Making Software Engineering Research Relevant

Beecham, Sarah; O’Leary, Pádraig; Baker, Sean; Richardson, Ita; Noll, John

doi:10.1109/mc.2014.92

Cited by 37 publications

(12 citation statements)

References 4 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Concerning research relevance, Beecham et al communicated with a test group of practitioners (Beecham et al 2014) and found that evidence based on experience was seen as most important, and if it was not available in their own organization, they would seek information from similar organizations in the world for insights on global software engineering. They compare typical sources for software engineering researchers and sources where practitioners seek information and found that the overlap is very small.…”

Section: Related Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

How software engineering research aligns with design science: a review

et al. 2020

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Background Assessing and communicating software engineering research can be challenging. Design science is recognized as an appropriate research paradigm for applied research, but is rarely explicitly used as a way to present planned or achieved research contributions in software engineering. Applying the design science lens to software engineering research may improve the assessment and communication of research contributions. Aim The aim of this study is 1) to understand whether the design science lens helps summarize and assess software engineering research contributions, and 2) to characterize different types of design science contributions in the software engineering literature. Method In previous research, we developed a visual abstract template, summarizing the core constructs of the design science paradigm. In this study, we use this template in a review of a set of 38 award winning software engineering publications to extract, analyze and characterize their design science contributions. Results We identified five clusters of papers, classifying them according to their different types of design science contributions. Conclusions The design science lens helps emphasize the theoretical contribution of research output-in terms of technological rules-and reflect on the practical relevance, novelty and rigor of the rules proposed by the research.

show abstract

Section: Related Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

How software engineering research aligns with design science: a review

et al. 2020

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…The final pool of sources included 54 sources, which we present next, and then review them in the rest of this paper. (Glass 2009) x x S18 Making SE research relevant 2014 (Beecham et al 2014) x x S19 On impact in SE research 2018 (Zeller 2019) x x S20 On the relevance of formal methods to software development 1985 (Floyd 1985) x (Glass et al 2006) x x S33 Successful SE research 1998 (Parnas 1998) x x S34 Summary of the Dagstuhl workshop on future directions in SE 1993 (Tichy et al 1993) x Summary of the Dagstuhl workshop on x x S39 The other impediment to SE research 2010 (Meyer 2010) x x S40 The relationship between theory and practice in SE 1994 (Glass 1996) x x S41 The software-research crisis 1994 (Glass 1994) x…”

Section: Inclusion / Exclusion Criteriamentioning

confidence: 99%

“…More recently, some critics have said that: "SE research suffers from irrelevance. Research outputs have little relevance to software practice" (Tan and Tang 2019), and that "practitioners rarely look to academic literature for new and better ways to develop software" (Beecham et al 2014). Also SE education has also been criticized, e.g., "… SE research is divorced from real-world problems (an impression that is reinforced by how irrelevant most popular SE textbooks seem to the undergraduates who are forced to wade through them)" (Wilson 2019).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Practical relevance of software engineering research: synthesizing the community’s voice

2020

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Software engineering (SE) research should be relevant to industrial practice. There have been regular discussions in the SE community on this issue since the 1980's, led by pioneers such as Robert Glass. As we recently passed the milestone of "50 years of software engineering", some recent positive efforts have been made in this direction, e.g., establishing "industrial" tracks in several SE conferences. However, many researchers and practitioners believe that we, as a community, are still struggling with research relevance and utility. The goal of this paper is to synthesize the evidence and experience-based opinions shared on this topic so far in the SE community, and to encourage the community to further reflect and act on the research relevance. For this purpose, we have conducted a Multi-vocal Literature Review (MLR) of 54 systematically-selected sources (papers and non peer-reviewed articles). Instead of relying on and considering the individual opinions on research relevance, mentioned in each of the sources, the MLR aims to synthesize and provide the "holistic" view on the topic. The highlights of our MLR findings are as follows. The top three root causes of low relevance, discussed in the community, are: (1) Researchers having simplistic views (or wrong assumptions) about SE in practice; (2) Lack of connection with industry; and (3) Wrong identification of research problems. The top three suggestions for improving research relevance are: (1) Using appropriate research approaches such as action-research; (2) Choosing relevant (practical) research problems; and (3) Collaborating with industry. By synthesizing all the discussions on this important topic so far, this paper aims to encourage further discussions and actions in the community to increase our collective efforts to improve the research relevance. Furthermore, we raise the need for empirically-grounded and rigorous studies on the relevance problem in SE research, as carried out in other fields such as management science.

show abstract

“…Qualitative research methods emphasize words, sounds and images rather than numbers and quantitative measurement in data collection and analysis [26]. In the context of software engineering, there can appear to be a disconnect between research conducted and industry needs [5,7]. Software engineering research is complex due the intersection of issues around human behaviour during software development as well as human and computer capabilities [33].…”

Section: Empirical Studies In Industrymentioning

confidence: 99%

Experience of industry case studies

Bass

Beecham

Noll

2018

Proceedings of the 6th International Workshop on Conducting Empirical Studies in Industry

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This research comprises a methodological comparison of two independent empirical case studies in industry: Case Study A and Case Study B. Case Study A, is a multiple-case study involving a set of short-duration data collections with 46 practitioners at 9 international companies engaged in offshoring and outsourcing. Case Study B, in contrast, is a single case, participant observation embedded case study lasting 13 months in a mid-sized Irish software company with geographically distributed software teams. Both cases were exploring similar problems of understanding the activities performed by various actors involved in scrum software development teams. In this study, we examine the findings from both studies, the efficiency of the different case study methods and the contributions offered by each approach. We adopted naturalistic research criteria to evaluate the two case study approaches. We found that both multiple-case and embedded case studies are suitable for exploratory research (hypothesis development) but that embedded research may also be more suitable for explanatory research (hypothesis testing). We also found that longitudinal case studies offer better confirmability; while multi-case studies offer better transferability. We propose a set of illustrative research questions to assist with the selection of the appropriate case study method. CCS CONCEPTS • Software and its engineering → Software creation and management; Software development process management; Collaboration in software development;

show abstract

Making Software Engineering Research Relevant

Cited by 37 publications

References 4 publications

How software engineering research aligns with design science: a review

How software engineering research aligns with design science: a review

Practical relevance of software engineering research: synthesizing the community’s voice

Experience of industry case studies

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About