Guidelines for conducting interactive rapid reviews in software engineering -- from a focus on technology transfer to knowledge exchange

Evidence-based software engineering (EBSE) aims to improve research utilization in practice. It relies on systematic methods (like systematic literature reviews, systematic mapping studies, and rapid reviews) to identify, appraise, and synthesize existing research findings to answer questions of interest. However, the lack of practitioners' involvement in the design, execution, and reporting of these methods indicates a lack of appreciation for knowledge exchange between researchers and practitioners. Within EBSE, the main reason for conducting these systematic studies is to answer the practitioner's questions and impact practice. However, in many cases, academics have undertaken these studies without any direct involvement of practitioners.

This report focuses on the rapid review guidelines and presents practical advice on conducting these with practitioner involvement to facilitate knowledge co-creation.

Based on a literature review of rapid reviews and stakeholders engagement in medicine and our experience of using secondary studies in software engineering, we propose extensions to an existing proposal for rapid reviews in software engineering to increase researchers-practitioners knowledge exchange. We refer to the extended method as an interactive rapid review.

An interactive rapid review is a streamlined approach to conduct agile literature reviews in close collaboration between researchers and practitioners in software engineering. This report describes the process and discusses possible usage scenarios and some reflections from the proposal's ongoing evaluation.

The proposed guidelines will potentially boost knowledge co-creation through active researcher-practitioner interaction by streamlining practitioners' involvement and recognizing the need for an agile process.