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Frontiers of Information Technology & Electronic Engineering >> 2022, Volume 23, Issue 5 doi: 10.1631/FITEE.2100467

How to manage a task-oriented virtual assistant software project: an experience report

Affiliation(s): Faculty of Electronic and Information Engineering, Xi'an Jiaotong University, Xi'an 710049, China; Microsoft Research Asia, Beijing 100080, China; less

Received: 2021-09-30 Accepted: 2022-05-19 Available online: 2022-05-19

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Abstract

Task-oriented s are software systems that provide users with a natural language interface to complete domain-specific tasks. With the recent technological advances in natural language processing and , an increasing number of task-oriented s have been developed. However, due to the well-known complexity and difficulties of the natural language understanding problem, it is challenging to manage a task-oriented software project. Meanwhile, the management and experience related to the development of s are hardly studied or shared in the research community or industry, to the best of our knowledge. To bridge this knowledge gap, in this paper, we share our experience and the lessons that we have learned at managing a task-oriented software project at Microsoft. We believe that our practices and the lessons learned can provide a useful reference for other researchers and practitioners who aim to develop a system. Finally, we have developed a requirement management tool, named SpecSpace, which can facilitate the management of projects.

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