TY - GEN

T1 - On the Potentials of Realtime Sentiment Analysis on Text-Based Communication in Software Projects

AU - Schroth, Lennart

AU - Obaidi, Martin

AU - Specht, Alexander

AU - Klünder, Jil

N1 - Funding Information: Acknowledgment. This research was funded by the Leibniz University Hannover as a Leibniz Young Investigator Grant (Project ComContA, Project Number 85430128, 2020–2022).

PY - 2022/8/16

Y1 - 2022/8/16

N2 - Sentiment analysis is an established possibility to gain an overview of the team mood in software projects. A software analyzes text-based communication with regards to the used wording, i.e., whether a statement is likely to be perceived positive, negative, or neutral by the receiver of said message. However, despite several years of research on sentiment analysis in software engineering, the tools still have several weaknesses including misclassifications, the impossibility to detect negotiations, irony, or sarcasm. Another huge issue is the retrospective analysis of the communication: The team receives the results of the analysis at best at the end of the day, but not in realtime. This way, it is impossible to react and to improve the communication by adjusting a message before sending it. To reduce this issue, in this paper, we present a concept for realtime sentiment analysis in software projects and evaluate it in a user study with twelve practitioners. We were in particular interested in how realtime sentiment analysis can be integrated in the developers’ daily lives and whether it appears to be helpful. Despite the still missing long-term case study in practice, the results of our study point to the usefulness of such kind of analysis.

AB - Sentiment analysis is an established possibility to gain an overview of the team mood in software projects. A software analyzes text-based communication with regards to the used wording, i.e., whether a statement is likely to be perceived positive, negative, or neutral by the receiver of said message. However, despite several years of research on sentiment analysis in software engineering, the tools still have several weaknesses including misclassifications, the impossibility to detect negotiations, irony, or sarcasm. Another huge issue is the retrospective analysis of the communication: The team receives the results of the analysis at best at the end of the day, but not in realtime. This way, it is impossible to react and to improve the communication by adjusting a message before sending it. To reduce this issue, in this paper, we present a concept for realtime sentiment analysis in software projects and evaluate it in a user study with twelve practitioners. We were in particular interested in how realtime sentiment analysis can be integrated in the developers’ daily lives and whether it appears to be helpful. Despite the still missing long-term case study in practice, the results of our study point to the usefulness of such kind of analysis.

KW - Realtime feedback

KW - Sentiment analysis

KW - Social aspects

KW - Software project

KW - Team mood

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85133512051&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.1007/978-3-031-14785-2_6

DO - 10.1007/978-3-031-14785-2_6

M3 - Conference contribution

SN - 978-3-031-14784-5

T3 - Lecture Notes in Computer Science (including subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics)

SP - 90

EP - 109

BT - Human-Centered Software Engineering

A2 - Bernhaupt, Regina

A2 - Ardito, Carmelo

A2 - Sauer, Stefan

PB - Springer International Publishing AG

CY - Cham

ER -