Examples: We have implemented observation in our work in two ways (1997). First,
one experimenter took paper-and-pencil notes to indicate what the participant was
doing and for approximately how long. This information gave us a good general
picture of the work habits of the software engineers. We also used synchronized
shadowing where two experimenters used two laptop computers to record the software
engineer’s actions. One was responsible for ascertaining the participants’ high
level goals, while the other was responsible for recording their low-level actions.
We used pre-defined categories (Microsoft Word macros) to make recording easier.
Wu et al. (2003) also used pre-defined categories to shadow software engineers.