Keynotes

Empirical Research for AI-Native Software Engineering

Markku Oivo

Markku Oivo is Professor Emeritus of Software Engineering at the University of Oulu, Finland. For more than four decades, he has worked at the intersection of research and industrial practice and has helped shape empirical software engineering as an international research community. He has held research and leadership positions in academia and industry in Finland, the United States, France, Germany, Italy, and Spain. He was one of the six founding members of the International Software Engineering Research Network, ISERN, in 1993. He has been involved with ESEM since its inception and was General Chair of ESEIW and ESEM 2018. His recent work focuses on the radical transformation of software engineering through generative AI and its implications for industrial practice, software business, and the concepts, methods, and evidence of empirical software engineering research. Most recently at DIMECC Ltd, he led the development of a major industry-driven research program on AI-native software engineering involving 25 organizations, including 21 companies and four universities.

Abstract

Software engineering is being revolutionized by generative AI faster than our evidence can mature. The unit of analysis in empirical research is shifting from individual developers to rapidly evolving human-AI systems, whose behavior is stochastic, opaque, and version-dependent. For a community built on careful measurement and reproducible claims, this is both an opportunity and a quiet crisis. Which findings about AI-native development are durable knowledge, which are perishable snapshots. AI-native software engineering challenges construct validity, as productivity, quality, and expertise change meaning; external validity, as results depend on rapidly obsolete tools; and reproducibility, as the systems studied are proprietary, non-deterministic, and often impossible to replicate.

U(b)locking AI-native Development for Enterprise Software

Tobias Schimmer

Tobias Schimmer is head of Developer Experience for SAP, strategic technology leader, information systems and software engineering scientist, and executive with over 20 years of experience bridging academic software engineering research with large-scale enterprise software transformations. From driving SAP's global lean/agile, user-centered design, and business model transformations to co-founding SAP’s Innovation Center and Newport Beach location in Southern California and establishing SAP's first dedicated Developer Experience organization with a proven track record in development productivity, AI-driven development workflows, and human-centered software processes.

Abstract

SAP’s AI-native developer experience program extends across our full product development lifecycle — requirements, architectural and user experience design, coding, testing, operations, and support — serving all people in development roles, including engineers, product managers, and customer support. In this keynote, we share insights on how we are actively experimenting and evolving our AI-native PDLC practices while simultaneously removing major blockers and frictions for AI and human effectiveness leveraging infrastructure, frameworks, and automation; all of which is backed by data-driven insights from surveys, telemetry, and communities.