results obtained from the user tests, this game can be used as an educational tool, which supports the traditional training methods, to increase the knowledge levels of students about the syntax and logic of the C programming language.
Citation - WoS: 0
Citation - Scopus: 1
Digital Storytelling on a Virtual Heritage Museum with Believable Agents
(Ieee, 2021) Güleç, Ulaş; Gulec, Ulas; Yilmaz, Murat; Yılmaz, Murat; Kalan, Kaan; Dikbayir, Hasan Saygin; Merdivanli, Ogulcan; Degirmenci, Utku Mert; Clarke, Paul M.; Bilgisayar Mühendisliği; Yazılım Mühendisliği
The preservation of cultural heritage plays a very important role in terms of the sustainability of societies since culture is one of the most important phenomena that hold individuals together. However, although the protection of cultural heritage is a very important issue for societies, there are serious problems in the accuracy of information or access to information due to the verbal or written communication of the subjects that need to be conveyed. In particular, there is a serious decrease in the sense of belonging in individuals due to the inability to transfer cultural heritage to the younger generations correctly. At this point, the aim of the study is to teach individuals the Turkish horror culture by experiencing them in a realistic environment with various different stories in a virtual reality-based gamified system instead of teaching them in writing or verbally. For this purpose, a 3D virtual museum was developed within the scope of the study, inspired by real characters and areas, and it was aimed for individuals to learn Turkish horror culture elements through tasks in different scenarios. The developed system was tested by 5 experts in the field as a preliminary study and the realism level of the created system was measured with the comments of the experts. According to the findings, it has been determined that the level of realism offered by the designed virtual environment is sufficient to explain the Turkish horror culture to individuals.
Citation - WoS: 21
Citation - Scopus: 27
Effective Social Productivity Measurements during Software Development: An Empirical Study
(World Scientific Publ Co Pte Ltd, 2016) Yilmaz, Murat; Yılmaz, Murat; O'Connor, Rory V.; Clarke, Paul; Yazılım Mühendisliği
Much of contemporary scientific discussion regarding factors that influence software development productivity is undertaken in various domains where there is an insuflcient empirical basis for exploring socio-technical factors of productivity that are specific to a software development organization. The purpose of the study is to characterize the multidimensional nature of software development productivity and its social aspects as a set of latent constructs (i.e. variables that are not directly observed) for a medium-sized software company. To this end, we designed an exploratory in-depthfield study based on the hypothesized productivity constructs, which were modeled by a set of factors identified from literature reviews, and later refined by industrial focus groups. In order to demonstrate the applicability of our approach, we conducted confirmatory factor analysis with the data attained from a questionnaire with 216 participants. To investigate factors of influence further, we analyzed the impact of selected team-based variables over the latent constructs of productivity. Taken together, our findings confirm that such an approach can be used to explore the quantifiable influence of socio-technical factors that would affect productivity of a particular software development organization. Ultimately, the resulting model provides guidance to explore the comparative importance of a set of firm-specific factors that may help to improve the productivity of the organization.
Citation - WoS: 0
Citation - Scopus: 0
Engagement and Brand Recall in Software Developers: an Eye-Tracking Study on Advergames
(Mdpi, 2024) Akcan, Duygu; Yilmaz, Murat; Gulec, Ulas; Ilgin, Hueseyin Emre
Advergames represent a novel product placement strategy that surpasses traditional advertising methods by fostering interaction between brands and their target audiences. This study investigates the unique engagement opportunities provided by video games, focusing mainly on the 'flow experience', an intensified state of immersion frequently encountered by players of computer games. Such immersive experiences have the potential to significantly influence a player's perception, offering a new avenue for advertisements to impact and engage audiences effectively. The primary objective of this research was to examine the influence of advergames on players who are deeply immersed in the gaming experience, with a specific focus on the subsequent effects on brand recognition over time. The study involved 44 software developers, who were evenly divided into two groups for the experiment. Both groups were exposed to an identical gaming environment with the task of locating a designated product within the game. However, one group interacted with an enhanced version of the game, which included additional stimuli-such as dynamic music, an engaging narrative, time constraints, a competitive leaderboard, and immersive voice acting-to intensify the gaming experience. The experiment strategically placed various products within the game, and their detectability was assessed using eye-tracking technology. Following gameplay, participants completed questionnaires that measured their experience with flow state and brand recall. The data were analyzed using the Mann-Whitney U test and correlation analysis to facilitate comparisons. The findings indicated that the product associated with the primary task achieved the highest recall rate between both groups. Furthermore, eye-tracking technology identified the areas in the game that attracted the most attention, revealing a preference for mid- and high-level placements over lower-level ones.
Citation - WoS: 4
Citation - Scopus: 5
Examining reward mechanisms for effective usage of application lifecycle management tools
(Springer-verlag Berlin, 2017) Usfekes, Cagdas; Yılmaz, Murat; Yilmaz, Murat; Tuzun, Eray; Clarke, Paul M.; O'Connor, Rory V.; Yazılım Mühendisliği
Application lifecycle management (ALM) highlights the rules of the road for the entire software ecosystems' lifecycle. Successful ALM enables clarity around the entire delivery effort, from defining requirements to deploying the software product. One of the challenges in software engineering today is to orchestrate ALM tools to a set of software projects effectively. In particular, it is challenging for software practitioners to continuously fully engage with the tasks that are assigned to them. The goal of this study is to address such situations using a game theoretic approach by utilizing a reward mechanism, which we intent to test in a medium-sized software development organization. Based on a set of game elements, this study proposes an auction mechanism to address human resource allocation and task optimization issues, and consequently tackle the potential problem of software practitioners' engagement.
Citation - WoS: 8
Citation - Scopus: 11
Exploring Software Process Variation Arising from Differences in Situational Context
(Springer-verlag Berlin, 2017) Clarke, Paul M.; O'Connor, Rory V.; Solan, David; Elger, Peter; Yilmaz, Murat; Ennis, Adam; Treanor, Ryan
The software development process is continuously changing, there is huge pressure to condense release cycles into shorter and shorter timeframes, tools are changing dramatically and companies must continually examine the efficacy of their development process. Attempting to hit a moving target is difficult and it is a decision which can have a major effect in terms of both the end-product and the business. In this paper, we discuss the role of situational context in deciding upon the software development process through the analysis of two case studies. The case studies take a detailed look at the organisational profile and context of each company in turn before we compare and contrast each situational context for factors that may influence the development process. We then compare the processes each company has chosen before our discussion of the role context plays in choosing a 'correct' software development process. While both companies have enjoyed sustained business growth and while both are agile in mindset, we find that they are in fact quite distinct in their processes, this distinction being driven by their different situational contexts.
Citation - WoS: 5
Citation - Scopus: 6
Exploring the Belief Systems of Software Development Professionals
(Taylor & Francis inc, 2015) O'Connor, Rory V.; Yilmaz, Murat
It is commonly accepted that an individual's beliefs and actions are based on his or her assessment and perceptions of the world. In order to determine what practices an individual is likely to follow at any given time, it is necessary to understand the individual's behavioral intention in a given circumstance. From an Information Technology perspective, a software development professional's belief systems are potentially the basis for the adoption and implementation of new and innovative work practices and processes. In this article, we explore the belief systems of software development professionals in order to understand the beliefs underlying intention and practice, and we seek answers about how they adopt or reject new and innovative software development processes and practices. The results point out a strong influence of past experiences, personality types, and repeated behavior on current software development processes and practices in industrial settings.
Citation - WoS: 43
Exploring the relationship between software process adaptive capability and organizational performance
(Ieee Computer Soc, 2015) Clarke, Paul; Yılmaz, Murat; O'Connor, Rory V.; Leavy, Brian; Yilmaz, Murat; Yazılım Mühendisliği
Software development is a complex socio-technical activity, with the result that software development organisations need to establish and maintain robust software development processes. While much debate exists regarding the effectiveness of various software development approaches, no single approach is perfectly suited to all settings and no setting is unchanging. The capability to adapt the software process is therefore essential to sustaining an optimal software process. We designed an exploratory study to concurrently examine software process adaptive capability and organisational performance in 15 software development organisations, finding that companies with greater software process adaptive capability are shown to also experience greater business success. While our exploratory study of the complex relationship between these phenomena is limited in some respects, the findings indicate that software process adaptive capability may be worthy of further integration into software process engineering techniques. Software process adaptive capability may be an important organisational strength when deriving competitive advantage, and those responsible for the creation and evolution of software process models and methodologies may want to focus some of their future efforts in this area.
Citation - WoS: 43
Citation - Scopus: 53
Gamification as a disruptive factor in software processimprovement initiatives
(Graz Univ Technolgoy, inst information Systems Computer Media-iicm, 2014) Herranz, Eduardo; Yılmaz, Murat; Colomo-Palacios, Ricardo; de Amescua Seco, Antonio; Yilmaz, Murat; Yazılım Mühendisliği
For any Software Process Improvement (SPI) initiative to succeed human factors, in particular, motivation and commitment of the people involved should be kept in mind. In fact, Organizational Change Management (OCM) has been identified as an essential knowledge area for any SPI initiative. However, enough attention is still not given to the human factors and therefore, the high degree of failures in the SPI initiatives is directly linked to a lack of commitment and motivation. Gamification discipline allows us to define mechanisms that drive people's motivation and commitment towards the development of tasks in order to encourage and accelerate the acceptance of an SPI initiative. In this paper, a gamification framework oriented to both organization needs and software practitioners groups involved in an SPI initiative is defined. This framework tries to take advantage of the transverse nature of gamification in order to apply its Critical Success Factors (CSF) to the organizational change management of an SPI. Gamification framework guidelines have been validated by some qualitative methods. Results show some limitations that threaten the reliability of this validation. These require further empirical validation of a software organization.