Interactive posters: An alternative to collect practitioners' experience

Context: The validity of survey-based research depends on, amongst other considerations, the number and validity of obtained data points. As with any empirical study that involves practitioners, collecting data via surveys is difficult. Objectives: We report our experiences derived while conducting an industry survey on the impact of agile practices on software process quality. Method: After unsuccessfully trying to collect data with an online questionnaire, we used an interactive approach with posters at practitioners-focussed software engineering community events to aid data collection. Results: We present a list of lessons learnt. In particular, the poster-based data collection approach provided utility, for both gathering a large amount of responses and facilitating follow-up interactions with study participants. Conclusion: Our experiences in this work may help those facing challenges associated with obtaining responses from practitioners through the use of potentially complex questionnaires.