Blogs (1) >>
ICSE 2019
Sat 25 - Fri 31 May 2019 Montreal, QC, Canada

Online controlled experiments are the gold standard for evaluating improvements and accelerating innovations in online and app worlds. However, little is known about applicability, implementation, and efficacy of experimentation for operating systems (OS), where many features are non-user-facing. In this paper, we present the Windows Experimentation platform (WExp), and insights from implementation and execution of real-world experiments in the OS. We start by discussing the need for experimentation in OS, using real experiments to illustrate the benefits. We then describe the architecture of WExp, focusing on unique considerations in its engineering. Finally, we discuss learnings and challenges from conducting real-world experiments. Our experiences and insights can motivate practitioners that build OS, platforms, and other non-user-facing components to start experimenting, can help practitioners to successfully build an experimentation platform, can help guide experimenters with best-practices, and highlight for researchers promising avenues for future work.

Wed 29 May

Displayed time zone: Eastern Time (US & Canada) change

11:00 - 12:30
Controlled Experiments of Production SoftwareSoftware Engineering in Practice / Papers at St-Denis / Notre-Dame
Chair(s): Yvonne Dittrich IT University of Copenhagen, Denmark
11:00
20m
Talk
Three Key Checklists and Remedies for Trustworthy Analysis of Online Controlled Experiments at ScaleSEIPIndustry Program
Software Engineering in Practice
Aleksander Fabijan Microsoft, Pavel Dmitriev Outreach.io, Helena Holmström Olsson Malmö University, Jan Bosch Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden, Lukas Vermeer Booking.com, Dylan Lewis Intuit
11:20
20m
Talk
Safe Velocity: A Practical Guide to Software Deployment at Scale using Controlled RolloutSEIPIndustry Program
Software Engineering in Practice
Tong Xia Microsoft, Sumit Bhardwaj Microsoft, Pavel Dmitriev Outreach.io, Aleksander Fabijan Microsoft
11:40
20m
Talk
Experimentation in the Operating System: The Windows Experimentation PlatformSEIPIndustry Program
Software Engineering in Practice
Paul Luo Li Microsoft, Pavel Dmitriev Outreach.io, Huibin Mary Hu Microsoft, Xiaoyu Chai Microsoft, Zoran Dimov Microsoft, Brandon Paddock Microsoft, Ying Li Microsoft, Alex Kirshenbaum Microsoft, Irina Niculescu Microsoft, Taj Thoresen Microsoft
12:00
20m
Talk
Automating chaos experiments in productionSEIPIndustry Program
Software Engineering in Practice
Ali Basiri Netflix, Lorin Hochstein Netflix, Nora Jones Netflix, Haley Tucker Netflix
Pre-print
12:20
10m
Talk
Discussion Period
Papers