What Makes Good Research in Software Engineering?

Looks at research phases:

• Basic research. Investigate basic ideas and concepts, put initial structure on the problem, frame critical research questions.

• Concept formulation. Circulate ideas informally, develop a research community, converge on a compatible set of ideas, publish solutions to specific subproblems.

• Development and extension. Make preliminary use of the technology, clarify underlying ideas, generalize the approach.

Science and engineering research fields can be characterized in terms of the kinds of questions they find worth investigating, the research methods they adopt, and the criteria by which they evaluate their results. I will present such a characterization for software engineering, showing the diversity of research strategies and the way they shift as ideas mature. Understanding these strategies should help software engineers design research plans and report the results clearly; it should also help explain the character of software engineering research to computer science at large and to other scientists.