Background: Action research is a well-established research methodology. It is following a post-positivist research philosophy grounded in critical thinking. The methodology is driven by practical problems, emphasis participatory research, and develops practically useful solutions in an iterative manner. Objective: Two objectives are to be achieved: (1) Understanding the state of the art with respect to action research usage in the software engineering literature, and (2) reflecting and providing recommendations of how to foster industry-academia collaboration through action research. Method: Based on our experience with two action research studies in close collaboration with Ericsson lessons learned and guidelines are presented. Results: In both cases presented action research led to multiple refinements in the interventions implemented. Furthermore, the close collaboration and co-production with the industry was essential to identify and describe the required refinements to provide an in-depth understanding. In comparison with previous studies, we required multiple iterations while previous software engineering studies reported mostly one iteration, or were not explicit regarding the number of iterations studied. Conclusion: We conclude that action research is a powerful tool for industry-academia collaboration. The success of the method highly depends on the researchers and practitioners working in a team. Future studies need to improve the reporting with respect to describing the type of action research used, the iterations, the model of collaboration, and the rationales for changes in each iteration.

Context: A recent approach for measurement program planning, GQM + Strategies, provides an important extension to existing approaches linking measurements and improvement activities to strategic goals and ways to achieve these goals. There is a need for instruments aiding in eliciting information from stakeholders to use GQM + Strategies. The success of GQM + Strategies highly depends on accurately identifying goals, strategies and information needs from stakeholders.Objective: The research aims at providing an instrument (called GQM + S-EI), aiding practitioners to accurately elicit information needed by GQM + Strategies (capturing goals, strategies and information needs).Method: The research included two phases. In the first phase, using action research method, the GQM + S-EI was designed in three iterations in Ericsson AB. Thereafter, a case study was conducted to evaluate whether the information elicited with the designed instrument following the defined process was accurate and complete. Results:We identified that the industry requires elicitation instruments that are capable to elicit information from stakeholders, not having to know about the concepts (e.g. goals and strategies). The case study results showed that our proposed instrument is capable of accurately and completely capturing the needed information from the stakeholders.Conclusions: We conclude that GQM + S-EI can be used for accurately and completely eliciting the information needed by goal driven measurement frameworks. The instrument has been successfully transferred to Ericsson AB for measurement program planning.