I work as Full Professor in the Computer Science Department at the Blekinge Institute of Technology (Sweden).
The core of the research I am involved in is applied and currently falls mostly within Empirical Software Engineering (ESE).
My current research concentrates on four themes: A) Human-centric Software Engineering (HCSE); B) Evidence-based Research in Software Engineering (EBSE); C) Employing Statistical and Machine-Learning techniques to investigate different problems within and outside Software engineering, and D) Value-based Software Engineering.
In relation to theme A, to date I have focused the most on investigating human factors (e.g. personality, human capabilities) and how they relate to team climate, within an Agile Software Development context. Such research results can be used in different ways, as for example, to inform team formation, improve team climate & team management, and to build company-specific, and even cross-company team climate forecasting models. There has also been the implementation of a Web-based capability measurement solution, for use to forecast effort and to support the allocation of developers to projects & tasks. With regards to theme B, I have contributed towards EBSE by means of numerous Systematic Literature Reviews and Mapping Studies in SE; and have also investigated methodological aspects relating to EBSE. Examples of the latter are the proposal of a framework to support decision-making relating to whether an SLR should be updated; comparison of search mechanisms for SLR updating and also for SLR searches in general; use of Grounded theory principles for aggregating evidence from SLRs. Regarding theme C, the range of problems to which statistical and Machine-Learning techniques were applied has been to date: Web/Software effort estimation, cross- vs- within-company predictions, team climate forecasting, forecasting the value of strategic decisions within the context of value-based software engineering (VBSE), dementia prognosis, and maintainability prediction. Finally, in relation to theme D, I have carried out both quantitative and qualitative research aiming at supporting software and software-intensive industries improve their value-based decision-making, at all different levels within an organisation (strategic, tactic and operational). To date such research included the development of a bespoke tool to support value-based decision-making, the use of Bayesian network to estimate the value of decisions within a range of software/software-intensive systems’ contexts, stakeholders’ value propositions elicitation and theory building using Grounded Theory, and personality & decision-making style in VBSE.
Finally, with regard to what I consider to be measures of one’s scientific impact and academic reputation, my achievements have been to date the following:
