The primary theory of software engineering is that an organization's Policies and Processes influence the quality of its Products. We call this the PPP Theory. Although empirical software engineering research has grown common, it is unclear whether researchers are trying to evaluate the PPP Theory. To assess this, we analyzed half (33) of the empirical works published over the last two years in three prominent software engineering conferences. In this sample, 70% focus on policies/processes or products, not both. Only 33% provided measurements relating policy/process and products. We make four recommendations: (1) Use PPP Theory in study design; (2) Study feedback relationships; (3) Diversify the studied feedforward relationships; and (4) Disentangle policy and process. Let us remember that research results are in the context of, and with respect to, the relationship between software products, processes, and policies.

翻译：软件工程的首要理论是组织的政策和过程影响其产品的质量，我们称之为PPP理论。尽管经验软件工程研究已日益普遍，但研究者是否在尝试验证PPP理论尚不明确。为评估这一情况，我们分析了近两年三个重要软件工程会议中半数（33篇）经验研究论文。样本结果显示，70%的研究仅聚焦于政策/过程或产品之一，而非两者兼顾；仅33%提供了政策/过程与产品之间的度量关联。我们提出四点建议：（1）在研究设计中应用PPP理论；（2）研究反馈关系；（3）多样化所研究的前馈关系；（4）将政策与过程分开考量。需谨记：研究结果始终植根于软件产品、过程与政策之间的关联背景之中。