Seminars & Colloquia

Per Runeson

Lund University

"Case Study Research in Software Engineering"

Friday October 21, 2011 10:00 AM
Location: 3211, EB2 NCSU Centennial Campus
(Visitor parking instructions)

 

Abstract:
The term "case study" appears every now and then in the title of software engineering research papers. However, the presented studies range from very ambitious and well organized studies in the field, to small toy examples that claim to be case studies. 
 
Case studies are conducted in several fields of research, e.g. social science, political science, and economics. They focus on phenomena in their context, especially when the boundary between the phenomenon and its context is unclear. This is particularly true in software engineering, where the interaction between technical, organizational and  'people' issue are impossible to separate, and hence case study is feasible research method in software engineering.
 
This presentation aims to clarify what constitutes a case study that fulfills scientific criteria of good research, and how it can be applied to software engineering research. It gives an overview of available practical guidelines for case study research in software engineering, based on experience from conducting such studies. Those wanting to prepare for the seminar may read the following paper:
 
Runeson, P., Höst, M.: Guidelines for Conducting and Reporting Case Study Research in Software Engineering. Empirical Software Engineering 14(2), 131–164 (2009) http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10664-008-9102-8 

 

Short Bio:

Dr. Per Runeson is a professor in software engineering at the Department of Computer Science, Lund University, Sweden, and is the academic leader of the Software Engineering Research Group since 2001, and now a visiting professor at NCSU. He received a PhD from Lund University in 1998 under supervision of Prof. Claes Wohlin, and an MSc in Computer Science and Engineering from the same university in 1991. He has five years of industrial experience as a consulting expert in software engineering at Q-Labs, Sweden.

Prof. Runeson's research interests concern methods and processes for software development, with a certain interest for software testing. The research is directed towards development and evaluation of efficient and effective methods to facilitate and measure software quality. The research has a strong empirical focus, involving surveys, case studies and experiment conducted in close cooperation with industry partners.

Prof. Runeson has published more than 100 refereed papers in international journals, conferences and workshops, bringing a 4th rank worldwide in JSS ranking of systems and software engineering research scholars, based on publication records 2003-2007. He is the coauthor of a book on experimentation in software engineering and continues to contribute to the methodological development of the field.

Host: Laurie Williams, Computer Science


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