Kitchenham review protocol
Adapt systematic reviewing to computing evidence
The Kitchenham tradition adapts systematic review planning, conduct and reporting to software engineering. It emphasises a prior protocol, research questions, search strategy, selection rules, quality assessment and data extraction. It is a discipline-specific implementation of systematic review principles, not an alternative statistical analysis or a guarantee that software benchmarks and industrial studies can be pooled.
Use for computing questions about techniques, tools, development practices or empirical evidence when the relevant literature spans conferences, journals and heterogeneous evaluation settings.
Strengths
- Provides a structured protocol suited to computing literature
- Makes tool and study evaluation criteria explicit
Limitations
- Conference duplication and evolving terminology complicate searches
- Benchmark outcomes may not transfer to industrial deployments
Know the boundary
A Kitchenham-style protocol specifies review conduct; PRISMA specifies transparent reporting.