Tracing Integration Errors to Upstream Development Activities : An exploratory study

Abstract: The Eiffel Protocol provides traceability downstream and upstream of all activities that transpire inside the CI/CD pipeline. The traceability achieved by the Eiffel Protocol comes with great benefits even though it does not cover all development activities as it pertains only to the CI/CD pipeline. Our research aims to explore the idea of extending the Eiffel Protocol to cover all activities and discuss what benefits could be seen, especially in the scope of reducing the number of integration failures. A literature study was first carried out to find the root causes of these failures. After the literature study, we conducted a focus group session to gather data about the potential benefits and problems of an extension, what analyses could be drawn, and how it can affect integration errors. Our results show that an extension is beneficial as analyses that can be made with the generated data can tackle some of the biggest issues found in software development teams, especially in larger organizations. The complexity, cost involved and the time needed to see a return on investment does however weigh it down. Thus, while it is beneficial it is not enough for organizations to consider it as a priority to integrate with their environments when thinking of the costs involved to do so. Further implementation solutions need to be researched before it shows its worth.