Software Engineering Research Adoption Cycle
I recently re-discovered a diagram making fun of adoption in enterprise IT and adapted it to SE industry vs. (academic) research :-)
While talking to Marvin Wyrich and Shalini Chakraborty about science communication, the issue of misalignment between the topics discussed at industry conferences vs. academic conferences came up. Currently, the GenAI hype overshadows everything, but looking into the past, (academic) SE research was often quite late to the game.
Take Continuous Integration as an example. In 2011, while I was a working student at JAM Software GmbH, we were using CruiseControl (if I remember correctly). That tool has been around since 2001. And yet, the topic became visible in SE research only after 2014-2016, e.g., with Michael Hilton’s research. Please correct me if I’m wrong!
IMHO, if we talk about relevance of SE research, one important thing to consider is relevance of the topics/problems we study. Sure, there needs to be academic freedom and curiosity-driven research as well, but I’m convinced that academic researchers also need to invest time into understanding the current state of SE practice. Otherwise, the best science communication - as an afterthought - won’t help.
So thanks to my former colleagues and friends at SAP, QAware GmbH, and other places for continuously helping me NOT to climb too high into the ivory tower :-)
Diagram licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.