Hasso-Plattner-Institut
Prof. Dr. h.c. mult. Hasso Plattner
 

Christoph Matthies

Research Assistant & PhD Student

Phone:+49 (331) 5509-1329
Email:christoph.matthies(at)hpi.de
Address:August-Bebel-Str. 88, 14482 Potsdam
Room:V-2.02
Links:dblp, Google Scholar, arXiv, ResearchGate, Publons,
ACM Digital Library, SpeakerDeck

 

Research Area: Enterprise Software Engineering

Research

My research focuses on Data-Informed Agile Software Process Improvement
I investigate how project data created by development teams can enable process insights
so that development teams may use their own data to enact process improvements

Research Abstract

Modern software is built by collaborating teams. Team members need to practice and uphold an effective development process that enables project success. In popular Agile process frameworks, such as Scrum, work processes are maintained through iterative process improvement cycles and retrospection meetings. However, the details of how improvement steps can be implemented, tracked and evaluated are not specified. This requires teams to rely on their subjective perceptions and experiences. It is, therefore, challenging to assess the impact of applied improvement actions, such as switching project management software or trying a new development practice.

We tackle these challenges by supplementing existing Agile methods with improvement approaches based on software engineering team data. Our approach includes gathering empirical data on the perceptions of team members, as well as deriving insights from teams’ project data. This data, such as commits or work documentation, are already being produced during regular development work. By aggregating, linking and analyzing the available data, we enable teams to gain actionable insights into their own development processes.

This additional view of the executed process can be used proactively in Agile process improvement approaches. It paves the way for more data-informed Agile development processes based on self-organizing teams.

Teaching Activities

  • Winter Term 2022/23 - Scalable Software Engineering
    • Two parallel hands-on development projects with >80 participants overall
    • Students take the roles of Product Owner, Scrum Master, Project Management and Dev Team
    • We introduced multiple interactive student workshops
    • We featured guest lectures from idealo internet, SAP Signavio, Ambrosys & mobile.de
  • Winter Term 2021/22 - Scalable Software Engineering
    • Two parallel development projects with ~80 participants overall, supported by a group of five tutors
    • We employed both online and in-person course formats
    • We featured guest lectures from mobile.dePlanetScaleSAP & DigitalService4Germany
  • Winter Term 2020/21 - SWT II - Agile Software Development in Large Teams
    • Converted the course to an entirely virtual setup for this year
    • We featured guest lectures from GitHub, eBay Classifieds Group, SAP & Babbel
    • We summarized our tips & best practices for new Scrum Coaches and Tutors
    • We provided an overview of digital Kanban board solutions
    • We prepared for the exam with virtual software development Jeopardy!
  • Winter Term 2019/20 - SWT II - Agile Software Development in Large Teams
  • Winter Term 2018/19 - SWT II - Agile Software Development in Large Teams

Supervised Master Theses

Publications

2023

  • 1.
    Matthies, C., Heinrich, R., Wohlrab, R.: Investigating Software Engineering Artifacts in DevOps Through the Lens of Boundary Objects. Proceedings of the 27th International Conference on Evaluation and Assessment in Software Engineering. ACM (2023).
     

2022

  • 1.
    Paula, D.D., Hahn, D., Matthies, C., Uebernickel, F.: InnoPulse: a Tool to Support Collaborative Reflection in Creativity-Driven Engineering Projects. Proceedings of the Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences. Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (2022).
     
  • 2.
    Matthies, C., Teusner, R., Perscheid, M.: Challenges (and Opportunities!) of a Remote Agile Software Engineering Project Course During COVID-19. Proceedings of the 55th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences. Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (2022).
     

2021

  • 1.
    Dobrigkeit, F., Matthies, C., Pajak, P., Teusner, R.: Cherry Picking - Agile Software Development Teams Applying Design Thinking Tools. Agile Processes in Software Engineering and Extreme Programming textendash Workshops. pp. 201–206. Springer International Publishing (2021).
     
  • Situational Interventions... - Download
    2.
    Teusner, R.: Situational Interventions and Peer Feedback in Massive Open Online Courses, https://doi.org/10.25932/publishup-50758, (2021).
     
  • ESPBench: The Enterprise ... - Download
    3.
    Hesse, G., Matthies, C., Perscheid, M., Uflacker, M., Plattner, H.: ESPBench: The Enterprise Stream Processing Benchmark. Proceedings of the ACM/SPEC International Conference on Performance Engineering. pp. 201–212 (2021).
     
  • How Fast Can We Insert? A... - Download
    4.
    Hesse, G., Matthies, C., Uflacker, M.: How Fast Can We Insert? An Empirical Performance Evaluation of Apache Kafka. IEEE International Conference on Parallel and Distributed Systems (ICPADS). pp. 641–648 (2021).
     
  • Experience vs Data: A Cas... - Download
    5.
    Matthies, C., Dobrigkeit, F.: Experience vs Data: A Case for More Data-Informed Retrospective Activities. Lecture Notes in Business Information Processing. pp. 130–144. Springer International Publishing (2021).
     

2020

  • Mining for Process Improv... - Download
    1.
    Matthies, C., Dobrigkeit, F., Hesse, G.: Mining for Process Improvements: Analyzing Software Repositories in Agile Retrospectives. IEEE/ACM International Conference on Software Engineering Workshops (ICSEW). pp. 189–190. ACM, New York, NY, USA (2020).
     
  • Towards Empirically Valid... - Download
    2.
    Matthies, C., Dobrigkeit, F.: Towards Empirically Validated Remedies for Scrum Retrospective Headaches. Proceedings of the 53rd Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS) (2020).
     
  • 3.
    Matthies, C., Huegle, J., Dürschmid, T., Teusner, R.: Attitudes, Beliefs, and Development Data Concerning Agile Software Development Practices. In: Felderer, M., Hasselbring, W., Rabiser, R., and Jung, R. (eds.) Software Engineering 2020. pp. 73–74. Gesellschaft für Informatik e.V., Bonn (2020).
     
  • More than Code: Contribut... - Download
    4.
    Ramin, F., Matthies, C., Teusner, R.: More than Code: Contributions in Scrum Software Engineering Teams. Proceedings of the IEEE/ACM 42nd International Conference on Software Engineering Workshops. pp. 137–140. ACM, New York, NY, USA (2020).
     
  • 5.
    Matthies, C.: Playing with Your Project Data in Scrum Retrospectives. Proceedings of the ACM/IEEE 42nd International Conference on Software Engineering: Companion Proceedings. pp. 113–115. ACM, New York, NY, USA (2020).
     

2019

  • Attitudes, Beliefs, and D... - Download
    1.
    Matthies, C., Huegle, J., Dürschmid, T., Teusner, R.: Attitudes, Beliefs, and Development Data Concerning Agile Software Development Practices. 2019 IEEE/ACM 41st International Conference on Software Engineering: Software Engineering Education and Training (ICSE-SEET). pp. 158–169. IEEE (2019).
     
  • An Additional Set of (Aut... - Download
    2.
    Matthies, C., Dobrigkeit, F., Hesse, G.: An Additional Set of (Automated) Eyes: Chatbots for Agile Retrospectives. IEEE/ACM International Workshop on Bots in Software Engineering (BotSE). pp. 34–37. IEEE (2019).
     
  • Adding Value by Combining... - Download
    3.
    Hesse, G., Matthies, C., Sinzig, W., Uflacker, M.: Adding Value by Combining Business and Sensor Data: An Industry 4.0 Use Case. In: Li, G., Yang, J., Gama, J., Natwichai, J., and Tong, Y. (eds.) International Conference on Database Systems for Advanced Applications (DASFAA). pp. 528–532. Springer International Publishing (2019).
     
  • Quantitative Impact Evalu... - Download
    4.
    Hesse, G., Matthies, C., Glass, K., Huegle, J., Uflacker, M.: Quantitative Impact Evaluation of an Abstraction Layer for Data Stream Processing Systems. IEEE International Conference on Distributed Computing Systems (ICDCS). pp. 1381–1392 (2019).
     
  • Application of Data Strea... - Download
    5.
    Hesse, G., Sinzig, W., Matthies, C., Uflacker, M.: Application of Data Stream Processing Technologies in Industry 4.0: What is Missing?. International Conference on Data Science, Technology and Applications (DATA). pp. 304–310. SciTePress (2019).
     
  • Towards Using Data to Inf... - Download
    6.
    Matthies, C., Hesse, G.: Towards Using Data to Inform Decisions in Agile Software Development: Views of Available Data. International Conference on Software Technologies (ICSOFT). pp. 552–559. SciTePress (2019).
     
  • Feedback in Scrum: Data-I... - Download
    7.
    Matthies, C.: Feedback in Scrum: Data-Informed Retrospectives. 2019 IEEE/ACM 41st International Conference on Software Engineering: Companion Proceedings (ICSE-Companion). pp. 198–201. IEEE (2019).
     
  • Agile Process Improvement... - Download
    8.
    Matthies, C.: Agile Process Improvement in Retrospectives. 2019 IEEE/ACM 41st International Conference on Software Engineering: Companion Proceedings (ICSE-Companion). pp. 150–152. IEEE (2019).
     
  • Counteracting Agile Retro... - Download
    9.
    Matthies, C., Dobrigkeit, F., Ernst, A.: Counteracting Agile Retrospective Problems with Retrospective Activities. In: Walker, A., O’Connor, R.V., and Messnarz, R. (eds.) Systems, Software and Services Process Improvement. EuroSPI 2019. Communications in Computer and Information Science. pp. 532–545. Springer International Publishing (2019).
     

2018

  • What Stays in Mind? - Ret... - Download
    1.
    Teusner, R., Matthies, C., Staubitz, T.: What Stays in Mind? - Retention Rates in Programming MOOCs. 2018 IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference (FIE) (2018).
     
  • Beyond Surveys: Analyzing... - Download
    2.
    Matthies, C., Teusner, R., Hesse, G.: Beyond Surveys: Analyzing Software Development Artifacts to Assess Teaching Efforts. IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference (FIE). pp. 1–9 (2018).
     
  • Scrum2Kanban: Integrating... - Download
    3.
    Matthies, C.: Scrum2Kanban: Integrating Kanban and Scrum in a University Software Engineering Capstone Course. Proceedings of the 2nd International Workshop on Software Engineering Education for Millennials. pp. 48–55. ACM, New York, NY, USA (2018).
     
  • Senska - Towards an Enter... - Download
    4.
    Hesse, G., Reissaus, B., Matthies, C., Lorenz, M., Kraus, M., Uflacker, M.: Senska - Towards an Enterprise Streaming Benchmark. TPC Technology Conference (TPCTC). pp. 25–40. , Cham (2018).
     

2017

  • Prof. CI: Employing Conti... - Download
    1.
    Matthies, C., Treffer, A., Uflacker, M.: Prof. CI: Employing Continuous Integration Services and GitHub Workflows to Teach Test-Driven Development. 2017 IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference (FIE). pp. 1–8 (2017).
     
  • Should I Bug You? Identif... - Download
    2.
    Teusner, R., Matthies, C., Giese, P.: Should I Bug You? Identifying Domain Experts in Software Projects Using Code Complexity Metrics. 2017 IEEE International Conference on Software Quality, Reliability and Security (QRS). pp. 418–425 (2017).
     
  • A New Application Benchma... - Download
    3.
    Hesse, G., Matthies, C., Reissaus, B., Uflacker, M.: A New Application Benchmark for Data Stream Processing Architectures in an Enterprise Context: Doctoral Symposium. ACM International Conference on Distributed and Event-based Systems (DEBS). pp. 359–362 (2017).
     

2016

  • Agile Metrics for a Unive... - Download
    1.
    Matthies, C., Kowark, T., Uflacker, M., Plattner, H.: Agile Metrics for a University Software Engineering Course. 2016 IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference (FIE). pp. 1–5. IEEE (2016).
     
  • Lightweight Collection an... - Download
    2.
    Kowark, T., Matthies, C., Uflacker, M., Plattner, H.: Lightweight Collection and Storage of Software Repository Data with DataRover. Proceedings of the 31st IEEE/ACM International Conference on Automated Software Engineering. pp. 810–815. ACM, New York, NY, USA (2016).
     
  • How Surveys, Tutors, and ... - Download
    3.
    Matthies, C., Kowark, T., Richly, K., Uflacker, M., Plattner, H.: How Surveys, Tutors, and Software Help to Assess Scrum Adoption in a Classroom Software Engineering Project. Proceedings of the 38th International Conference on Software Engineering Companion. pp. 313–322. ACM, New York, NY, USA (2016).
     
  • ScrumLint: Identifying Vi... - Download
    4.
    Matthies, C., Kowark, T., Richly, K., Uflacker, M., Plattner, H.: ScrumLint: Identifying Violations of Agile Practices Using Development Artifacts. Proceedings of the 9th International Workshop on Cooperative and Human Aspects of Software Engineering. pp. 40–43. ACM, New York, NY, USA (2016).
     
  • Teaching Agile the Agile ... - Download
    5.
    Matthies, C., Kowark, T., Uflacker, M.: Teaching Agile the Agile Way — Employing Self-Organizing Teams in a University Software Engineering Course. 2016 American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE) International Forum (2016).