Case Study Research in Software Engineering: Guidelines and Examples

FOREWORD

This book is very timely given the increasing interest in case study research within the software engineering community and the realization by many that research that uses a case study approach provides us with a good understanding of what actually happens in the real world. What use is our research if we do not actually understand what is really happening and cannot provide useful insights into organizations targeting their practical needs?

Doing case study research in software engineering and ensuring that the research is thorough is not easy. Although there is a long history of case study research in the social sciences, it has been difficult to translate their research guidelines into the software engineering domain. This book will help both experienced and novice case study researchers improve their research methodology. The authors provide comprehensive examples of case study research they, and others, have conducted. They also critique the examples. This is very useful for researchers wanting to undertake case study research and will help them to avoid some of the problems already experienced by the authors and other researchers.

In case study research, we choose to study some phenomenon within its real-life setting. Our “unit of analysis” may be some aspect of a software engineering project, a software engineering methodology and its use within an organization, a software engineering section of an organization, or the whole or a particular part of a new or ongoing ...