Together We Are Stronger: Evidence-Based Reflections on Industry-Academia Collaboration in Software Testing

Abstract

For a highly relevant and applied research area like software testing industry-academia collaboration is of uttermost importance. In this paper we reflect on how industry-academia collaboration can be improved based on evidence from four empirical studies. We therefore first present four studies providing evidence on the (1) perceived level of challenges in testing activities, (2) focus areas in industrial and academic software testing conferences, (3) synergies between industrial and academic software testing conferences, as well as (4) the need for consideration of grey literature. Then, we reflect on issues, which we think can improve the link and synergies between industry and academia in software testing, i.e., research topics, guidelines and evidence, value and risk, context and scalability, action research and education as well as grey literature and open science.