Empirical paradigm - the role of experiments

  • Authors:

  • Barbara Kitchenham

  • Affiliations:

  • -

  • Venue:
  • Proceedings of the 2006 international conference on Empirical software engineering issues: critical assessment and future directions
  • Year:
  • 2006

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Abstract

This article discusses the role of formal experiments in empirical software engineering. I take the view that the role of experiments has been overemphasised. Laboratory experiments are not representative of industrial software engineering tasks, so do not provide us with a reliable assessment of the effect of our techniques and tools. I suggest we need to concentrate a larger proportion of our research effort on industrial quasi-experiments and case studies. Methodologies for these empirical methods are well-understood in the social science and would appear to be appropriate mechanisms for investigating many software engineering research questions. In addition, I believe we need to make the results of empirical software engineering more visible and relevant to practitioners. To influence practitioners I suggest that we need to produce evidence-based text books and evidence-based software engineering standards.