Using GQM and TAM to evaluate StArt - a tool that supports Systematic Review

Background: Although Systematic Literature Review (SLR) is a reliable way of conducting literature review, its process is laborious and composed of repetitive activities. Hence, aiming to facilitate and support the conduction of such a process, the StArt tool was developed. Objective: As any new technology should be evaluated before its use, the objective of this paper is to present an overview of this tool and describe an evaluation that was carried out aiming at characterizing its usefulness and its ease of use. Method: The evaluation, applied twice, was designed through GQM paradigm and TAM model. The participants were graduate students who had a previous knowledge on SLR and have already applied the SLR process manually. Results: In both the evaluations the results were concentrated on the answers “extremely agree” or “quite agree” both for the usefulness and for the ease of use. Conclusion: Based on the results the further actions are: improvements related to the “quite agree” answers and the conduction of an experiment for evaluating the StArt in a deeper way. Despite these needed improvements, the results provide insights that StArt indeed helps the conduction of SLR and facilitates the application of its process.