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.