Abstract. Software engineering is not only about technical solutions. It is to a large extent also concerned with organizational issues, project management and human behaviour. For a discipline like software engineering, empirical methods are crucial, since they allow for incorporating human behaviour into the research approach taken. Empirical methods are common practice in many other disciplines. This chapter provides a motivation for the use of empirical methods in software engineering research. The main motivation is that it is needed from an engineering perspective to allow for informed and wellgrounded decision. The chapter continues with a brief introduction to four research methods: controlled experiments, case studies, surveys and postmortem analyses. These methods are then put into an improvement context. The four methods are presented with the objective to introduce the reader to the methods to a level that it is possible to select the most suitable method at a specific instance. The methods have in common that they all are concerned with quantitative data. However, several of them are also suitable for qualitative data. Finally, it is concluded that the methods are not competing. On the contrary, the different research methods can preferably be used together to obtain more sources of information that hopefully lead to more informed engineering decisions in software engineering.

Collaboration between industry and academia supports improvement and innovation in industry and helps to ensure industrial relevance in academic research. This paper presents an exploratory study of factors for successful collaboration between industry and academia. A survey was designed for data collection and was firstly conducted in Sweden then replicated in Australia. The context for the two studies is different thus forming a starting point for potential generalizations in the future. From the two studies we conclude that the industrial side of collaboration is the key element for successful collaboration, with key factors being "Buy in and support from company management" and "Champion at company". Context-specific factors were also identified based on differences in the context between the two studies. These findings may help industry and academia to set up successful collaborative ventures.

Inter-rater agreement is a well-known challenge and is a key issue when discussing fault classification. Fault classification is, by nature, a subjective task since it highly depends on the people performing the classification. Measures are required to hinder the subjective nature of fault classification to propagate through the fault classification process and onto subsequent activities using the classified faults, for example process improvement. One approach to prevent the subjective nature of fault classification is to use multiple raters and measure inter-rater agreement.In this paper, we evaluate the possibility to have an independent group of people classifying faults. The objective is to evaluate whether such a group could be used in a process improvement initiative. An empirical study is conducted with eight persons classifying 30 faults independently. The study concludes that the provided material were unsatisfactory to obtain inter-rater agreement.

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Web and software engineering are not only about technical solutions. It is to a large extent also concerned with organisational issues, project management and human behaviour. For disciplines like Web and software engineering, empirical methods are crucial, since they allow for incorporating human behaviour into the research approach taken. Empirical methods are common practice in many other disciplines. This chapter provides a motivation for the use of empirical methods in Web and software engineering research. The main motivation is that it is needed from an engineering perspective to allow for informed and well-grounded decision. The chapter continues with a brief introduction to four research methods: controlled experiments, case studies, surveys and post-mortem analyses. These methods are then put into an improvement context. The four methods are presented with the objective to introduce the reader to the methods to a level that it is possible to select the most suitable method at a specific instance. The methods have in common that they all are concerned with quantitative data. However, several of them are also suitable for qualitative data. Finally, it is concluded that the methods are not competing. On the contrary, the different research methods can preferably be used together to obtain more sources of information that hopefully lead to more informed engineering decisions in Web and software engineering.