Towards a Maturity Model for Systematic Literature Review Process

2022-06-23

arXiv.org

AI Summary

Systematic Literature Reviews (SLRs) in software engineering frequently suffer from validity threats due to omitted or inadequately executed steps, and lack an actionable, quality-improvement framework. Method: This paper introduces, for the first time, the Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI) maturity paradigm into SLR process modeling, proposing MM4SLR—a five-level, incremental maturity model grounded in 39 key practices, 9 goals, and 5 process areas. The model was designed via literature-driven identification, clustering analysis, and level mapping, and empirically validated across four published SLRs. Contribution/Results: MM4SLR enables effective diagnosis of SLR quality deficiencies, supports researchers in selecting context-appropriate practices, and facilitates continuous process improvement. It constitutes the first structured, assessable, and evolutionary maturity framework for enhancing the rigor, standardization, and credibility of SLRs in software engineering.

Abstract

Systematic literature reviews (SLR) have been increasingly conducted in software engineering and they provide significant benefits in terms of summarizing the state of the research. The process of conducting SLR is complex, involving several activities and consuming considerable effort and time from researchers. Researchers often skip or poorly conduct essential activities, which introduce threats to validity, resulting in lower-quality SLR. But researchers are often unaware of what they could do to mature their SLR process, thus improving the SLR quality. The main goal of this paper is to introduce a maturity model for the SLR process named MM4SLR. To this end, we were inspired by well-known models like CMMI (Capability Maturity Model Integration). We first identified 39 key practices for SLR from the literature and grouped them into nine goals that were further grouped into five process areas. We then organized the process areas into five maturity levels which compose our model. Our proof of concept, applying the MM4SLR to four published SLR showed that the MM4SLR is suitable for appraising SLR and can identify important flaws in SLR quality. MM4SLR can therefore support researchers in creating their SLR processes and selecting practices that could be adopted to mature their processes.

Problem

• Software Engineering
• Systematic Literature Review (SLR)
• Quality Improvement

Innovation

• MM4SLR
• Systematic Literature Review
• Maturity Model