It is my belief that software engineers not only need to know software engineering methods and processes, but that they also should know how to assess them. Conse quently, I have taught principles of experimentation and empirical studies as part of the software engineering curriculum. Until now, this meant selecting a text from another discipline, usually psychology, and augmenting it with journal or confer ence papers that provide students with software engineering examples of experi ments and empirical studies. This book fills an important gap in the software engineering literature: it pro vides a concise, comprehensive look at an important aspect of software engineer ing: experimental analysis of how well software engineering methods, methodologies, and processes work. Since all of these change so rapidly in our field, it is important to know how to evaluate new ones. This book teaches how to go about doing this and thus is valuable not only for the software engineering stu dent, but also for the practicing software engineering professional who will be able to • Evaluate software engineering techniques. • Determine the value (or lack thereof) of claims made about a software engineer ing method or process in published studies. Finally, this book serves as a valuable resource for the software engineering researcher.
Reviews
`This is a well written and concise book, which provides the reader with the essentials necessary to design, conduct and analyse a software engineering experiment. Its value lies in that it is specifically written for the software engineering field, and has surveyed the major contributions by a number of leading researchers in this area. A `how to' book is always welcome, both as a useful starting point to the inexperienced and as a helpful reference and reminder of best practice to others.' Software Testing Verification and Reliability, 11 (2001)
Authors and Affiliations
Lund University, Sweden
Claes Wohlin,
Per Runeson,
Martin Höst,
Magnus C. Ohlsson,
Björn Regnell,
Anders Wesslén
Bibliographic Information
Book Title: Experimentation in Software Engineering
Book Subtitle: An Introduction
Authors: Claes Wohlin, Per Runeson, Martin Höst, Magnus C. Ohlsson, Björn Regnell, Anders Wesslén
