On establishing the essential components of a technology-dependant framework: A strawman framework for industrial case study-based research

A goal of evidence-based software engineering is to provide a means by which industry practitioners can make rational decisions about technology adoption. When a technology is mature enough for potential widespread use, practitioners find empirical evidence most compelling when the study has taken place in a live, industrial situation in an environment comparable to their own. However, empirical software engineering is in need of guidelines and standards to direct industrial case studies so that the results of this research are valuable and can be combined into an evidentiary base. In this paper, we present a high-level view of a measurement framework that has been used with multiple agile software development industrial case studies. We propose that this technology-dependent framework can be used as a strawman for a guideline of data collection, analysis, and reporting of industrial case studies. Our goal in offering the framework as a strawman is to solicit input from the community on a guideline for the essential components of a technology-dependent framework for industrial case study research.