Abstract:
In software engineering research, the design of algorithms, techniques, notations, procedures, methods, tools, etc. to be used in the domain of software engineering, alternates with empirical research of the effect of these artefacts in the software engineering domain. This is methodologically complex because it involves a mutual nesting of design problems and research questions, as well as a balancing of on the one hand generalisability to other cases, with on the other hand utility in a particular case.
This tutorial provides guidelines help the practicing software engineering researcher to set up the methodology of design research projects.
The tutorial uses the engineering cycle as its top-level methodological framework. Within this framework, we first treat typical engineering research questions such as the prediction what effects will be produced by a designed artefact in a problem domain, what the valuation of these effect with respect to stakeholder goals is and how sensitive this is to changes in the problem domain. Next, we discuss the large range of research methods available to the software engineering researcher when validating artefact designs, from lab experiments to simulations and field research. Thirdly, we will discuss the role of theories of practice in explaining and predicting artefact behaviour in a problem domain, and fourthly we will provide a usable structure for practical design theories and provide hints for finding or building these theories. Many examples from software engineering research are given to illustrate the points made in the tutorial. The tutorial is summarized in the form of a set of guidelines for practicing software engineering researchers.
Presenter:
Roel Wieringa is head of the Computer Science Department at the University of Twente, The Netherlands, and Chair of Information Systems in this department. He is also scientific director of the School for Information and Knowledge Systems (SIKS), which provides advanced education to all Dutch Ph.D. students in information and knowledge systems. His research interests include requirements engineering, modelling techniques for reactive systems, process modelling and architecture, and design science research methodology. He has written a book on requirements engineering (Wiley, 1996) and one on reactive system design (Morgan Kaufmann, 2003), and serves on the editorial board of several journals.