Exploring and improving industry-academia communication in software engineering

Background: Despite the mutual benefit of the industry-academia partnership, the level of joint work is still low. For this reason, the interest in connecting research and practice has increased recently in the academic community. Objective: This research aims to design and apply approaches to improve the knowledge exchange between academic researchers and software engineering practitioners. Methodology: This work can be seen from a design science perspective. Following the design-science paradigm, the knowledge regarding a phenomenon is obtained through the design and evaluation of solutions that apply in a specific context. Consequently, this research work proposes and evaluates approaches to bridge the communication gap. Results: Two approaches have been explored and partially evaluated. The SERP-taxonomy architecture that can be used to describe and link research results and industry challenges, and rapid reviews to foster communication between industry and academia. Conclusion: This thesis will provide empirical evidence of the application of collaborative approaches to improve industry-academia communication and get closer research and practice.