ABSTRACT

Although this chapter is mainly about how evidence-based ideas can be used in software engineering, we actually begin by examining some prior activities that helped pave the way for an acceptance of evidence-based thinking. To do so, we first examine some of the ‘challenges’ that empirical software engineer researchers were already posing, as well as some of the other factors that helped to make it the right time to introduce evidence-based thinking to software engineering in the years after 2004. We then describe a few examples of how evidence-based research has contradicted some widely-held beliefs about software engineering practices, after which we discuss what the concept of EBSE implies for software engineering and what the use of a systematic review might expect to achieve within a software engineering context. Finally, we examine some limitations that apply to evidence-based practices as used in software engineering research.