Conferencia invitada: Prof. Dr. Robert Feldt

Conferenciante:

Prof. Dr. Robert Feldt, Chalmers University of Technology in Gothenburg, Sweden.

Título:

Where is (and should) Empirical Software Engineering (be) going?

Resumen:

Software Engineering is relatively young and as any scientific discipline it is evolving both in the topic it studies and in the methods it uses. However, one can ask if and in what sense it is also maturing? It is clear that there is a larger push for empirical studies; it is rare nowadays that papers are accepted in the top venues without extensive empirical support and validation. However, increasing the number/ratio of empirical studies might not be enough, we should also discuss the evolution of the topics studied and the methodological quality.

In this talk, I’ll share results on how empirical software engineering has evolved over the last 25 years both in the topics it studies, the methods used, and the underlying data collected. Based on this I will then consider if the current trends are the desirable ones and give pointers and inspiration to what we might do differently going forward. In particular, I will propose we need more precision in the hypotheses we study and in the claims we make. I will also argue our results should increasingly take the form of causal models and theories.

Acerca del conferenciante:

Prof. Robert Feldt is a Professor of Software Engineering at Chalmers University of Technology in Gothenburg, where he is part of the Software Engineering division at the Department of Computer Science and Engineering. He is also a part-time Professor of Software Engineering at Blekinge Institute of Technology in Karlskrona, Sweden. Since April 2017 I’m the co-Editor in Chief of Empirical Software Engineering (EMSE) Journal.