Context: Software practitioners adopt approaches like DevOps, Scrum, and Waterfall for high-quality software development. However, limited research has been conducted on exploring software development approaches concerning practitioners discussions on Q&A forums. Objective: We conducted an empirical study to analyze developers discussions on Q&A forums to gain insights into software development approaches in practice. Method: We analyzed 13,903 developers posts across Stack Overflow (SO), Software Engineering Stack Exchange (SESE), and Project Management Stack Exchange (PMSE) forums. A mixed method approach, consisting of the topic modeling technique (i.e., Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA)) and qualitative analysis, is used to identify frequently discussed topics of software development approaches, trends (popular, difficult topics), and the challenges faced by practitioners in adopting different software development approaches. Findings: We identified 15 frequently mentioned software development approaches topics on Q&A sites and observed an increase in trends for the top-3 most difficult topics requiring more attention. Finally, our study identified 49 challenges faced by practitioners while deploying various software development approaches, and we subsequently created a thematic map to represent these findings. Conclusions: The study findings serve as a useful resource for practitioners to overcome challenges, stay informed about current trends, and ultimately improve the quality of software products they develop.

翻译：背景：软件从业者采用DevOps、Scrum和Waterfall等方法进行高质量软件开发。然而，关于从业者在问答论坛上讨论软件开发展方法的研究仍较为有限。目的：我们开展了一项实证研究，通过分析开发者在问答论坛上的讨论，深入了解实际中的软件开发展方法。方法：我们分析了Stack Overflow（SO）、软件工程Stack Exchange（SESE）和项目管理Stack Exchange（PMSE）论坛中的13,903条开发者帖子。采用混合方法，包括主题建模技术（即潜在狄利克雷分配（LDA））和定性分析，以识别软件开发展方法中经常讨论的主题、趋势（热门、困难主题）以及从业者在采用不同方法时面临的挑战。发现：我们在问答网站上识别出15个频繁提及的软件开发展方法主题，并观察到前三个最难主题的趋势上升，需要更多关注。最后，我们的研究识别出从业者在部署各种软件开发展方法时面临的49个挑战，并据此创建了主题图以呈现这些发现。结论：研究结果为从业者克服挑战、了解最新趋势并最终提高所开发软件产品的质量提供了有用资源。