Where's the Theory for Software Engineering?

Johnson, Pontus; Ekstedt, Mathias; Jacobson, Ivar

doi:10.1109/ms.2012.127

Cited by 84 publications

(83 citation statements)

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“…In recent years, theory, as understood in the field of sciences, has gained popularity in the field of empirical SE [21][22][23]. Members of the International Empirical Software Engineering Research Network (ISERN) engaged increasingly more and more into research initiatives that aim to formulate theories, evaluating theories and evaluating the use of theories in the field [29].…”

Section: Identifying the Main Theories In Human Factors In Software Dmentioning

confidence: 99%

Human factors in software development: On its underlying theories and the value of learning from related disciplines. A guest editorial introduction to the special issue

Amrit

Daneva

Damian

2014

Information and Software Technology

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Section: Identifying the Main Theories In Human Factors In Software Dmentioning

confidence: 99%

Human factors in software development: On its underlying theories and the value of learning from related disciplines. A guest editorial introduction to the special issue

Amrit

Daneva

Damian

2014

Information and Software Technology

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“…Conceptualization is closely related to theorizing, or the process of building theories [17]. We have observed an increasing level of attention for the role of theory within software engineering research [1][2] [4]. However, conceptualization and theory building has not been recognized to be as important as empirical research within the SE research community.…”

Section: A the Importance Of Conceptualizationmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…For instance, SE students could study the "theory" of software evolution, and learn the different types of maintenance activities as identified by Swanson [53]. 1 This would qualify as providing a typology, which is one of the purposes of science [31]. Note that a typology differs from a "list of variables or constructs" in that the former links the various viable "values" (e.g, adaptive v. corrective maintenance), whereas the latter may consists contain an unrelated constructs.…”

Section: The Purpose Of Science and Goals Of Theorymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…It is clear that in this study, the researchers' primary interest was in OSS development, and the Apache web server in particular. The next step by Mockus et al was to select an appropriate research method to study this phenomenon; the paper does not suggest that the researchers based their study 1. Open source developments will have a core of developers who control the code base.…”

Section: ) Research Path and Theorymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This is a question that Johnson et al recently posed [1]. When discussing the topic of theory in Software Engineering (SE) research, many authors point to other, more mature and established disciplines, such as physics and the social sciences, and argue that SE research, too, needs to develop theories [1] [2][3] [4][5] [6].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Uncovering theories in software engineering

Stol

Fitzgerald

2013

2013 2nd SEMAT Workshop on a General Theory of Software Engineering (GTSE)

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Abstract-There has been a growing interest in the role of theory within Software Engineering (SE) research. For several decades, researchers within the SE research community have argued that, to become a real engineering science, SE needs to develop stronger theoretical foundations. A few authors have proposed guidelines for constructing theories, building on insights from other disciplines. However, so far, much SE research is not guided by explicit theory, nor does it produce explicit theory. In this paper we argue that SE research does, in fact, show traces of theory, which we call theory fragments. We have adapted an analytical framework from the social sciences, named the Validity Network Schema (VNS), that we use to illustrate the role of theorizing in SE research. We illustrate the use of this framework by dissecting three well known research papers, each of which has had significant impact on their respective subdisciplines. We conclude this paper by outlining a number of implications for future SE research, and show how by increasing awareness and training, development of SE theories can be improved.

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A lean and mean strategy: a data migration industrial study

Razavian

Lago

2013

J Software Evolu Process

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SUMMARY Many companies have legacy assets to be integrated or modernized. Like today's software developments, migration projects are faced with steadily increasing demands for efficiency: migration has to be carried out faster, better, and cheaper. At the same time, migration complexity increases, and migration projects remain challenging despite the companies' extensive experience. To cope with such efficiency demands, companies need a well‐defined migration strategy. In previous work, we have defined such a migration strategy called lean and mean strategy. In this paper, following technical action research, we apply our migration strategy, and evaluate it, in two large industrial case studies in the field of data migration. The use of the strategy in our case studies reveals the benefits of lean and mean strategy for meeting the efficiency demands. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

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Where's the Theory for Software Engineering?

Cited by 84 publications

References 0 publications

Human factors in software development: On its underlying theories and the value of learning from related disciplines. A guest editorial introduction to the special issue

Human factors in software development: On its underlying theories and the value of learning from related disciplines. A guest editorial introduction to the special issue

Uncovering theories in software engineering

A lean and mean strategy: a data migration industrial study

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