Overview of the Impact Project

This session is intended to introduce the ICSE audience to the Impact Project, whose goals are to 1) study the impact that software engineering research has had upon software engineering practice, and 2) promulgate project findings to the community, and then broadly to industry, academe, and government. The project is being sponsored by ACM SIGSOFT, and funded by a variety of international funding sources. The project has been in operation for over six years, and preliminary reports on the project were presented at ICSE 2001 and ICSE 2002. Formal reports have begun to appear as articles in ACM TOSEM. Here at ICSE 2007 we will report on the project again in the form of a 3-session mini-track. This first session will (re)introduce the project, and outline the studies that have been completed, are underway, and are anticipated. It will also summarize some of the larger findings and understandings about research impact that have been gleaned so far from observation of the various studies. This session and the mini-track are aimed at informing the community, and also at engaging it in both the studies themselves, and the discussions of the findings. Thus, this session will conclude with ample time for discussion.