1. What Industry Wants from Research
ICSE 2011
Lionel C. Briand
Simula Research Laboratory
and
University of Oslo
© Lionel Briand

2. Perception from industry
• Disconnect
• Scalability (heuristics versus exact
methods)
• Applicability (context factors and
constraints)
© Lionel Briand

3. Compelling evidence
• Realistic conditions
– Scale
– Human factors
– Impact of change
– Cost-benefit analysis
© Lionel Briand

4. Research questions
• Many … and they have not changed
in 20 years
• Requirements changes
• Large scale testing
• Product lines and complex
configuration
• Certification
© Lionel Briand

5. Most relevant empirical finding
• Requirements traceability
• Regression testing
• Global software development
• Change propagation (MSR)
• … ???
© Lionel Briand

6. Success Stories
• (Model-based) testing and empirical
research at Microsoft Research
• Research on inspections and model
-based testing at Fraunhofer
• Our research at Simula, though
recent, is having a significant
impact on our partners
© Lionel Briand

7. Dissemination to industry
• Different research paradigm than
the dominating one is needed
Problem
identification Realistic
validation
Release
solution
Ind. Partners
Problem
formulation
Candidate
Lab Study
State-of-the-art Solutions
Initial
validation
© Lionel Briand

8. Engage industry in research
• Engage researchers in industry: Get
researchers to take an interest in
industry problems
• Different research paradigm (engineering
research)
• Combine research and technology
transfer (same people)
• Understand problems an assess solutions
in context
© Lionel Briand

9. Reasons and Solutions for the
Perceived Lack of Impact of SE
Research
• Potential reasons:
– Scalability
– Interest
– Publications
– Difficulty of real problems
– Integration of research results
• Partial solutions
– Different research paradigm
– Scalable solutions: combining MDE & SBSE
– Empirical studies: better understanding, demonstrable result
– Long term relationships: understand the domain, focus on
important problems
© Lionel Briand