Contextualizing Empirical Evidence January/February 2013 (Vol.
30, No. 1) pp. 81-83 0740-7459/13/$31.00 © 2013 IEEE  Published
by the IEEE Computer Society Contextualizing Empirical Evidence
 Article Contents     What Is Context?     Omnibus Context:The
Broad Perspective     The Way Forward   Download Citation
Download Content PDFs Require Adobe Acrobat What works for whom,
where, when, and why is the ultimate question of evidence-based
software engineering. 1 Still, the empirical research seems
mostly concerned with identifying universal relationships that
are independent of how work settings and other contexts interact
with the processes important to software practice. Questions of
"What is best?" seem to prevail. For example, "Which is better:
pair or solo programming? test-first or test-last?" What Is
Context? The word contextus is Latin for weaving together or
making a connection. Approaches to context and contextual
dimensions vary widely, reflecting different philosophical
stances and practical orient