For more than 40 years, software development has been striving to become an engineering discipline. Despite many advances in software development, it remains closer to a craft than to engineering even today. The results of applying the vast majority of software engineering methods and techniques are unpredictable; the underlying causes of most development events remain unknown (why some projects fail and others succeed, why a particular technique proves highly effective in certain circumstances but fails to work well in others, among other questions).
For years, a group of researchers has argued that these shortcomings stem from the methodology used in software engineering research. They believe that the generation and accumulation of knowledge about software construction should align with the scientific method followed in the vast majority of sciences. Experimental Software Engineering maintains that the scientific method is applicable to the study of software development.
In this lecture, the speaker presented arguments on why and how the scientific method can (and should) be applied to the generation of knowledge about software construction, as well as the benefits that this rigorous research method could bring to software companies.
Natalia Juristo holds a Ph.D. in Computer Science from the Polytechnic University of Madrid (UPM), is a Professor of Software Engineering at UPM, and serves as Coordinator of the European Master’s in Software Engineering (IS), in collaboration with the University of Bolzano (Italy), the University of Kaiserslautern (Germany), and Blekinge University (Sweden). She has had an extensive research career in the areas of empirical software engineering, usability, requirements engineering, and software testing. She is the author and editor of various books and publications in scientific journals and conferences. She has served on program committees (including ICSE, RE, REFSQ, ESEM, and ISESE) and has been a member of editorial boards and a guest editor for special issues of several journals, such as IEEE Software, the Journal of Empirical Software Engineering, the Journal of Software and Systems, Data and Knowledge Engineering, and the International Journal of Software Engineering and Knowledge Engineering. She also served on the organizing committees of SEKE 97, SEKE01, ESEM07, and the workshop "Bridging the Gap between HCI and SE" at ICSE03 and "Replication in Empirical SE Research" at ICSE10. He served as General Chair for ESEM07, SNPD02, and SEKE01; and as programme for ISESE04 and SEKE97. He is a senior member of the IEEE and has received the Computer Society Golden Core award. In 2009, he received an honorary doctorate from the Blekinge Institute of Technology ( Sweden).