Applicability of Software Engineering Research
I’ve just read a great column by Titus Winters on the applicability of software engineering research!
One thing that I also regularly mention when people ask me what is missing in research papers to make them more appealing to practitioners is context, constraints, and assumptions.
Take all the work on model-driven software engineering as an example: Sure, there are advantages and those techniques totally make sense in highly regulated or safety-critical domains. But for a startup, aspects like time-to-market are critical. If I’m still modeling when my funding runs out, that’s the end of my startup.
Thanks Paris Avgeriou and David Shepherd for starting the “Dear Researchers” column in the JSS journal!