Lean Research Inception (LRI) is a collaborative framework that helps researchers and practitioners jointly formulate and assess research problems with real-world relevance in Software Engineering.
Inspired by agile methods like Design Thinking, Lean Startup, and Lean Inception, LRI seeks to promote early integration between academia and industry. It combines a visual tool, the Problem Vision board, with a Semantic Differential Scale based on value, feasibility, and applicability, drawing from the concept of the Minimum Viable Product (MVP).
This board includes:
• An example based on a real-world problem to illustrate how LRI works
• A blank template to support workshops, research planning, or co-creation sessions
The approach is part of the Ph.D. research of Anrafel Fernandes Pereira at PUC-Rio (Brazil). It has been refined through studies at the SAIL Lab (Software and AI Engineering Lab) and in a workshop with senior researchers during International Software Engineering Research Network - ISERN 2024.
LRI is recommended for research groups, industry-academia collaboration projects, and anyone aiming to align scientific research with industry needs.
Explore some of our publications on Lean Research Inception (LRI):
PEREIRA, Anrafel Fernandes et al. Towards Lean Research Inception: Assessing Practical Relevance of Formulated Research Problems. In: Proceedings of the 29th International Conference on Evaluation and Assessment in Software Engineering. 2025. p. 770-775 - https://arxiv.org/pdf/2506.12669
PEREIRA, Anrafel Fernandes et al. Attributes to Support the Formulation of Practically Relevant Research Problems in Software Engineering. 3rd International Workshop on Methodological Issues with Empirical Studies in Software Engineering (WSESE@ICSE). 2026 - https://arxiv.org/pdf/2512.12699
PEREIRA, Anrafel Fernandes et al. Towards AI Agents Supported Research Problem Formulation. 3rd International Workshop on Methodological Issues with Empirical Studies in Software Engineering (WSESE@ICSE). 2026 - https://arxiv.org/pdf/2512.12719
PEREIRA, Anrafel Fernandes et al. Teaching Practically Relevant Research Problem Formulation in Software Engineering with Lean Research Inception. XXIX Ibero-American Conference on Software Engineering (CIbSE 2026), 2026 - https://arxiv.org/pdf/2603.19967
