Towards a discipline of software engineering forensics analysis

Software development and procurement continues to be a source of great disappointment for its social and economic stakeholders, with literally billions of dollars being expended for little ostensible benefit. But significant progress can be made in engineering domains that match software for complexity and novelty: the international regime of aviation accident and incident reporting has been the basis for a wide range of evidence-based technical and process improvements in applied aeronautical engineering. Accordingly, we set out to characterise the knowledge, activities and structures that would promise to deliver analogous benefits to software engineering. While we are hopeful of early positive outcomes, a significant research agenda lies before us.