Some researcher considerations when conducting empirical studies in industry

Abstract

Research collaborations must be set up for a win-win relationship, avoiding many hurdles along the way. In this short paper the goal is to identify some considerations when conducting empirical studies in industry. These considerations deal with problem solution approaches, communication focus, unpleasant results, mismatching interpretations and scope, business aspects and some evaluation criteria for a successful collaboration.

Challenges and best practices in industry-academia collaborations in software engineering: A systematic literature review

“…Additionally, it helps to be able to refer to prior experience [57] (BP9) and present replicated results that were successful across projects [62] as well as success stories [48].…”

“…As can see in the frequencies data, a majority 72% (24 of 33) of the studies are experience reports, i.e., a team of authors being involved in IAC have presented their experience. Apart from the 24 experience reports, in terms of maturity (level) of research approaches, we classified the remaining papers as follows: six papers [37,44,47,40,41,23] under empirical studies, three opinion papers [46,48,49], and no philosophical papers.…”

“…Furthermore, the differences in objectives [56,55,51] (C22), reward systems [46,23,48] (C25), and what is perceived as useful (C23) hinder to establish collaborations. For example, Glass and Hunt [57] point out that only few researchers would be interested in doing the development ("D") of R&D. With regard to rewards, it was pointed out that academia does not value industry impact and that there is no academic reward for industry collaborations and success [58,45].…”

“…Different stakeholders need to commit, in particular company management is of importance [51,45,61,57,48,60,42,46]. An important means to gain commitment is the ability to communicate well in early meetings (BP18), the most frequently mentioned best practice.…”

“…As pointed out by Raschke et al [47] early success needs to be delivered for a continued collaboration. When no solution is transferred attractive and interesting knowledge for the practitioners should be produced that is valuable for both parties [37,48,66].…”