Case Study Research in Software Engineering: Guidelines and Examples

EPILOGUE

Wenn jemand eine Reise tut, so kann er was erzählen.¹

Learning about case study research and also undertaking case study research has been a journey for the authors of this book; a journey now into its second decade. We have not traveled everywhere and of course we have not learned all there is to learn about case study research in software engineering. But as a result of our journey we believe that we have experiences that may be of value to others, and we willingly share those experiences with the empirical software engineering research community.

The learning and maturation of a research community is also a journey. For example, the value of flexibility in study design and the importance of qualitative data may be hard to appreciate and to therefore accept, particularly for those whose approach to research is built on the foundations of the natural sciences, where randomization and quantification are gold standards. It takes time to appreciate the unique and valuable contribution of case study research and, as a result, it understandably takes time to learn to distinguish between, for example, a biased experiment and a stringent case study.

We have “Learn(ed) to do by knowing and to know by doing” according to Dewey's pedagogy². For case study research in software engineering, we now offer practical Knowledge to those who seek to undertake case study in software engineering, and also to those who seek to learn from the results of others' case studies of software engineering. ...