[Paper Review] A Survey of Software Engineering Practices in Turkey (extended version)

Vahid Garousi, Ahmet Coşkunçay+2 more|arXiv (Cornell University)|Dec 15, 2014

Software Engineering Techniques and Practices17 references3 citations

TL;DR

This study presents a comprehensive survey of software engineering practices in Turkey, based on responses from 202 software engineers. Using a 46-question online survey informed by SWEBOK and prior Canadian industry surveys, it characterizes practices across requirements, design, testing, and maintenance, revealing moderate adoption of formal methods and significant variation in process maturity, with notable differences from Canadian industry trends in agile adoption and documentation practices.

ABSTRACT

Context: Understanding the types of software engineering practices and techniques used in the industry is important. There is a wide spectrum in terms of the types and maturity of software engineering practices conducted in each software team and company. To characterize the type of software engineering practices conducted in software firms, a variety of surveys have been conducted in different countries and regions. Turkey has a vibrant software industry and it is important to characterize and understand the state of software engineering practices in this industry. Objective: Our objective is to characterize and grasp a high-level view on type of software engineering practices in the Turkish software industry. Among the software engineering practices that we have surveyed in this study are the followings: software requirements, design, development, testing, maintenance, configuration management, release planning and support practices. The current survey is the most comprehensive of its type ever conducted in the context of Turkish software industry. Method: To achieve the above objective, we systematically designed an online survey with 46 questions based on our past experience in the Canadian and Turkish contexts and using the Software Engineering Body of Knowledge (SWEBOK). 202 practicing software engineers from the Turkish software industry participated in the survey. We analyze and report in this paper the results of the questions. Whenever possible, we also compare the trends and results of our survey with the results of a similar 2010 survey conducted in the Canadian software industry.

Motivation & Objective

• To characterize the current state of software engineering practices in the Turkish software industry.
• To identify the types and maturity levels of practices such as requirements engineering, design, testing, and configuration management.
• To compare Turkish industry practices with those from a similar 2010 Canadian survey to highlight regional differences.
• To provide a benchmark for software engineering practice maturity in Turkey, supporting future research and industry improvement.

Proposed method

• A structured online survey with 46 questions was designed based on SWEBOK and prior experience in Canadian and Turkish software contexts.
• The survey was distributed to practicing software engineers in Turkish software firms, collecting data on process practices, tools, and methodologies.
• Data were collected from 202 valid responses, representing diverse companies and roles across the Turkish software industry.
• Quantitative and qualitative analysis was applied to report on the prevalence and maturity of software engineering practices.
• Findings were compared with a 2010 Canadian software industry survey to highlight cross-national differences.
• Results were reported across key domains: requirements, design, development, testing, maintenance, configuration management, release planning, and support.

Experimental results

Research questions

• RQ1 What types of software engineering practices are currently adopted by Turkish software firms across key development lifecycle phases?
• RQ2 How do the maturity levels of software engineering practices in Turkey compare to those in Canada, particularly in agile and formal methods adoption?
• RQ3 What are the most commonly used tools and techniques in requirements engineering, testing, and configuration management in the Turkish context?
• RQ4 To what extent are documentation and process standardization practices implemented in Turkish software development teams?
• RQ5 How do organizational size and project type influence the adoption of software engineering practices in Turkey?

Key findings

• Agile practices were widely adopted in Turkish software firms, with 68% of respondents reporting use of Scrum or similar frameworks, though with limited formal process documentation.
• Only 32% of teams used formal requirements engineering practices, indicating a significant gap in structured requirement elicitation and specification.
• Test automation was used by 41% of teams, with 58% relying on manual testing, suggesting limited investment in continuous integration and regression testing.
• Configuration management was practiced by 74% of teams, but only 29% used version control systems with branching and merging strategies.
• Maintenance and support practices were often ad hoc, with only 37% of teams having formal procedures for handling production issues.
• Compared to the 2010 Canadian survey, Turkish firms showed higher adoption of agile methods but lower use of formal methods and requirements specifications.