Kennet Henningsson

Empirical research methods in software engineering

Software engineering is not only about technical solutions. It is to a large extent also concerned with organizational issues, project management and human behaviour. For a discipline like software engineering, empirical methods are crucial, since they allow for incorporating human behaviour into the research approach taken. Empirical methods are common practice in many other disciplines. This chapter provides a motivation for the use of empirical methods in software engineering research. The main motivation is that it is needed from an engineering perspective to allow for informed and well-grounded decision. The chapter continues with a brief introduction to four research methods: controlled experiments, case studies, surveys and post-mortem analyses. These methods are then put into an improvement context. The four methods are presented with the objective to introduce the reader to the methods to a level that it is possible to select the most suitable method at a specific instance. The methods have in common that they all are concerned with quantitative data. However, several of them are also suitable for qualitative data. Finally, it is concluded that the methods are not competing. On the contrary, the different research methods can preferably be used together to obtain more sources of information that hopefully lead to more informed engineering decisions in software engineering.

The Success Factors Powering Industry-Academia Collaboration

Collaboration between industry and academia supports improvement and innovation in industry and helps to ensure industrial relevance in academic research. This article presents an exploratory study of the factors for successful collaboration between industry and academia in software research.

Assuring fault classification agreement - an empirical evaluation

Inter-rater agreement is a well-known challenge and is a key issue when discussing fault classification. Fault classification is, by nature, a subjective task since it highly depends on the people performing the classification. Measures are required to hinder the subjective nature of fault classification to propagate through the fault classification process and onto subsequent activities using the classified faults, for example process improvement. One approach to prevent the subjective nature of fault classification is to use multiple raters and measure inter-rater agreement. We evaluate the possibility to have an independent group of people classifying faults. The objective is to evaluate whether such a group could be used in a process improvement initiative. An empirical study is conducted with eight persons classifying 30 faults independently. The study concludes that the provided material were unsatisfactory to obtain inter-rater agreement.

Empirical Research Methods in Web and Software Engineering

Web and software engineering are not only about technical solutions. They are to a large extent also concerned with organisational issues, project management and human behaviour. For disciplines like Web and software engineering, empirical methods are crucial, since they allow for incorporating human behaviour into the research approach taken. Empirical methods are common practice in many other disciplines. This chapter provides a motivation for the use of empirical methods in Web and software engineering research. The main motivation is that it is needed from an engineering perspective to allow for informed and well-grounded decisions. The chapter continues with a brief introduction to four research methods: controlled experiments, case studies, surveys and post-mortem analyses. These methods are then put into an improvement context. The four methods are presented with the objective to introduce the reader to the methods to a level where it is possible to select the most suitable method at a specific instance. The methods have in common that they all are concerned with quantitative data. However, several of them are also suitable for qualitative data. Finally, it is concluded that the methods are not competing. On the contrary, the different research methods can preferably be used together to obtain more sources of information that hopefully lead to more informed engineering decisions in Web and software engineering.

Consolidating different views of quality attribute relationships

In recent years, quality attributes have received increased attention as being critical for a software systems success or failure. Different classifications of quality attributes frequently mention many relations both positive and negative between quality attributes. However, the classifications and the quality attribute relations are often presented in such a way that they are not easily compared with each other, which means that it is difficult to confirm the relations found in one source with the relations found in another. In this article we triangulate between different sources where quality attribute relations have been (or can be) expressed. The contribution is a consolidated view of which quality attributes that are considered (by several sources) to have positive or negative relations with each other.

Risk-based trade-off between verification and validation – an industry-motivated study

Within industry the demand for short lead-time and reduced effort consumption is in focus. For an associated industry partner the lead-time and effort focus has meant turning the interest towards the Verification and Validation (V&V) process. The industry cooperation motivating this study aims at providing a tailored and applicable V&V process, where the order of verification and validation may be changed as well as the amount of V&V activities conducted. Through the industry cooperation as well as industrial and academic experience, a method has been formulated that address how to select a suitable V&V process depending on the functionality being developed. The method describes how a suitable process is created and selected, where the appropriate process is identified based on functionality and coupling between the system entities being developed. It is concluded that the method provides support, structure and clarification to address the possibilities to a trade-off between verification and validation.