  The primary theory of software engineering is that an organization's Policies
and Processes influence the quality of its Products. We call this the PPP
Theory. Although empirical software engineering research has grown common, it
is unclear whether researchers are trying to evaluate the PPP Theory. To assess
this, we analyzed half (33) of the empirical works published over the last two
years in three prominent software engineering conferences. In this sample, 70%
focus on policies/processes or products, not both. Only 33% provided
measurements relating policy/process and products. We make four
recommendations: (1) Use PPP Theory in study design; (2) Study feedback
relationships; (3) Diversify the studied feedforward relationships; and (4)
Disentangle policy and process. Let us remember that research results are in
the context of, and with respect to, the relationship between software
products, processes, and policies.
