En el marco de CIbSE 2018, ofrecemos una charla sin costo sobre teorías del diseño para hacer investigación en ingeniería de software. 

In recent years, the ability to analyze large amounts of data has called into doubt the need for scientific theories. A simple response to this is that predictive theories are scientific theories too. A more substantial response is that, even though correlation is sufficient for prediction, it is not sufficient for the explanation of effects in terms of causes, mechanisms or reasons. Whenever we want to understand the phenomena we study, we should look for causes, mechanisms, or reasons, which means that we should build scientific theories.

However, too many research papers in information systems, artificial intelligence and related disciplines fail to state their theoretical contribution. Technical research papers may present new designs without adequate explanation of why they work; empirical papers may make impressive use of statistics without clear contribution to theoretical understanding; or at the other extreme, interpretative research papers may contain convoluted text about philosophical approaches and theoretical contributions, of which the contents may disappear into thin air if analyzed closely. In this tutorial I provide a bird’s eye view on how to produce a clear and defensible theoretical contribution.

I focus on design theories and start with a brief introduction to the design and engineering cycles. I will then zoom in on the role of problem theories and design theories in the design cycle. I will then review the structure of design theories, and identify the different kinds of steps that researchers follow to reason from data to theories: descriptive, statistical, abductive and analogic inference. The tutorial will be illustrated by examples from software engineering and from other engineering disciplines.

Proferor:

Roel Wieringa
University of Twente
The Netherlands
https://wwwhome.ewi.utwente.nl/~roelw/

r.j.wieringa@utwente.nl

Roel Wieringa occupies the chair of Information Systems at the Department of Computer Science at the University of Twente, The Netherlands. His research interests include requirements engineering, conceptual modelling, and research methodology for information systems, software engineering and the design sciences. He has written three books, Requirements Engineering: Frameworks for Understanding (Wiley, 1996),  Design Methods for Reactive Systems: Yourdon, Statemate and the UML (Morgan Kaufmann, 2003, and Design Science Methodology for Information Systems and Software Engineering  (Springer, 2014). Find more at http://wwwhome.ewi.utwente.nl/~roelw/.

¡Los esperamos!