Case Study Research in Software Engineering: Guidelines and Examples

PREFACE

The authors’ first contact with case study research and qualitative analysis was around the turn of the millennium. For Rainer, the journey started when entering his PhD program in 1995, and guidance was given by an earlier edition of Yin’s book on case studies [216] from social sciences and Benbasat et al’s paper [19] from information systems. For Runeson, Höst, and Regnell, the journey began by studying the first edition of Robson’s book [161] and by inviting a sociologist, the late Dr. Peter Arvidson, to give a seminar on “sociologic research methodology,” which was a first step of our journey toward using these “fuzzy” tools for research.

Our experience of adapting and applying case study methodology from other disciplines to software engineering has motivated us to write this book. We intend to provide comprehensive guidance for researchers and students conducting case studies, for reviewers of case study manuscripts, and for readers of case study papers; and we do so to help these groups of people in their efforts to better understand and improve software engineering practice. The nature of case study research means that it is hard to provide precise guidelines, so we complement our guidelines with a range of examples; examples of not only “good practice” but also of mistakes that we have made and from which we hope others can learn. Hence, we provide examples that the reader may learn from and adapt to their situations.

The book is constituted of two main parts: ...