April took me to Keele University, just outside Manchester, for the Evaluation and Assessment in Software Engineering conference (EASE 2010). I had two papers accepted for publication at this conference. I presented one, and one of my colleagues presented the other.

The paper I presented has been important in shaping my PhD thesis. It compared the priorities placed on aspects of software product quality by employees versus subcontracted developers. This study was not originally planned, but as we had the data from the employees and all of the instruments designed for data collection, it was relatively little work and seemed like it could be interesting. The results were more interesting than we anticipated, and now my thesis is focused at examining the differences in priorities that different groups place on aspects of software product quality.

The other paper was on configuration management of requirements and related materials. This isn’t my area of research, but part of a course I took with two fellow PhD students.

Keele University is set in the English countryside. I was told, quite aptly, to imagine to imagine the set of a BBC murder mystery telemovie.

I spent half a day in Manchester before making my way to Keele.