In systems development, interdisciplinary cooperation among scientists coming from various disciplines has been proposed for a long time now, but still seems to be rarely accomplished or succesfully exercised in real world projects. There are, of course, outstanding examples, but so far interdisciplinarity has not become a matter of everyday practice. Sometimes, quite the opposite seems to be true, especially if we look at the curricula at our universities or if we examine the everyday situation of software developers.

On the other hand, a wealth of knowledge and experience has been gathered within diverse scientific communities, knowledge that is largely tacit, but nevertheless provides a rich background for mutual understanding. Besides the pleasant atmosphere and the excellent organisational framework provided by the people from Dagstuhl Castle this tacit knowledge and common experience contributed largely to the success of this seminar.

However, there is no way to capture the spirit and condense atmoshere of the discussions or cover the many constructive ideas and insights by assembling a number of abstracts, especially since many of the sessions were re-organized according to the interest of the participants and the situation at hand. Thus, what is normally regarded as a hindrance to interdisciplinary collaboration, namely, the variety and diversity of individual perspectives and professional backgrounds, became a source for an enlightening and stimulating discourse. Consequently, it was not the exchange of ideas, results, or position statements which made this seminar an outstanding accomplishment in the view of most participants, but the fact that mutual understanding and cooperative learning took place.

This learning process can hardly be conveyed to others by means of written documentation. Hence, the participants were asked to provide any material for this booklet which would help others to understand the individual work accomplished and its background, and which might provide a piece to the overall mosaic of interdisciplinary foundations of systems design and evaluation in general. As a result the nature, length and style of the individual contributions reflect the diversity we have also experienced during the seminar.

The Dagstuhl-Seminar-Report starts with documenting the original invitation that was sent to the participants to highlight our starting point. All other contributions then follow in alphabetical order.

Finally, I would like to thank Nina Graf for her enormous effort to help me with the technical side of the editing process. She did a wonderful job in administering the contributions, converting different formats on different technical platforms and putting it all together in a readable form.

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