Research

Identifying relevant research problems is perhaps the most important issue in research in software engineering [Tekinerdogan 2007]. We interpret relevancy here as a valuable service for the software engineering domain in particular and the community in general. In principle research on software engineering can be categorized as follows:

No research: No research is done in the field of software engineering. Perhaps some courses are given on software engineering but research is largely missing.

Research-but-no-transfer: Hereby, academicians work on some research problems but the research results are never transferred to the industry in due time. This is because either the research problems and/or solutions are not relevant, or because there is no systematic approach to support the transfer process.

Research-then-transfer: Research is not or possibly initially defined in collaboration with the industry. However, after the research definition phase there is practically no collaboration with the industrial context. Both evolve separately and in due time the defined research problems and/or research results become less relevant. 

Industry-as-laboratory: A complementary approach that aims to identify relevant research problems and solutions through close interaction with the industry [Potts 94]. Research problems can be initiated either at the academic level or directly within an industrial context. The main issue here is that during the research a continuous interaction with the industry is defined. The following figure shows the industry-as-laboratory strategy:

Fig. The research strategy that is adopted by Bilsen: Industry-as-laboratory. 

Bilsen aims to apply the industry-as-laboratory approach [Potts ] as much as possible. This approach is also in alignment with our background and experiences in earlier projects. We think that with this strategy we cannot only address relevant problems but also provide relevant solutions and publish high quality scientific papers [Tekinerdogan 2007].