A Personal Perspective on the Evolution of Empirical Software Engineering

Basili, Victor R.

doi:10.1007/978-3-642-37395-4_17

Cited by 10 publications

(9 citation statements)

References 28 publications

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“…We believe that for many software engineering BoKs this cannot be done by single research groups and requires community involvement. As recently stated by Basili [45], software engineering requires a \community supported living experience base". In line with this argument, we believe that a major risk for enabling a growing KB is failing to achieve community involvement for frequent updates and quality assurance.…”

Section: Bene¯ts and Risksmentioning

confidence: 98%

Systematic Knowledge Engineering: Building Bodies of Knowledge from Published Research

Biffl

Kalinowski

Rabiser

et al. 2014

Int. J. Soft. Eng. Knowl. Eng.

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Context. Software engineering researchers conduct systematic literature reviews (SLRs) to build bodies of knowledge (BoKs). Unfortunately, relevant knowledge collected in the SLR process is not publicly available, which considerably slows down building BoKs incrementally.Objective. We present and evaluate the Systematic Knowledge Engineering (SKE) process to support e±ciently building BoKs from published research.Method. SKE is based on the SLR process and on Knowledge Engineering practices to build a Knowledge Base (KB) by reusing intermediate data extraction results from SLRs. We evaluated the feasibility of applying SKE by building a Software Inspection BoK KB from published experiments and a Software Product Line BoK KB from published experience reports. We compared the e®ort, bene¯ts, and risks of building BoK KBs regarding the SKE and the traditional SLR processes.Results. The application of SKE for incrementally collecting and organizing knowledge in the context of a BoK was feasible for di®erent domains and di®erent types of evidence. While the e®orts for conducting the SKE and traditional SLR processes are comparable, SKE provides signi¯cant bene¯ts for building BoKs.Conclusions. SKE enables researchers in a scienti¯c community to reuse and incrementally build knowledge in a BoK. SKE is ready to be evaluated in other software engineering domains.

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Section: Bene¯ts and Risksmentioning

confidence: 98%

Systematic Knowledge Engineering: Building Bodies of Knowledge from Published Research

Biffl

Kalinowski

Rabiser

et al. 2014

Int. J. Soft. Eng. Knowl. Eng.

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…In this manuscript, we will not even try to address the social mechanisms within the research communities to the extent they deserve, but briefly reflect and reason about the epistemological setting to motivate the challenges in our still emerging field. An insightful introduction into the evolution of empirical software engineering can be taken from the personal perspective provided by Victor Basili, one of the pioneers in the field [10].…”

Section: Scientific Movements and Practices -In A Nutshellmentioning

confidence: 99%

Empirical software engineering: From discipline to interdiscipline

Méndez

Passoth

2019

Journal of Systems and Software

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Empirical software engineering has received much attention in recent years and coined the shift from a more design-science-driven engineering discipline to an insight-oriented, and theory-centric one. Yet, we still face many challenges, among which some increase the need for interdisciplinary research. This is especially true for the investigation of social, cultural and human-centric aspects of software engineering. Although we can already observe an increased recognition of the need for more interdisciplinary research in (empirical) software engineering, such research configurations come with challenges barely discussed from a scientific point of view. In this position paper, we critically reflect upon the epistemological setting of empirical software engineering and elaborate its configuration as an Interdiscipline. In particular, we (1) elaborate a pragmatic view on empirical research for software engineering reflecting a cyclic process for knowledge creation, (2) motivate a path towards symmetrical interdisciplinary research, and (3) adopt five rules of thumb from other interdisciplinary collaborations in our field before concluding with new emerging challenges. This supports to elevate empirical software engineering from a developing discipline moving towards a paradigmatic stage of normal science to one that configures interdisciplinary teams and research methods symmetrically.

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“…Ivar Jacobson, co‐developer of the UML standard, established the Software Engineering Method and Theory initiative in 2009 (Jacobson & Spence, ), in an effort to transform the foundations of SE by enhancing its language, methods and theories (http://semat.org/). According to key scholars, empirical research in SE is still in its infancy (Jackson, ; Basili, ), and there is a need for better theory development (Endres & Rombach, ; Johnson et al, ; Sjøberg et al, ; Stol & Fitzgerald, ). Following similar endeavours, and given the fragmentation of ISD, we need a system of knowledge that can pull together the academic and practitioner community into a zone of mutual discursive interaction (Ramiller et al , 2008).…”

Section: Need To Address Fragmented Isd Knowledgementioning

confidence: 99%

Distilling a body of knowledge for information systems development

Hassan

Mathiassen

2017

Information Systems Journal

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Abstract. As a contribution towards consolidating the information systems (IS) field, we offer a systematic method for distilling a canonical body of knowledge (BOK) for information systems development (ISD), an area that historically accounts for as much as half of all IS research. Based on an integrative synthesis of the literature, we present a map of the most significant ISD research, uncover gaps in its canons and suggest fruitful lines of inquiry for new research. Our review combines citation analysis, which identifies the field's evidence of cumulative tradition, with computer-aided textual analysis, a hermeneutically guided method that organizes the fragmented corpus of ISD literature into coherent knowledge areas. From a pool of over 6500 articles published in the IS Senior Scholars' Basket of Journals, we find 940 IS citation classics, and from that list, 466 ISD articles that offer canonical ISD knowledge distinctive to IS and complementary to other disciplines such as software engineering and project management. From this study, we offer two contributions: (1) a justification for an ISDBOK grounded in the theory of practice and professionalism, and (2) a canonical map of disciplinary ISD knowledge with areas that have demonstrated cumulative tradition and others that require the attention of IS scholars.

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A Personal Perspective on the Evolution of Empirical Software Engineering

Cited by 10 publications

References 28 publications

Systematic Knowledge Engineering: Building Bodies of Knowledge from Published Research

Systematic Knowledge Engineering: Building Bodies of Knowledge from Published Research

Empirical software engineering: From discipline to interdiscipline

Distilling a body of knowledge for information systems development

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