CASE STUDY (A RESEARCH METHODOLOGY IN SE/CS perspective) 1 By: Prof. Dr. Bashir Ahmad Qurtaba University D.I.Khan

GOALS OF THE PRESENTATION  To understand what is a case study  Differentiate Case Studies from other research methods  How to conduct a Case Study 2

WHAT IS CASE STUDY:  Case study is a suitable research methodology for software engineering research.  “An empirical inquiry that investigates a contemporary phenomenon within its real-life context, especially when the boundaries between phenomenon and context are not clearly evident.” Yin (2002). 3

WHAT IS CASE STUDY:  Case studies offer in-depth understanding of how and why certain phenomena occur, and can reveal the mechanisms by which cause- effect relationships occur.  Case studies do not generate the same results on e.g. causal relationships as controlled experiments do, but they provide deeper understanding of the phenomena understudy. 4

EXAMPLE  An Extreme programming(XP) study, investigating how Agile software development can coexist with a stage-gate managed product development 5

TYPES OF CASE STUDY There are two types of case studies:  Exploratory case studies are used as initial investigations of some phenomena to derive new hypotheses and build theories.  Confirmatory case studies are used to test existing theories.Confirmatory case studies can also be useful for choosing between rival theories. 6

CASE STUDY RESEARCH PROCESS Five major steps for conducting a case study are: 1.Design(objectives are defined and the case study is planned ) 2.Preparation for Data collection( procedures & protocols for data collection are defined ) 3.Collecting evidence( execution with data collection on the studied case ) 4.Analysis of collected data 5.Reporting 7

8 1. Case Study Design and Planning

A.DEFINING THE CASE  Objective—what to achieve?(exploratory/confirmatory)  The case—what is studied? It contains one/more unit of analysis.(software development project, individual, group of people).  Research questions—what to know?  Methods—how to collect data?(interviews, documentation analysis etc)  Selection strategy—where to seek data? 9

B.CASE STUDY PROTOCOL  The case study protocol is a container for the design decisions  The protocol is a continuously changed document that is updated when the plans for the case study are changed.  It prevents the researcher from missing to collect data that were planned to be collected 10

C.ETHICAL CONSIDERATIONS  Subjects and organizations must explicitly agree to participate in the case study  Results of Case study may be sensitive to a company. 11

2.COLLECTING DATA 12

A.DIFERENT DATA SOURCES  It is important to use several data sources in a case study. If the same conclusion can be drawn from several sources of information, i.e. triangulation, this conclusion is stronger than a conclusion based a single source.  Triangulation means taking different angles towards the studied object 13

B.INTERVIEW  Data collection through interviews is important in case studies. In interview-based data collection, the researcher asks a series of questions to a set of subjects about the areas of interest in the case study 14

C.OBSERVATIONS  Observations can be conducted in order to investigate how a certain task is conducted by software engineers.  One approach is to monitor a group of software engineers with a video recorder and later on analyze the recording  Another way is of repeatedly asking questions like “What is your strategy?” and “What are you thinking? 15

D.ARCHIVAL DATA  Archival data refers to, for example, meeting minutes, documents from different development phases, organizational charts, financial records, and previously collected measurements in an organization. 16

3.DATA ANALYSIS 17

A.QUANTITATIVE DATA ANALYSIS  Descriptive statistics, such as mean values, standard deviations are used to get an understanding of the data that has been collected 18

B.Qualitative Data Analysis  The basic objective of this analysis is to derive conclusions from the data, keeping a clear chain of evidence.  The chain of evidence means that a reader should be able to follow the derivation of results and conclusions from the collected data 19

C.VALIDITY  The validity of a study denotes the trustworthiness of the results, 20

4.REPORTING 21

REPORTING  The report communicates the findings of the study. Reports may have different audiences, such as peer researchers, policy makers, research sponsors etc.  a case study report  tell what the study was about  communicate a clear sense of the studied case  provide a “history of the inquiry” so the reader can see what was done, by whom and how. 22

EXAMPLE EXPLANATION  The objective of Extreme programming(XP) study was to investigate how an agile process can coexist with a stage-gate management organization  Two units of analysis are people from two different companies,  Data were primarily collected using interviews  Analysis was conducted with qualitative methods, but this was combined with a limited quantitative analysis  Results were presented to the involved companies in seminar format, and to the research community in journal format 23

KEY TERMS  Agile software development is a group of software development methodologies software development methodologies  Extreme programming is a type of agile software developmentagile software development  A stage–gate model, also referred to as a phase– gate process, is a project management technique in which an initiative or project (e.g., new product development, process improvement, business change) is divided into stages (or phases) separated by gateproject managementnew product development 24

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