Jacob Krüger

I am a software engineering researcher with a focus on human aspects in software evolution, integrating economics, psychology, and other domains into software engineering. In 2021, I obtained my PhD from the Otto-von-Guericke University Magdeburg under the supervision of Prof. Thomas Leich and Prof. Gunter Saake. My dissertation (external reviewers: Prof. Jan Bosch and Prof. Rick Rabiser) focused on providing an empirics-based understanding of the re-engineering of variant-rich systems to support developers in the decision whether to rely on unsystematic or systematic software reuse. For this purpose, I studied modern practices of engineering variant-rich systems to derive a novel process model as well as guidelines for scoping and planning the (re-)engineering of variant-rich systems. Digging into the details of such re-engineering endeavors, I elicited insights into the economics of software reuse, the impact of missing knowledge, and how to improve the tracing of that knowledge. Building on my dissertation, I am advancing with a focus on developers’ cognition and the challenges therein that are related to software evolution.

If you are interested in collaborating with me (e.g., theses, research/industrial projects), just send me an email! Particularly for students, I can offer theses topics in the following areas and their intersections (these are only examples, feel free to suggest your own!):

• Re-engineering variant-rich systems
  • Economic impact of re-engineering
  • Challenges of merging variants
• Quality in software evolution
  • Degeneration of software architecture
  • Code and bug propagation
• Cognition in software engineering
  • Cognitive biases
  • Program comprehension
• Fork-based software development
  • Developer support for merging forks
  • Knowledge recovery
• Guidelines for conducting research
  • Management of research artifacts
  • Empirical studies

Checkout my personal website or ask me if you want to learn a bit more about my projects or want to access preprints of my publications.