Over twenty years ago, the Software Engineering (SE) research community have been involved with Evidence-Based Software Engineering (EBSE). EBSE aims to inform industrial practice with the best evidence from rigorous research, preferably from systematic literature reviews (SLRs). Since then, SE researchers have conducted many SLRs, perfected their SLR procedures, proposed alternative ways of presenting their results (such as Evidence Briefings), and profusely discussed how to conduct research that impacts practice. Nevertheless, there is still a feeling that SLRs' results are not reaching practitioners. Something is missing. In this vision paper, we introduce Evidence to Decision (EtD) frameworks from the health sciences, which propose gathering experts in panels to assess the existing best evidence about the impact of an intervention in all relevant outcomes and make structured recommendations based on them. The insight we can leverage from EtD frameworks is not their structure per se but all the relevant criteria for making recommendations to practitioners from SLRs. Furthermore, we provide a worked example based on an SE SLR. We also discuss the challenges the SE research and practice community may face when adopting EtD frameworks, highlighting the need for more comprehensive criteria in our recommendations to industry practitioners.
翻译:二十多年前,软件工程研究界开始参与基于证据的软件工程。EBSE旨在通过严谨研究(优选系统文献综述)的最佳证据来指导工业实践。此后,SE研究者开展了大量SLR,完善了SLR流程,提出了替代性的结果呈现方式(如证据简报),并深入探讨了如何开展影响实践的研究。然而,人们仍感到SLR成果未能有效触达实践者。某些环节存在缺失。在本愿景论文中,我们引入健康科学领域的证据到决策框架,该框架建议组建专家小组评估现有关于干预措施在所有相关结果中影响的最佳证据,并据此提出结构化建议。我们可以从EtD框架中汲取的洞见并非其结构本身,而是从SLR向实践者提出建议时所需的所有相关准则。此外,我们基于一项SE领域的SLR提供了具体示例。我们还讨论了SE研究与实践社群在采用EtD框架时可能面临的挑战,强调在向行业实践者提出建议时需要更全面的评估准则。