Toward Methodological Guidelines for Process Theories and Taxonomies in Software Engineering

Software engineering is increasingly concerned with theory because the foundational knowledge comprising theories provides a crucial counterpoint to the practical knowledge expressed through methods and techniques. Fortunately, much guidance is available for generating and evaluating theories for explaining why things happen (variance theories). Unfortunately, little guidance is available concerning theories for explaining how things happen (process theories), or theories for analyzing and understanding situations (taxonomies). This paper therefore attempts to clarify the nature and functions of process theories and taxonomies in software engineering research, and to synthesize methodological guidelines for their generation and evaluation. It further advances the key insight that most process theories are taxonomies with additional propositions, which helps inform their evaluation. The proposed methodological guidance has many benefits: it provides a concise summary of existing guidance from reference disciplines, it adapts techniques from reference disciplines to the software engineering context, and it promotes approaches that better facilitate scientific consensus.