Abstract
In recent years there has been a call from researchers in empirical software engineering to carry out more research in the industrial setting. The arguments for this have been well founded and the benefits clearly enunciated. But apart from the community’s call for empirical goals to be based around business goals, there has been little consideration of the business conditions under which empirical software engineering methods may, or may not, be appropriate for the business. In this paper the empirically derived high-level management practices that are associated with business success are used as initial decision criteria to decide the path to follow: (a) whether empirical software engineering research will be of value to the business, and (b) if it is of value, the form that that research might take. The place of theory is considered in the case of path (b).
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Acknowledgments
NICTA is funded by the Australian Government as represented by the Department of Broadband, Communications, and the Digital Economy, and the Australian Research Council (ARC) through the ICT Centre of Excellence Program. This work has also benefited from discussions with Mark Staples, Liming Zhu, Paul Bannerman, and Len Bass.
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Jeffery, R. (2013). Paths to Software Engineering Evidence. In: Münch, J., Schmid, K. (eds) Perspectives on the Future of Software Engineering. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-37395-4_9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-37395-4_9
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