Empirical Software Engineering Research Roadmap Introduction

The gathering of leading Empirical Software Engineering researchers at Dagstuhl provides a unique opportunity to capture the current challenges facing the field. Our gathering enables deep discussions that identify critical issues, discuss promising opportunities, and outline future directions. A typical framework for organizing ideas and plans from thought leaders is the definition of a roadmap for a field, and the researchers gathered at Dagstuhl have agreed to define a roadmap for Empirical Software Engineering research. The following sections describe what we mean by a roadmap and elaborate on the roadmap process, uses, benefits, types, and structure. We then introduce an example skeletal roadmap for Empirical Software Engineering that serves as a starting point for Dagstuhl working group discussions. In the subsequent sections, we document the working group’s outcomes and describe the resulting overall roadmap in a final summary.