Collaborative Refactoring: Results of an Empirical Study Using Grounded Theory

Due to the current market dynamics, changes in requirements are often faced by the software industry, impacting directly on the software system to be produced. To deal with this situation, software development organizations need to use techniques that enable fast responses. Agile methods have been considered adequate to handle these situations. Our research focuses on understanding how Brazilian organizations are adopting agile methods. In this paper we present the results of an empirical study of refactoring activities, which in the organizations we studied are conducted in a collaborative way. We call this collaborative refactoring. Our results suggest that collaborative refactoring promotes knowledge sharing among the development team especially about the software architecture of the system. On the other hand, we also observed that there is a lack of tools to support collaborative refactoring.