Industry-Academia Research Collaboration in Software Engineering: The Certus Model

TL;DR

This paper presents the Certus Model, a structured framework for effective industry-academia collaboration in software engineering, emphasizing participative knowledge creation and continuous joint problem solving over an eight-year research period.

Contribution

The paper introduces the Certus Model, a comprehensive seven-phase framework that advances existing collaboration models by covering the entire lifecycle of participative research in software engineering.

Findings

The Certus Model delineates seven distinct phases of collaboration.

It emphasizes active dialogue and continuous commitment for successful knowledge co-creation.

The model is grounded in eight years of qualitative data from industry-academia collaboration.

Abstract

Context: Research collaborations between software engineering industry and academia can provide significant benefits to both sides, including improved innovation capacity for industry, and real-world environment for motivating and validating research ideas. However, building scalable and effective research collaborations in software engineering is known to be challenging. While such challenges can be varied and many, in this paper we focus on the challenges of achieving participative knowledge creation supported by active dialog between industry and academia and continuous commitment to joint problem solving. Objective: This paper aims to understand what are the elements of a successful industry-academia collaboration that enable the culture of participative knowledge creation. Method: We conducted participant observation collecting qualitative data spanning 8 years of collaborative research between a software engineering research group on software V&V and the Norwegian IT sector. The collected data was analyzed and synthesized into a practical collaboration model, named the Certus Model. Results: The model is structured in seven phases, describing activities from setting up research projects to the exploitation of research results. As such, the Certus model advances other collaborations models from literature by delineating different phases covering the complete life cycle of participative research knowledge creation. Conclusion: The Certus model describes the elements of a research collaboration process between researchers and practitioners in software engineering, grounded on the principles of research knowledge co-creation and continuous commitment to joint problem solving. The model can be applied and tested in other contexts where it may be adapted to the local context through experimentation.