Approaches, success factors, and barriers for technology transfer in software engineering—Results of a systematic literature review

Abstract

Introduction: Technology transfer aims at supporting the transfer of results from software engineering research from academia to industrial application.Objective: This paper reports on the current state of technology transfer in software engineering.Method: We conducted a systematic literature review, in which we investigated 3070 papers. We identified in total 70 relevant papers, which were subject of a detailed analysis.Results: Many different approaches are proposed to foster technology transfer in software engineering. The majority of these approaches suggest direct collaboration between industry and academia or teaching new technologies in industrial training or university education. In addition, a considerable number of experience reports on technology transfer exist. Hence, a multitude of best practices, success stories, and lessons learned is reported. Among others, empirical evidence, maturity, and adaptability of the technology seem important preconditions for successful transfer, while social and organizational factors seem important barriers to successful technology transfer.Conclusion: Our findings can aid software engineering researchers in determining how best to support the transfer of their research results into practice. Furthermore, analysis of the literature also revealed that no reports exist on the combination of various technology transfer approaches, which could increase advantages of existing approaches while reducing their disadvantages. KEYWORDS software engineering, systematic literature review, technology transfer 1 | BACKGROUND AND MOTIVATION Software engineering research aims at solving real-world problems (cf Wieringa 1 ) and demands the evaluation of a proposed solution in an industrial setting (cf Basili 2 and Salman et al 3 ). However, there is often still a gap between academic solution proposals and industrial needs, and for many results from software engineering research, it takes a long time to have an impact on software engineering practices. 4 This is not only due to the fact that novel results from academic research are often unknown to practitioners but also that those research results are often not directly applicable to industry. 5To close this gap, software engineering research also deals with technology transfer itself (cf Pfleeger 6 ). Technology transfer aims at supporting the transfer of research results from academia to practice and is thus of interest to many scientific disciplines (cf, eg, Teece 7 ). While some challenges remain the same regardless of the technology to be transferred, others are particular to the software engineering field, as software engineering technologies typically evolve in a short time and thus the state of the art constantly changes (cf Boehm 8 and Finkelstein and Kramer 9 ).There exists a plethora of proposed solution approaches to foster technology transfer in software engineering as well as experience reports on successful technology transfer projects. Nevertheless, there is a need to support researchers in identifying proper technol...

Can non‐developers learn a simplified modeling notation quickly?

“…Empirical evidence is one of the proposed approaches in software engineering to transfer results from academia to industry. [ 47 ] Based on the results, we show that practitioners could see the UITD as a tool with potential to be put into practice because it requires little effort to be understood by people, regardless of their programming skill level.…”

An industry survey on approaches, success factors, and barriers for technology transfer in software engineering

“…However, only few report what practitioners expect from researchers to adopt their technology 12 . To add to this body of knowledge, this article continues an avenue of research into software engineering technology transferpreviously reported in Reference 13. Therein, we have reported a systematic literature review on approaches, success factors, and barriers for software engineering technology transfer.…”

“…We aim to investigate what is considered important for software engineering technology transfer from an industry perspective and thereby complement our theoretical findings published inReference 13. Therefore, it is evaluated whether the findings from Reference 13 hold for the interviewed industry professionals.…”

“…We aim to investigate what is considered important for software engineering technology transfer from an industry perspective and thereby complement our theoretical findings published inReference 13. Therefore, it is evaluated whether the findings from Reference 13 hold for the interviewed industry professionals. To define a study setup for investigating industry professionals' opinions towards technology transfer approaches, a prerequisite is the existence of a testable theory.…”

Training and Diffusion of Change: The Impact of Training and Proactivity on Change-Related Advice Giving

“…If training is provided in a fashion that brings with it valued knowledge and skills, including potential career opportunity and status, it can be particularly important in motivating employee commitment to both the organization and the change (Colquitt, LePine, & Noe, 2000; Martins & Kellermanns, 2004). Past research has shown that relevant training increases the individual’s use of new technology (Brings, Daun, Brinckmann, Keller, & Weyer, 2018; Gegenfurtner, Quesada-Pallarès, & Knogler, 2014). We hypothesize that change-related training will increase employee skills and knowledge relevant to the change.…”