Structuring Software Engineering Case Studies to Cover Multiple Perspectives

This post is my riff on a paper titled Structuring Software Engineering Case Studies to Cover Multiple Perspectives by Emil Boerjesson and Rober Feldt from Chalmers Univ. The paper offers suggestions on how multiple perspectives can be ensured by using a 6 step process. In their case study, they wanted to ensure they looked at the V&V process using four different perspectives; Business, Architecture, Process and Organization (BAPO) as well as from three distinct temporal perspectives; past, present, future (PCF).

The paper does not have any deep contribution to the case study approach to software engineering research; however it does provide an easy paper for the start of understanding how case studies can be used in the research of software engineering.

They call a case study:

• an observational research method,
• a way to investigate a phenomenon in its context,
• applicable when there is no clear distinction between the phenomena and its context,
• have guidelines recently published by Runeson and Hoest [1]

Their six-step methodology is:

1. Get Knowledge about the Domain
2. Develop focus Questions/Areas
3. Choice of Detailed Research Methods
4. Data collection
5. Data analysis and Alignment
6. Valuation Discussion

[1] P. Runeson and M. Hoest, "Guidelines for conducting and reporting case study research in software engineering," Empirical software Engineering, vol. 14, no. 2, pp. 131-164, 2009.