Action research as a model for industry-academia collaboration in the software engineering context

Background: Action research is a well-established research methodology. It is following a post-positivist research philosophy grounded in critical thinking. The methodology is driven by practical problems, emphasis participatory research, and develops practically useful solutions in an iterative manner. Objective: Two objectives are to be achieved: (1) Understanding the state of the art with respect to action research usage in the software engineering literature, and (2) reflecting and providing recommendations of how to foster industry-academia collaboration through action research. Method:} Based on our experience with two action research studies in close collaboration with Ericsson lessons learned and guidelines are presented. Results: In both cases presented action research led to multiple refinements in the interventions implemented. Furthermore, the close collaboration and co-production with the industry was essential to identify and describe the required refinements to provide an in-depth understanding. In comparison with previous studies, we required multiple iterations while previous software engineering studies reported mostly one iteration, or were not explicit regarding the number of iterations studied. Conclusion: We conclude that action research is a powerful tool for industry-academia collaboration. The success of the method highly depends on the researchers and practitioners working in a team. Future studies need to improve the reporting with respect to describing the type of action research used, the iterations, the model of collaboration, and the rationales for changes in each iteration.