A systematic literature review of the SBSE research community in Spain

Since its appearance in 2001, search-based software engineering has allowed software engineers to use optimisation techniques to automate distinctive human problems related to software management and development. The scientific community in Spain has not been alien to these advances. Their contributions cover both the optimisation of software engineering tasks and the proposal of new search algorithms. This review compiles the research efforts of this community in the area. With this aim, we propose a protocol to describe the review process, including the search sources, inclusion and exclusion criteria of candidate papers, the data extraction procedure and the categorisation of primary studies. After retrieving more than 3700 papers, 232 primary studies have been selected, whose analysis gives a precise picture of the current research state of the community, trends and future challenges. With 145 authors from 19 distinct institutions, results show that a diversity of tasks, including software planning, requirements, design and testing, and a large variety of techniques has been used, from exact search to evolutionary computation and swarm intelligence. Further, since 2015, specific scientific events have helped to bring together the community, improving collaborations, financial funding and internationalisation.