SASER in Practice: Early Insights from Two Case Studies Connected to Industry

Systems Engineering (SE) research with Industry as a laboratory (IaL) has multiple benefits: it safe-guards relevance, facilitates co-design, and allows researchers to gain practical insights. However, it faces a challenge in aligning traditional academic research with fast-paced industrial processes. The Spiral Approach for Systems Engineering Research (SASER) was recently proposed to address this challenge. In this paper, we demonstrate and discuss for the first time the application of SASER in the context of (1) the High-tech industry, and (2) Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs). Despite the context differences of the two case studies, SASER shows promising results for both the researchers and the industrial partners in keeping the partners interested, enabling shorter feedback loops, and preventing analysis paralysis. Even though there are just two case studies and this is an early stage research application of SASER, we firmly believe that it shows merit in facilitating SE academic research in the context of IaL.