Review of Frank Niessink's thesis

Frank Niessink showed me your review of his thesis (see pages 187–195 in this issue of the Journal of Software Maintenance ). I am somewhat puzzled by the negative ‘tone’ of Section 5 of your review, labeled ‘Comments’. Under item 1, you say ‘Had the researcher used control theory and practice as a base, nearly the entire book could have been readily condensed into an “application of” medium-length paper.’ To me, this sounds as a pretty negative overall opinion. I know control theory can be applied to software development, software maintenance, and process improvement. I must confess I had not consciously thought of applying it here. It might have allowed him to make certain arguments more concise. I doubt whether it would have reduced the whole thing to a medium-length paper. You noticed in the first paragraph of your review that much of the dissertation has been published in seven papers. These seven papers have together been reviewed by quite a few people. There have of course been quite a few remarks by those referees, but not a single one of them mentioned control theory. This may hint at a serious lack of knowledge of this community. It may also indicate something else. Finally, the external examiner of Frank’s thesis was Dr Shari Lawrence Pfleeger, whom you undoubtedly know. Her written comments on the thesis go as follows. ‘This dissertation does a wonderful job of describing a measurement problem, identifying key issues related to it, deriving from the literature the important lessons learned about the problem in the past, and creating a framework for further understanding and improvement . . . . In summary, Mr Niessink has done a fine job, not only in demonstrating his ability to do good research, but also in synthesizing and extending current research to produce practical, effective solutions to important problems.’ I may be biased, but I do think Frank wrote a good thesis.