Case Study Research in Software Engineering: Guidelines and Examples

CHAPTER 6

REPORTING AND DISSEMINATION

6.1 INTRODUCTION

A case study cannot be completed successfully without reporting at least the findings of the study. There are however strong arguments for also reporting other aspects of the case study (e.g., the case study protocol) as well as for being prepared to disseminate artifacts collected during the study (while maintaining ethical responsibilities and commercial confidence) such as interview data.

There are a surprising number and diversity of audiences to which the researcher may need to report and disseminate. A consequence is that there are likely to be a surprising number of reports to prepare and publish, with these reports being varied in their content and structure.

Yin [217] considers the reporting activity to be one of the most challenging activities when doing case study research, and also the activity that places the greatest demands on the case study researcher. Indeed, Yin implies that those researchers who do not like composing reports, of various kinds, may want to reconsider whether case study research is an appropriate type of investigation for them.

In this chapter, we focus primarily on case study-specific issues when preparing reports and disseminating artifacts. We recognize, however that a case study can contain other methods of enquiry within it, such as a survey, or archival analysis; and, conversely, that a case study may be part of a larger study. So although this chapter focuses on case study-specific issues, ...