General Theory Of Software Engineering Research Articles

Invited Lecture: Notions of 'Theory' and their Practical Consequences in the Discipline of Software 'Engineering' (including Information Systems Design)

This contribution provides the full text to the invited lecture which I gave at the Annual Seminar of the Southern African Chapter of the Association for Information Systems (AISSAC), September the 14th, 2020. In this contribution, which thoroughly elaborates some of my earlier thoughts on this topic, I argue science-philosophically that the quest for a so-called 'general theory of software engineering' (GTSE) is, all-in-all, not feasible. More positively I also argue that software 'engineering' (which includes information systems design) might well become a 'proper' engineering discipline via the development and appropriate application of a multitude of domain-specific micro theories, by which successful engineering disciplines are typically characterized. Since different meta-theoretical opinions can be found even about what is a 'micro theory', I also explicate which definition of the notion of 'micro theory' is most appropriate in (and for) this particular domain of discourse.

Separability Principles for a General Theory of Software Engineering

The four GTSE (General Theory of Software Engineering) Workshops have brought awareness to, more or less mature, differing approaches, candidate theories for SE (Software Engineering). But one asks how to appraise the generality of these theories? And in case they are specialized sub-theories, are they amenable to combination into more general theories? The papers of the fourth GTSE Workshop addressed these questions by means of what can be collectively refer to as Separability Principles . In a sense, participants used well known techniques applied to design software systems to design SE theories. Separability is a powerful tool for understanding relations among SE candidate theories and guide how to assemble sub-theories into a general framework. Participants enthusiastically debated a series of related issues. The specialized vs. general theories questions were raised in diverse forms, such as, SE meaning multiple things, good predictive theories for narrow problems, ability of General theories to generate specific theories, and last but not least, whether "General" capture the contents of the workshop itself. The 4th GTSE edition was collocated with ICSE 2015 (International Conference of Software Engineering) in Firenze, Italy

A general theory of software engineering: Balancing human, social and organizational capitals

There exists no generally accepted theory in software engineering, and at the same time a scientific discipline needs theories. Some laws, hypotheses and conjectures exist, but yet no generally accepted theory. Several researchers and initiatives emphasize the need for theory in the discipline. The objective of this paper is to formulate a theory of software engineering. The theory is generated from empirical observations of industry practice, including several case studies and many years of experience in working closely between academia and industry. The theory captures the balancing of three different intellectual capitals: human, social and organizational capitals, respectively. The theory is formulated using a method for building theories in software engineering. It results in a theory where the relationships between the three different intellectual capitals are explored and explained. The theory is illustrated based on an industrial case study, where it is shown how decisions made in industry practice are explainable with the formulated theory, and the consequences of the decisions are made explicit. Based on the positive results, it is concluded that the theory may have a good explanatory power, although more evaluations are needed.

The Tarpit – A general theory of software engineering

ContextRecent years have seen an increasing interest in general theories of software engineering. As in other academic fields, these theories aim to explain and predict the key phenomena of the discipline. ObjectiveThe present article proposes a general theory of software engineering that we have labeled the Tarpit theory, in reference to the 1982 epigram by Alan Perlis. MethodAn integrative theory development approach was employed to develop the Tarpit theory from four underlying theoretical fields: (i) languages and automata, (ii) cognitive architecture, (iii) problem solving, and (iv) organization structure. Its applicability was explored in three test cases. ResultsThe theory demonstrates an explanatory and predictive potential for a diverse set of software engineering phenomena. It demonstrates a capability of explaining Brooks’s law, of making predictions about domain-specific languages, and of evaluating the pros and cons of the practice of continuous integration. ConclusionThe presented theory appears capable of explaining and predicting a wide range of software engineering phenomena. Further refinement and application of the theory remains as future work.

How to Develop a General Theory of Software Engineering

Many academic disciplines have general theories, which apply across the discipline and explain diverse phenomena. General theories facilitate developing a cumulative body of knowledge, increase a field's resistance to fads and pseudoscience, and help us respond to novel situations where old heuristics break down. The goal of the SEMAT General Theory of Software Engineering (GTSE) workshop is therefore to promote developing and testing general theories for software engineering. The Third GTSE workshop was co-located with the International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE) in 2014. Participants explored different types of theories and how to assemble them into a framework. Participants debated how to make theories practical to practitioners and agreed that different types of practitioners (e.g. developers) have different needs for theories.

System components of a general theory of software engineering

The contribution of this paper to a general theory of software engineering is twofold: it presents the model system concept, and it integrates the software engineering design process into a decision making theory and a value-based decision-under-risk process. The model system concept is defined as a collection of interconnected and consistent components that work together for defining, developing, and delivering a software system. This model system concept is used to represent the multiple facets of a software engineering project such as stakeholders and models related to domain/environment, success, decision, product, process, and property. The model system concept is derived from software development practices in the industry and academia.The theoretical decision framework acts as a central governance component for a given software engineering project. Applying this decision framework allows for effectively managing risks and uncertainties related to success in the project building stage. Especially, this puts the design process in an economic perspective, where concepts such as value-of-waiting, value-of-information and possible outcomes can be coped with explicitly. In practice, the decision framework allows for the optimal control of modern adaptive software development. In particular, one can use dynamic programming to find the optimal sequence of decisions to be made considering a defined time horizon. In this way we can relate our contribution to a theory of software engineering to the well-studied areas of automatic control, optimization, decision theory and Bayesian analysis.Computational case studies exemplify the conceptual innovations proposed in this paper.

Report on the Second SEMAT Workshop on General Theory of Software Engineering (GTSE 2013)

Many academic disciplines have general theories, which apply across the discipline and underlie much of its research. Examples include the Big Bang theory (cosmology), Maxwell's equations (electrod...

Report on the first SEMAT workshop on general theory of software engineering (GTSE 2012)

Many academic disciplines have general theories, which apply across the discipline and underlie much of its research. Examples include the Big Bang theory (cosmology), Maxwell's equations (electrodynamics), the theories of the cell and evolution (biology), the theory of supply and demand (economics), and the general theory of crime (criminology). Software engineering, in contrast, has no widely-accepted general theory. Consequently, the SEMAT Initiative organized a workshop to encourage development of general theory in software engineering. Workshop participants reached broad consensus that software engineering would benefit from better theoretical foundations, which require diverse theoretical approaches, consensus on a primary dependent variable and better instrumentation and descriptive research.