There are numerous challenges, and rewards, in conducting empirical studies in industry. Challenges emanate from the multi-faceted complexity: in products, systems and services; development, evolution and management processes; vendor-customer models and relationships; organizational settings; business contexts and their dynamics; etc. Yet there are rewards for successful studies in terms of utility of the results for industry. This workshop builds on the results and momentum of previous CESI workshops held during ICSE (2013-2016). We seek for research contributions highlighting how research results are put into action in industrial settings and how much cross company learning takes place through replication of empirical studies in different contexts. We are also interested in the impact of empirical studies conducted in industry, including successes and failures in the form of ‘lessons learned’. We also seek for papers that discuss empirical methods and how they can produce valuable results for industry, e.g., aggregation of empirical evidence into practical guidelines. This year, we would like to give a special emphasis on building and managing big data systems and the use and benefit of empirical studies in this context. Big data systems bring new types of software engineering challenges such as test optimization, planning for new requirements and/ or enhancements, optimization of code/ algorithms, decentralization of development tasks, the role of software analytics, etc.

Topics of interest include, but are not restricted to: impact and utility of study results in specific industrial contexts, replication and families of studies in different industrial settings, issues in sharing and publishing datasets and results, validation of suggestive investigative questions; communication between researchers and practitioners; stakeholder involvement in studies; establishing relationships; dealing with threats coming from the study context; interpreting results in industrial contexts; generalizing the findings from case studies; impact of industrial settings on the studies; aggregation of results from individual studies.

Paper categories

Experience reports (7 pages max) describe the experience with conducting studies in industry over a period of time and lessons learned that would be useful to be added to the CESI body of knowledge.

Technical papers (7 pages max) describe either studies conducted in industry highlighting concrete results and the way they were designed and conducted to overcome challenges, or on empirical methods that produce actionable results. Also expected in these papers are comparisons of the advances made against the state-of-the-art.

Vision papers (4 pages max) are expected to describe new directions to follow in conducting empirical studies in industry. Convincing arguments supported by clear rationale need to be included.

Practitioner messages (2 pages) are particularly intended for practitioners who are invited to submit their views on conducting empirical studies in industry.

Papers must describe original work not submitted or presented at other forums. Accepted papers will be published in electronic ICSE proceedings. The official publication date of the workshop proceedings is the date the ICSE proceedings are made available in the ACM Digital Library. This date may be up to two weeks prior to the first day of ICSE 2017. The official publication date affects the deadline for any patent filings related to published work.

Keynote speaker and invited talks

Keynote by Prof. Magne Jørgensen (Simula, Norway) “Working with industry to conduct empirical software engineering research: Patterns of successful and failed collaborations”. Invited talks by Adam R Neal (IBM, Canada) and Prof. Markku Oivo (Univ. of Oulu, Finland).

Submission information

Submissions are handled via Easychair (https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=cesi2017). They must be formatted according to ICSE 2017 guidelines (cf. http://icse2017.gatech.edu/submission-guidelines).

Paper length
Experience reports 7 pages
Technical papers 7 pages
Vision papers 4 pages
Practitioner messages 1-2 pages

Important Dates
Submission of papers: January 20, 2017
Notification: February 17, 2017
Camera-ready: February 27, 2017
Workshop: May 2X, 2017