read

What papers and books would you consider as must-reads for software engineering researchers, especially for researchers that do qualitative studies? Here is my list of readings that I feel are important, seminal, or fundamental for conducting, communicating, and understanding software engineering research. In my opinion, each one of these provides important aspects.

In no particular order:

• Methodology Matters: Doing research in the Behavioral and Social Sciences
  by Joseph E. Mcgrath
• Selecting Empirical Methods for Software Engineering Research
  by Steve Easterbrook et al.
• Preliminary Guidelines for Empirical Research in Software Engineering
  by Barbara A. Kitchenham et al.
• Qualitative Methods in Empirical Studies of Software Engineering
  by Carolyn B. Seaman
• Research Design: Qualitative, Quantitative, and Mixed Methods Approaches (4th edition)
  by John W. Creswell
• Case Study Research in Software Engineering: Guidelines and Examples
  by Per Runeson et al.
• Views on Internal and External Validity in Empirical Software Engineering
  by Janet Siegmund et al.
• ‘Unsatisfactory Saturation’: A Critical Exploration of the Notion of Saturated Sample Sizes in Qualitative Research
  by Michelle O’Reilly and Nicola Parker
• The Truth, The Whole Truth, and Nothing But the Truth: A Pragmatic Guide to Assessing Empirical Evaluations
  by Stephen M. Blackburn et al.

More specific aspects in qualitative research:

• Constructing Grounded Theory (2nd edition)
  by Kathy Charmaz
• Grounded Theory in Software Engineering Research: A Critical Review and Guidelines
  by Klaas-Jan Stol et al.
• Developing a Grounded Theory to Explain the Practices of Self-Organizing Agile Teams
  by Rashina Hoda et al.
• Building Theories in Software Engineering
  by Dag I.K. Sjøberg et al.
• HCI, Natural Science and Design: A Framework for Triangulation Across Disciplines by Wendy E. Mackay and Anne-Laure Fayard
• The Role of Ethnographic Studies in Empirical Software Engineering
  by Helen Sharp et al.
• Taxonomies in Software Engineering: A Systematic Mapping Study and a Revised Taxonomy Development Method
  by Muhammad Usman et al.
• Counting in Qualitative Research: Why to Conduct it, When to Avoid it, and When to Closet it
  by David R. Hannah and Brenda A. Lautsch

There are many other recommended papers and books (too many to fit in a single blog post), so I tried to list the papers that should apply to most researchers. Have I forgotten to mention an important paper? Please let me know.

What papers or books do you feel are must-reads?
What would you recommend to new software engineering grad students?

P.S. I’d love to meet you on Twitter.