Empirical Software Engineering

Motivation

In 1992, a Dagstuhl seminar on “Experimental Software Engineering Issues” (seminar no. 9238) was conducted. Its goal was to discuss the state of the art of Empirical Software Engineering (ESE); to assess past accomplishments, to raise open questions, and to propose a future research agenda.

Since 1992, the topic of empirical software engineering has been adopted more widely by academia as interesting and promising research topic, and by industrial practice as a necessary infrastructure technology for goal-oriented sustained process improvement. At the same time, the spectrum of methods applied in ESE has broadened. For example, in 1992, the empirical methods applied in Software Engineering were basically restricted to quantitative studies (mostly controlled experiments), whereas since then, a range of qualitative methods has been introduced, from observational to ethnographical studies. Thus, the field can be said to have moved from experimental to empirical software engineering.

We believe that it is time now to again bring together practitioners and researchers to identify the progress since 1992 and the most important challenges for the next five to ten years.

Goals of the seminar:

• Identify progress since 1992 (Dagstuhl Seminar No. 9238*)
• Summarize the state-of-the-art in ESE
• Summarize the state-of-the-practice in ESE in industry
• Develop a roadmap for research, practice, education and training