Background: Communicating software engineering research to industry practitioners and to other researchers can be challenging due to its context dependent nature. Design science is recognized as a pragmatic research paradigm, addressing this and other characteristics of applied and prescriptive research. Applying the design science lens to software engineering research may improve the communication of research contributions. Aim: The aim of this study is to 1) evaluate how well the design science lens helps frame software engineering research contributions, and 2) identify and characterize different types of design science contributions in the software engineering literature. Method: In previous research we developed a visual abstract template, summarizing the core constructs of the design science paradigm. In this study, we use this template in a review of a selected set of 38 top software engineering publications to extract and analyze their design science contributions. Results: We identified five clusters of papers, classified based on their alignment to the design science paradigm. Conclusions: The design science lens helps to pinpoint the theoretical contribution of a research output, which in turn is the core for assessing the practical relevance and novelty of the prescribed rule as well as the rigor of applied empirical methods in support of the rule.
@cite_51 @cite_50 have also published a systematic review of design science articles in Information Systems. They identified articles by searching in top Information Systems journals and conferences from the years 2001--15, filtering the results and applying snow-balling, resulting in a final review sample of 119 papers or books. In their review, they analyze the topic addressed, artifact type, and evaluation method used. In our review we have classified papers along another dimension, i.e., what types of software engineering design science contributions the papers present in terms of problem understanding, solution design and solution validation. To our knowledge no reviews of software engineering literature have been made from a design science perspective before.
@cite_51 @cite_50
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In the last few years, design science research has received wide attention within the IS community. It is increasingly recognized as an equal companion to IS behavioral science research and being applied to address IS topics. With the aim of providing an overview of its current state, this paper presents a systematic literature review on design science research in IS field. The results of this paper reveal the focuses of previous theoretical and empirical design science research and provide some directions for future IS design science research. Design science research is a research paradigm focusing on problem-solving. It is increasingly accepted and adopted by Information Systems (IS) researchers as a legitimate research paradigm because of its capability in balancing research relevance and rigor. In the last fifteen years, many design science research has been published in top IS journals and has received a lot of attentions from IS researchers. However, current confusion and misunderstandings of DSR’s central ideas (e.g., definition, philosophical foundation, research outcomes, etc.) are obstructing it from having a more striking influence on the IS field. The purpose of this paper is to present a comprehensive and critical review of existing DSR literature. In total, 119 papers, published in top IS journals and conference proceedings, were included in the review. The results of this study portray a big picture of current DSR in IS field and build a comprehensive theoretical knowledge base in terms of DSR-related issues. This study also identifies many research issues which can be examined by future DSR.