Watching the Detectives: An Initial Report on an Industrial Experiment to Collaborate with the Empirical Software Engineering Research Community

Context: Evidence-based practice within healthcare benefits from the Cochrane Collaboration providing trustworthy evidence that can be used to inform clinical decisions. Currently no equivalent resource exists for the practice of software engineering. With the ever increasing dependence of society upon software an analogue of the collaboration for the discipline of software engineering would appear to be of potentially significant societal benefit. Objectives: This study investigated attitudes of the empirical software engineering community, as exemplified by attendees at an research focused conference, to the hypothesis that an analogue of the Cochrane Collaboration would be beneficial. Method: An online survey was employed to capture opinions of participants in the EASE’16 conference on the hypothesis. During a presentation at the industrial track of the conference attendees (27) were invited to complete the survey. Subsequently all conference attendees (90) were provided with details of the survey, irrespective of whether they had attended the presentation or not. No closing date for the survey was specified. Results: In total 9 conference attendees completed the survey: of whom 7 had attended the industrial track presentation. These figures approximate to a response rate of 26% for those attending the presentation and exactly 10% for conference participants overall. This response rate is insufficient to enable statistical analysis of the data obtained through the survey. Trends are, however, evident in the rankings of the responses provided. These trends are consistent with opinions and observations volunteered by a diverse range of individuals active in software engineering and allied fields dating from 2014 to the present. Conclusions: At this time there is insufficient data to validate the hypothesis. Nevertheless experience, informal observation and opinion continues to accumulate to provide evidence in support of the validity of the hypothesis, albeit principally in anecdotal form.