Collaborative research involving small companies: Experiences from co-production of knowledge for research and practice through use of an action case approach

In order for the conduct of collaborative research projects and their outcomes to be valuable for both research and practice it is necessary to successfully address a number of socio-technical challenges in the field of software engineering. Collaborative research involving researchers and practitioners related to software systems have utilised a variety of different research approaches. Adoption of an effective research approach for the situation at hand in a research project may significantly contribute to project success. Experiences from collaborative research show that action case can be an appropriate choice of approach for addressing socio-technical challenges in the software domain, which is appealing to both practitioners and researchers. This paper elaborates on a number of challenges for successful conduct of collaborative research projects and reports on experiences from use of action case as a research approach for conduct of collaborative research related to software systems.