My main research field is Empirical Software Engineering. I use methodologies such as machine learning, statistics and qualitative techniques (e.g., surveys and interviews) to better understand the software development phenomena.
The goal of my research is to augment the body of knowledge of the Software Engineering field and ultimately optimise the practice of software development. For example, what practices suit a development team better? A shorter releasing cycle with several sprints or a longer release cycle with minor releases along the way? Despite being important (and sometimes risky) decisions, software project managers have limited access to a body of scientific knowledge that can help them take important decisions.
My research aims to build a solid empirical knowledge of Software Engineering to help practicians take informed decisions. With an increasing corpus of empirical knowledge (i.e., data) about software engineering, the development of tools to aid developers building software naturally comes as another focus of my research. For example, I use machine learning algorithms to learn from historical data and help developers to identify bottlenecks within the development process.
In addition to research, I like bodybuilding, games, and, especially meeting new people. Feel free to send me an e-mail!
Saraiva, D., Alencar da Costa, D., Kulesza, U., Sizílio, G., Neto, J. G., Coelho, R., & Nagappan, M. (2023). Unveiling the relationship between continuous integration and code coverage.
Proceedings of the IEEE/ACM 20th International Conference on Mining Software Repositories (MSR). (pp. 247-259). IEEE.
doi: 10.1109/MSR59073.2023.00043
Conference Contribution - Published proceedings: Full paper
Bernardo, J. H., Alencar da Costa, D., Kulesza, U., & Treude, C. (2023). The impact of a continuous integration service on the delivery time of merged pull requests.
Empirical Software Engineering,
28, 97.
doi: 10.1007/s10664-023-10327-6
Journal - Research Article
Alencar da Costa, D., Grattan, N., Stanger, N., & Licorish, S. A. (2023). Studying the characteristics of SQL-related development tasks: An empirical study.
Empirical Software Engineering,
28, 69.
doi: 10.1007/s10664-023-10295-x
Journal - Research Article
Falessi, D., Laureani, S. M., Çarka, J., Esposito, M., & Alencar da Costa, D. (2023). Enhancing the defectiveness prediction of methods and classes via JIT.
Empirical Software Engineering,
28, 37.
doi: 10.1007/s10664-022-10261-z
Journal - Research Article
Santos, J., Alencar da Costa, D., & Kulesza, U. (2022). Investigating the impact of continuous integration practices on the productivity and quality of open-source projects. In F. Madeiral, C. Lassenius, T. Conte & T. Männistö (Eds.),
Proceedings of the 16th ACM/IEEE International Symposium on Empirical Software Engineering and Measurement (ESEM). (pp. 137-147). New York, NY: ACM.
doi: 10.1145/3544902.3546244
Conference Contribution - Published proceedings: Full paper
Alencar da Costa, D., Grattan, N., Stanger, N., & Licorish, S. A. (2023). Studying the characteristics of SQL-related development tasks: An empirical study.
Empirical Software Engineering,
28, 69.
doi: 10.1007/s10664-023-10295-x
Journal - Research Article
Bernardo, J. H., Alencar da Costa, D., Kulesza, U., & Treude, C. (2023). The impact of a continuous integration service on the delivery time of merged pull requests.
Empirical Software Engineering,
28, 97.
doi: 10.1007/s10664-023-10327-6
Journal - Research Article
Falessi, D., Laureani, S. M., Çarka, J., Esposito, M., & Alencar da Costa, D. (2023). Enhancing the defectiveness prediction of methods and classes via JIT.
Empirical Software Engineering,
28, 37.
doi: 10.1007/s10664-022-10261-z
Journal - Research Article
Ghaleb, T. A., Alencar da Costa, D., & Zou, Y. (2022). On the popularity of internet of things projects in online communities An empirical study of Hackster.io.
Information Systems Frontiers,
24, 1601-1634.
doi: 10.1007/s10796-021-10157-1
Journal - Research Article
Wimalasooriya, C., Licorish, S. A., Alencar da Costa, D., & MacDonell, S. G. (2022). A systematic mapping study addressing the reliability of mobile applications: The need to move beyond testing reliability.
Journal of Systems & Software,
186, 111166.
doi: 10.1016/j.jss.2021.111166
Journal - Research Article
Zhao, Y., Alencar da Costa, D., & Zou, Y. (2022). Composing web services using a multi-agent framework.
IEEE Transactions on Services Computing,
15(4), 2100-2113.
doi: 10.1109/TSC.2020.3032976
Journal - Research Article
Fan, Y., Xia, X., Alencar da Costa, D., Lo, D., Hassan, A. E., & Li, S. (2021). The impact of changes mislabeled by SZZ on just-in-time defect prediction.
IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering,
47(8), 1559-1586.
doi: 10.1109/TSE.2019.2929761
Journal - Research Article
Ghaleb, T. A., Alencar da Costa, D., Zou, Y., & Hassan, A. E. (2021). Studying the impact of noises in build breakage data.
IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering,
47(9), 1998-2011.
doi: 10.1109/TSE.2019.2941880
Journal - Research Article
Vandehei, B., Alencar da Costa, D., & Falessi, D. (2021). Leveraging the defects life cycle to label affected versions and defective classes.
ACM Transactions on Software Engineering & Methodology,
30(2), 24.
doi: 10.1145/3433928
Journal - Research Article
Ghaleb, T. A., Alencar da Costa, D., & Zou, Y. (2019). An empirical study of the long duration of continuous integration builds.
Empirical Software Engineering,
24, 2102-2139.
doi: 10.1007/s10664-019-09695-9
Journal - Research Article
Huang, Y., Alencar da Costa, D., Zhang, F., & Zou, Y. (2019). An empirical study on the issue reports with questions raised during the issue resolving process.
Empirical Software Engineering,
24, 718-750.
doi: 10.1007/s10664-018-9636-3
Journal - Research Article
Zhao, G., Alencar da Costa, D., & Zou, Y. (2019). Improving the pull requests review process using learning-to-rank algorithms.
Empirical Software Engineering,
24, 2140-2170.
doi: 10.1007/s10664-019-09696-8
Journal - Research Article
Alencar da Costa, D., McIntosh, S., Kulesza, U., Hassan, A. E., & Abebe, S. L. (2018). An empirical study of the integration time of fixed issues.
Empirical Software Engineering,
23(1), 334-383.
doi: 10.1007/s10664-017-9520-6
Journal - Research Article
Alencar da Costa, D., McIntosh, S., Treude, C., Kulesza, U., & Hassan, A. E. (2018). The impact of rapid release cycles on the integration delay of fixed issues.
Empirical Software Engineering,
23(2), 835-904.
doi: 10.1007/s10664-017-9548-7
Journal - Research Article
Alencar da Costa, D., McIntosh, S., Shang, W., Kulesza, U., Coelho, R., & Hassan, A. E. (2017). A framework for evaluating the results of the SZZ approach for identifying bug-introducing changes.
IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering,
43(7), 641-657.
doi: 10.1109/TSE.2016.2616306
Journal - Research Article
Freire, M., Kulesza, U., Aranha, E., Nery, G., Alencar da Costa, D., Jedlitschka, A., … Gómez, M. N. (2014). Assessing and evolving a domain specific language for formalizing software engineering experiments: An empirical study.
International Journal of Software Engineering & Knowledge Engineering,
24(10), 1509-1531.
doi: 10.1142/S0218194014400178
Journal - Research Article
Saraiva, D., Alencar da Costa, D., Kulesza, U., Sizílio, G., Neto, J. G., Coelho, R., & Nagappan, M. (2023). Unveiling the relationship between continuous integration and code coverage.
Proceedings of the IEEE/ACM 20th International Conference on Mining Software Repositories (MSR). (pp. 247-259). IEEE.
doi: 10.1109/MSR59073.2023.00043
Conference Contribution - Published proceedings: Full paper
Santos, J., Alencar da Costa, D., & Kulesza, U. (2022). Investigating the impact of continuous integration practices on the productivity and quality of open-source projects. In F. Madeiral, C. Lassenius, T. Conte & T. Männistö (Eds.),
Proceedings of the 16th ACM/IEEE International Symposium on Empirical Software Engineering and Measurement (ESEM). (pp. 137-147). New York, NY: ACM.
doi: 10.1145/3544902.3546244
Conference Contribution - Published proceedings: Full paper
Amaral, L., Oliveira, M. C., Luz, W., Fortes, J., Bonifácio, R., Alencar da Costa, D., … Lo, D. (2020). How (not) to find bugs: The interplay between merge conflicts, co-changes, and bugs.
Proceedings of the IEEE International Conference on Software Maintenance and Evolution (ICSME). (pp. 441-452). IEEE.
doi: 10.1109/icsme46990.2020.00049
Conference Contribution - Published proceedings: Full paper
Felidré, W., Furtado, L., Alencar da Costa, D., Cartaxo, B., & Pinto, G. (2019). Continuous integration theater.
Proceedings of the ACM/IEEE International Symposium on Empirical Software Engineering and Measurement. IEEE.
doi: 10.1109/ESEM.2019.8870152
Conference Contribution - Published proceedings: Full paper
Neto, E. C., Alencar da Costa, D., & Kulesza, U. (2019). Revisiting and improving SZZ implementations.
Proceedings of the ACM/IEEE International Symposium on Empirical Software Engineering and Measurement (ESEM). IEEE.
doi: 10.1109/ESEM.2019.8870178
Conference Contribution - Published proceedings: Full paper
Yang, A., Alencar da Costa, D., & Zou, Y. (2019). Predicting Co-Changes between Functionality Specifications and Source Code in Behavior Driven Development.
Proceedings of the 16th Mining Software Repositories (MSR) International Conference. IEEE.
doi: 10.1109/MSR.2019.00080
Conference Contribution - Published proceedings: Full paper
Bernardo, J. H., Alencar da Costa, D., & Kulesza, U. (2018). Studying the impact of adopting continuous integration on the delivery time of pull requests.
Proceedings of the 15th International Conference on Mining Software Repositories. (pp. 131-141). New York, NY: ACM.
doi: 10.1145/3196398.3196421
Conference Contribution - Published proceedings: Full paper
Neto, E. C., Alencar da Costa, D., & Kulesza, U. (2018). The impact of refactoring changes on the SZZ algorithm: An empirical study.
Proceedings of the IEEE 25th International Conference on Software Analysis, Evolution and Reengineering (SANER). (pp. 380-390). IEEE.
doi: 10.1109/SANER.2018.8330225
Conference Contribution - Published proceedings: Full paper