The Design of a Survey on Bridging the Gap between Software Industry Expectations and Academia

Abstract

Software practitioners have a variety of different roles, whose academic backgrounds are not only based on “Computing Disciplines” but also non-computing ones such as Electrical and Electronics Engineering. Many engineering graduates in the software industry often face difficulties after beginning their professional careers due to misalignment of the skills learnt in the university education with what is needed in the job. It is also reported that software practitioners in the embedded industry, who were graduated from any non-computing disciplines are lacking knowledge in key software engineering (SE) topics and knowledge areas (KAs), which they learn or improve themselves during the job (e.g., after university education). Companies spend crucial resources to train these personnel, who are not “ready” for the industry. Hence, academia must know what skills are needed to adapt the educational programs via an effective curriculum. Although SE is shaped and used by both practitioners and academicians, these two separate worlds have different objectives and concerns. In order to increase Industry-Academia Collaboration (IAC) in SE, it is necessary to understand different perceptions of practitioners about academia. After inspiring different curriculum guidelines and related studies and then identifying the expectations and opinions of practitioners about the academic world (as expert opinions via semi-structured interviews), a survey, which explores the gap between the industry expectations and academic activities, was designed. In this article, the design phase activities of this survey, whose results will shed light on software development education and more IACs, are presented.