
Pekka AbrahamssonTampere University | UTA · Faculty of Information Technology and Communication Sciences
Pekka Abrahamsson
Professor
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359
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Introduction
Skills and Expertise
Publications
Publications (359)
The use of Large Language Models (LLMs) for autonomous code generation is gaining attention in emerging technologies. As LLM capabilities expand, they offer new possibilities such as code refactoring, security enhancements, and legacy application upgrades. Many outdated web applications pose security and reliability challenges, yet companies contin...
Large Language Models (LLMs) have emerged as coding assistants, capable of generating source code from natural language prompts. With the increasing adoption of LLMs in software development, academic research and industry based projects are developing various tools, benchmarks, and metrics to evaluate the effectiveness of LLM-generated code. Howeve...
The emergence of generative artificial intelligence (GAI) and large language models (LLMs) such ChatGPT has enabled the realization of long-harbored desires in software and robotic development. The technology however, has brought with it novel ethical challenges. These challenges are compounded by the application of LLMs in other machine learning s...
The EU AI Act was created to ensure ethical and safe Artificial Intelligence (AI) development and deployment across the EU. This study aims to identify key challenges and strategies for helping enterprises focus on resources effectively. To achieve this aim, we conducted a Multivocal Literature Review (MLR) to explore the sentiments of both the ind...
Present-day software development faces three major challenges: complexity, time consumption, and high costs. Developing large software systems often requires battalions of teams and considerable time for meetings, which end without any action, resulting in unproductive cycles, delayed progress, and increased cost. What if, instead of large meetings...
AI-based systems, including Large Language Models (LLMs), impact millions by supporting diverse tasks but face issues like misinformation, bias, and misuse. Ethical AI development is crucial as new technologies and concerns emerge, but objective, practical ethical guidance remains debated. This study examines LLMs in developing ethical AI systems,...
This paper presents an experience report on the development of Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG) systems using PDF documents as the primary data source. The RAG architecture combines generative capabilities of Large Language Models (LLMs) with the precision of information retrieval. This approach has the potential to redefine how we interact wit...
Context: Large Language Models (LLMs) and Generative Pre-trained Transformers (GPTs) have transformed the field of Software Engineering (SE). Existing LLM-based multi-agent models have successfully addressed basic dialogue tasks. However, the potential of LLMs for more challenging tasks, such as automated code generation for large and complex proje...
Requirements Engineering (RE) plays a pivotal role in software development, encompassing tasks such as requirements elicitation, analysis, specification, and change management. Despite its critical importance, RE faces challenges including communication complexities, early-stage uncertainties, and accurate resource estimation. This study empiricall...
Large Language Models (LLMs) are widely used in Software Engineering (SE) for various tasks, including generating code, designing and documenting software, adding code comments, reviewing code, and writing test scripts. However, creating test scripts or automating test cases demands test suite documentation that comprehensively covers functional re...
Large language models are redefining software engineering by implementing AI-powered techniques throughout the whole software development process, including requirement gathering, software architecture, code generation, testing, and deployment. However, it is still difficult to develop a cohesive platform that consistently produces the best outcome...
The arrival of ChatGPT has also generated significant interest in the field of software engineering. Little is empirically known about the capabilities of ChatGPT to actually implement a complete system rather than a few code snippets. This chapter reports the firsthand experiences from a graduate-level student project where a real-life software pl...
This study explores the role of artificial intelligence (AI) in higher education, with a focus on the teaching of programming. Despite the growing use of AI in education, both students and teachers often struggle to understand its role and implications. To address this gap, we conducted surveys on two different university programming courses to ass...
In agile software development, maintaining high-quality user stories is crucial, but also challenging. This study explores the application of large language models (LLMs) to improve the quality of user stories within the agile teams of Austrian Post Group IT. We developed an Autonomous LLM-based Agent System (ALAS) and evaluated its impact on user...
Systematic Literature Reviews (SLRs) have become the foundation of evidence-based studies, enabling researchers to identify, classify, and combine existing studies based on specific research questions. Conducting an SLR is largely a manual process. Over the previous years, researchers have made significant progress in automating certain phases of t...
Business and technology are intricately connected through logic and design. They are equally sensitive to societal changes and may be devastated by scandal. Cooperative multi-robot systems (MRSs) are on the rise, allowing robots of different types and brands to work together in diverse contexts. Generative artificial intelligence has been a dominan...
The ethical impacts of Artificial Intelligence (AI) are causing concern in many areas of AI research and development. The implementation of AI ethics is still, in many ways, a work in progress, but various initiatives are tackling the issues by creating guidelines and implementation methods. This study investigates concerns about the negative impac...
Background: Continuous software engineering practices are currently considered state of the art in Software Engineering (SE). Recently, this interest in continuous SE has extended to ML system development as well, primarily through MLOps. However, little is known about continuous SE in ML development outside the specific continuous practices presen...
This study explores the role of artificial intelligence (AI) in university teaching, with a focus on the teaching of programming. Despite the growing use of AI in education, both students and teachers often struggle to understand its role and implications. To address this gap, we conducted a survey of a wide group of students (n = 200) to assess th...
The arrival of ChatGPT has caused a lot of turbulence also in the field of software engineering in the past few months. Little is empirically known about the capabilities of ChatGPT to actually implement a complete system rather than a few code snippets. This paper reports the first-hand experiences from a graduate level student project where a rea...
Context
The COVID‐19 pandemic has had a disruptive impact on how people work and collaborate across all global economic sectors, including software business. While remote working is not new for software engineers, forced WFH situations come with both limitations and opportunities. As the ‘new normal’ for working might be based on the current state...
Internet Research’s Special Issue - Ethics and Sustainability in Gaming and Persuasive Systems, is now calling for papers.
Guest Editors: Nannan Xi, Rebekah Rousi, Juho Hamari, Pekka Abrahamsson and Ville Vakkuri. This SI aims to attract multidisciplinary contributions that deal with ethics and sustainability, along with sub-fields such as privac...
Large Language Models (LLM) and Generative Pre-trained Transformers (GPT), are reshaping the field of Software Engineering (SE). They enable innovative methods for executing many software engineering tasks, including automated code generation, debug-ging, maintenance, etc. However, only a limited number of existing works have thoroughly explored th...
Context Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) tools have become increasingly prevalent in software development, offering assistance to various managerial and technical project activities. Notable examples of these tools include OpenAI's ChatGPT, GitHub Copilot, and Amazon CodeWhisperer. Objective. Although many recent publications have explore...
The growing domain of liquidity in computing extends its boundaries to include advancements like liquid artificial intelligence (AI). Liquid AI leverages liquid software using isomorphic Internet of Things (IoT) architecture to enhance computation at the edge. This innovation presents numerous possibilities and significant challenges. Central to th...
The increasing significance of social and environmental impact within
the technology startup business sector has garnered attention. Previous research
has explored impact investing and related themes in the startup context. However,
despite the growing interest in this area, a noticeable gap exists in research addressing impact investing ecosystems...
The increasing integration of artificial intelligence (AI) into software engineering (SE) necessitates prioritizing ethical considerations within management practices. Despite its recognized importance, the implementation remains scarce, mainly due to difficulties in identifying and representing critical ethical requirements. This study seeks to br...
Software startup companies develop innovative, software-intensive products within limited time frames and with few resources, searching for sustainable and scalable business models. Software startups are quite distinct from traditional mature software companies, but also from micro-, small-, and medium-sized enterprises, introducing new challenges...
Software startups are newly created companies with no operating history and oriented towards producing cutting-edge products. However, despite the increasing importance of startups in the economy, few scientific studies attempt to address software engineering issues, especially for early-stage startups. If anything, startups need engineering practi...
An impressive number of new startups are launched every day as a result of growing new markets, accessible technologies, and venture capital. New ventures such as Facebook, Supercell, Linkedin, Spotify, {WhatsApp}, and Dropbox, to name a few, are good examples of startups that evolved into successful businesses. However, despite many successful sto...
Context: Software startups are newly created companies with no operating history and fast in producing cutting-edge technologies. These companies develop software under highly uncertain conditions, tackling fast-growing markets under severe lack of resources. Therefore, software startups present an unique combination of characteristics which pose s...
Many small to large organizations have adopted the Microservices Architecture (MSA) style to develop and deliver their core businesses. Despite the popularity of MSA in the software industry, there is a limited evidence-based and thorough understanding of the types of issues (e.g., errors, faults, failures, and bugs) that microservices system devel...
Society's increasing dependence on Artificial Intelligence (AI) and AI-enabled systems require a more practical approach from software engineering (SE) executives in middle and higher-level management to improve their involvement in implementing AI ethics by making ethical requirements part of their management practices. However, research indicates...
Ethics of Artificial Intelligence (AI) is a growing research field that has emerged in response to the challenges related to AI. Transparency poses a key challenge for implementing AI ethics in practice. One solution to transparency issues is AI systems that can explain their decisions. Explainable AI (XAI) refers to AI systems that are interpretab...
The arrival of ChatGPT has caused a lot of turbulence also in the field of software engineering in the past few months. Little is empirically known about the capabilities of ChatGPT to actually implement a complete system rather than a few code snippets. This paper reports the first-hand experiences from a graduate level student project where a rea...
Quantum computing systems rely on the principles of quantum mechanics to perform a multitude of computationally challenging tasks more efficiently than their classical counterparts. The architecture of software-intensive systems can empower architects who can leverage architecture-centric processes, practices, description languages, etc., to model,...
Society's increasing dependence on Artificial Intelligence (AI) and AI-enabled systems require a more practical approach from software engineering (SE) executives in middle and higher-level management to improve their involvement in implementing AI ethics by making ethical requirements part of their management practices. However, research indicates...
Despite their commonly accepted usefulness, Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies are concerned with ethical unreliability. Various guidelines, principles, and regulatory frameworks are designed to ensure that AI technologies bring ethical well-being. However, the implications of AI ethics principles and guidelines are still being debated. To f...
The restrictions imposed by the COVID-19 pandemic required software development teams to adapt, being forced to work remotely and adjust the software engineering activities accordingly. In the studies evaluating these effects, a few have assessed the impact on software engineering activities from a broader perspective and after a period of time whe...
Increasing ethical concerns necessitate AI ethics forms part of practical software engineering (SE) foundational educational learning. Using an ethnographic approach and focus group discussions in a SE project-based learning environment, WIMMA lab, we gain insight into how AI ethics can be implemented to enable students to acquire these necessary s...
This article studies what are the characteristics of a B2B SaaS freemium firm. Freemium in a B2B setting is an under-explored phenomenon whereas B2C SaaS freemium has been studied extensively. On the consumer side freemium has played a big role but freemium has only recently started to enter the B2B environment. Traditional, sales-led B2B SaaS comp...
Digital Identity has become a topic that attracts the attention of researchers due to the enormous number of services that have been provided online recently. Researchers face many obstacles regarding the security, privacy, and utility of digital identity. Self-Sovereign Identity (SSI) ecosystems provide a solution for digital identity, in addition...
Increasing ethical concerns necessitate AI ethics forms part of practical software engineering (SE) foundational educational learning. Using an ethnographic approach and focus group discussions in a SE project-based learning environment, WIMMA lab, we gain insight into how AI ethics can be implemented to enable students to acquire these necessary s...
This article studies what are the characteristics of a B2B SaaS free-mium firm. Freemium in a B2B setting is an under-explored phenomenon whereas B2C SaaS freemium has been studied extensively. On the consumer side freemium has played a big role but freemium has only recently started to enter the B2B environment. Traditional, sales-led B2B SaaS com...
The coronavirus outbreak dramatically changed the work culture in the software industry. Most software practitioners began working remotely, which significantly revolutionized the traditional software processes landscape. Software development organizations have begun thinking about automating software processes to cope with the challenges raised by...
Digital Identity has become a topic that attracts the attention of researchers due to the enormous number of services that have been provided online recently. Researchers face many obstacles regarding the security, privacy, and utility of digital identity. Self-Sovereign Identity (SSI) ecosystems provide a solution for digital identity, in addition...
In Port terminals a progressive change is underway in digitalizing traditional systems to SMART systems with the aid of AI. This study follows one of such progressions, the SMARTER project. SMARTER is a sub research and development project of the Sea for Value program of DIMECC company, Finland to create replicable models for digitalization for fut...
Quantum computing systems rely on the principles of quantum mechanics to perform a multitude of computationally challenging tasks more efficiently than their classical counterparts. The architecture of software-intensive systems can empower architects who can leverage architecture-centric processes, practices, description languages, etc., to model,...
[Context] The COVID-19 pandemic has had a disruptive impact on how people work and collaborate across all global economic sectors, including the software business. While remote working is not new for software engineers, forced Work-from-home situations to come with both constraints, limitations, and opportunities for individuals, software teams and...
Software (ISSN: 2674-113X) [...]
Quantum computing systems rely on the principles of quantum mechanics to perform a multitude of computationally challenging tasks more efficiently than their classical counterparts. The architecture of software-intensive systems can empower architects who can leverage architecture-centric processes, practices, description languages to model, develo...
A common assumption exists according to which machine learning models improve their performance when they have more data to learn from. In this study, the authors wished to clarify the dilemma by performing an empirical experiment utilizing novel vocational student data. The experiment compared different machine learning algorithms while varying th...
Digitalization and Smart systems are part of our everyday lives today. So far the development has been rapid and all the implications that comes after the deployment has not been able to foresee or even assess during the development, especially when ethics or trustworthiness is concerned. Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Autonomous Systems (AS) are...
Ethical concerns related to Artificial Intelligence (AI) equipped systems are prompting demands for ethical AI from all directions. As a response, in recent years public bodies, governments, and companies have rushed to provide guidelines and principles for how AI-based systems are designed and used ethically. We have learned, however, that high-le...
Public sector is a large consumer for software. In countries such as Finland, many of the systems are made to order by consultancy companies that participate in public tenders. These tenders initiated by the state, cities, and other public sector organizations. Furthermore, as public sector tasks are often decomposed to various actors, each and eve...
The governance of blockchain systems is unique due to its decentralized nature and automatically enforced rules and mechanisms. Moreover, blockchain governance is crucial in achieving success and sustainability. With this study, we aim to advance the theory of blockchain governance and support practitioners by defining blockchain governance from a...
ContextSoftware startups are an essential source of innovation and software-intensive products. The need to understand product development in startups and to provide relevant support are highlighted in software research. While state-of-the-art literature reveals how startups develop their software, the reasons why they adopt these activities are un...
Artificial Intelligence (AI) systems are becoming increasingly widespread and exert a growing influence on society at large. The growing impact of these systems has also highlighted potential issues that may arise from their utilization, such as data privacy issues, resulting in calls for ethical AI systems. Yet, how to develop ethical AI systems r...
Sociometric badges are an emerging technology for study how teams interact in physical places. Audio data recorded by sociometric badges is often downsampled to not record discussions of the sociometric badges holders. To gain more information about interactions inside teams with sociometric badges a Voice Activity Detector (VAD) is deployed to mea...