IndAcSE: Meta-analysis of Industry-Academia Collaborations in Software Engineering

Research collaboration between industry and academia supports improvement and innovation in industry and helps ensure the industrial relevance of academic research. However, many researchers and practitioners in the community believe that the level of joint industry-academia collaboration (IAC) projects in Software Engineering (SE) research is relatively low, creating a barrier between research and practice. The goal of the empirical study reported in this paper is to explore and characterize the state of IAC with respect to industrial needs, developed solutions, impacts of the projects and also a set of challenges, patterns and anti-patterns identified by a recent Systematic Literature Review (SLR) study. To address the above goal, we conducted an opinion survey among researchers and practitioners with respect to their experience in IAC. Our dataset includes 101 data points from IAC projects conducted in 21 different countries. Our findings include: (1) the most popular topics of the IAC projects, in the dataset, are: software testing, quality, process, and project managements; (2) over 90% of IAC projects result in at least one publication; (3) almost 50% of IACs are initiated by industry, busting the myth that industry tends to avoid IACs; and (4) 61% of the IAC projects report having a positive impact on their industrial context, while 31% report no noticeable impacts or were “not sure”. To improve this situation, we present evidence-based recommendations to increase the success of IAC projects, such as the importance of testing pilot solutions before using them in industry. This study aims to contribute to the body of evidence in the area of IAC, and benefit researchers and practitioners. Using the data and evidence presented in this paper, they can conduct more successful IAC projects in SE by being aware of the challenges and how to overcome them, by applying best practices (patterns), and by preventing anti-patterns.

There has been a recent push to increase the practical relevance and impact of software engineering (SE) research. Even though many practitioners and researchers agree that this change is desirable, only some concrete actions have been taken in the community so far. In this paper, we present our experience in a large number of collaborative research projects (26 projects) which have had practical (industrial) impact. These projects have been conducted in several different countries, have focused on different SE topics (e.g., testing, software maintenance, and documentation), and have spanned over different domains (e.g., embedded software, defense and telecom, robotics). We characterize the industrial needs, contributions, and impacts of the projects. Furthermore, via a participant-observation research approach, the authors analyze their diary reflections recorded during the projects and synthesize their experience into a set of seven lessons learned on how to conduct successful industry-academia collaborations. Our hope is that the evidence and experience provided by our example projects would motivate SE practitioners and researchers to engage more on collaborative projects.

For a highly relevant and applied research area like software testing industry-academia collaboration is of uttermost importance. In this paper we reflect on how industry-academia collaboration can be improved based on evidence from four empirical studies. We therefore first present four studies providing evidence on the (1) perceived level of challenges in testing activities, (2) focus areas in industrial and academic software testing conferences, (3) synergies between industrial and academic software testing conferences, as well as (4) the need for consideration of grey literature. Then, we reflect on issues, which we think can improve the link and synergies between industry and academia in software testing, i.e., research topics, guidelines and evidence, value and risk, context and scalability, action research and education as well as grey literature and open science.

A survey of industry-academia collaborations in software engineering (survey questions)

A survey of industry-academia collaborations in software engineering (survey questions)

A survey of Industry-Academia Collaborative Projects in Software Engineering (survey questions)

Research collaboration between industry and academia supports improvement and innovation in industry and helps to ensure industrial relevance in academic research. However, many researchers and practitioners believe that the level of joint industry-academia collaboration (IAC) in sooware engineering (SE) research is still relatively low, compared to the amount of activity in each of the two communities. e goal of the empirical study reported in this paper is to characterize the state of IAC with respect to a set of challenges , paaerns and anti-paaerns identiied by a recent Systematic Literature Review study. To address the above goal, we gathered the opinions of researchers and practitioners w.r.t. their experiences in IAC projects. Our dataset includes 47 opinion data points related to a large set of projects conducted in 10 diierent countries. We aim to contribute to the body of evidence in the area of IAC, for the beneet of researchers and practitioners in conducting future successful IAC projects in SE. As an output, the study presents a set of empirical ndings and evidence-based recommendations to increase the success of IAC projects. CCS CONCEPTS • Sooware and its engineering → Sooware creation and management ; • Social and professional topics → Professional topics; * Supported by FCT (Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia) within the Project Scope UID/CEC/00319/2013.

Context: The global software industry and the software engineering (SE) academia are two large communities. However, unfortunately, the level of joint industry-academia collaborations in SE is still relatively very low, compared to the amount of activity in each of the two communities. It seems that the two ’camps’ show only limited interest/motivation to collaborate with one other. Many researchers and practitioners have written about the challenges, success patterns (what to do, i.e., how to collaborate) and anti-patterns (what not do do) for industry-academia collaborations.