Why and how did empirical software engineering get started?
Posted by elbaum | Posted on 04-14-2011
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Perhaps the most recognized pioneer in the field is Victor Basili (www.cs.umd.edu/~basili) who not only published some of the earlier work in the area in one o the first “empirical” laboratories (NASA Software Engineering Laboratory) but also founded the Empirical Software Engineering Journal (http://www.springer.com/computer/swe/journal/10664) and lead the formation of a community in empirical software engineers (ESEM, ISERN …). He started to work in this area in the early 70′s.One of the first software engineering paper with “Experimental” in the title: “A controlled experiment quantitatively comparing software development approaches”, Basili and Reider, TSE 1981, is actually a very good read.
Dr. Basili argues that understanding a discipline involves observation, model building, experimentation, encapsulation of knowledge, and evolving knowledge over time. Software engineering is just like any other discipline, requiring an empirical approach to be understood. That is why we have empirical software engineering. What is unique about it is that it applies to software products and processes.
