An Evidence Profile for Software Engineering Research and Practice

Evidence-based software engineering has emerged as an important part of software engineering. The need for empirical evaluation and hence evidence when developing new models, methods, techniques and tools in research has grown in the last couple of decades. Furthermore, industrial decision-making ought to become more evidence-based. The objective here is to develop and present an evidence-based profile, which could be used to divide pieces of evidence into different types and hence create an overall picture of evidence in a specific case. The evidence profile is developed in such a way that it allows evidence to be judged in context. The evidence profile consists of five types of evidence, and it is illustrated for perspective-based reading. It is shown how pieces of evidence can be classified into the different types. It is concluded that this type of approach may be useful for capturing the evidence with respect to a specific topic and in a specific context. Further work will include applying the evidence profile to evidence collected from different types of studies and contexts.