The CESI series of workshops was born out of the need to shift the focus away from simply conducting empirical studies (be them case studies, experiments, surveys, etc.), and reporting their results, to putting them firmly in the context of the software industry. In other words, the aim was to better understand the challenges and opportunities brought about by the organisational context in the conduct of empirical studies. There were several reasons for this shift. Simply knowing empirical procedures (from the literature or by conducting studies in, often tamed, academic environments) didn't seem to prepare one for how to plan and conduct empirical studies in industry. There are just too many hurdles in the way of conducting successful studies in industry. Examples are: (i) understanding specific problems in practice such that conducting relevant studies would give some insight into solving observed problems; (ii) ploughing through organisational politics to zero down to key investigative questions and associated measurable variables; (iii) balancing between scientific purity in empirical procedures and being practical enough to yield usable results for making business decisions within short cycle-times; (iv) taking the results of studies and putting them into practice, in retrospect, to validate the conduct and the outcome of the studies; and more. |