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Workshop Series on Empirical Software Engineering
5th international Workshop
"Experience on Applying Quantitative and Qualitative Empiricism
to Software Engineering"

in conjunction with

8th International Conference on Product Focused Software
Engineering (PROFES 2007)

Riga, Latvia
2 July 2007

Submission Deadline: 05 June 2007

Motivation
Many academics and practitioners believe that evaluation has a vital
role to play in software engineering. As well as evaluating both
application level and component level products, software engineers need
to be concerned with the evaluation of development processes,
engineering methods and supplier organizations.
The state of the art of empirical software engineering was assessed in
the 2006 Dagstuhl Seminar on Empirical Software Engineering [1].
Workshop participants agreed that the community has matured since 1992
but is still in a very early phase compared to other disciplines.
Improvements were suggested, among others, with regard to complementary
usage of quantitative and qualitative studies [2].
The aim of the workshop is to address the question of future directions
for empirical software engineering. This includes improving empirical
methodology, or information needed by industry. It is planned that
participants submit short submission statements, and that selected
participants are invited to submit an extended version of their paper
for submission.
The workshop itself is the fifth one in the workshop series on Empirical
Software Engineering. The first one was held in conjunction with the
PROFES 2002 in Rovaniemi, the second one was held in conjunction with
the Empirical Software Engineering International Week 2003 in Rome, the
third on was held in conjunction with PROFES 2005 in Oulu, the fourth
one took place in Amsterdam in conjunction with PROFES 2006.

Topics of Interest
All papers should focus on empirical methods, and contribute to one or
more of the following issues:

• Innovative approaches for empirical software engineering methods. Example questions addressed:

    o What are your experiences from applying quantitative and
qualitative methods (preferably a
       combination of different methods)?
    o How can contributions from other fields, such as medicine and
psychology, help in Empirical
       Software Engineering?
    o What are your experiences with advanced methods that are not
yet standard in
      Empirical Software Engineering?
    o Which approaches for analyzing / summarizing sets of empirical
studies can be worthwhile for
         Empirical Software Engineering?

• Information needed for decision making from empirical studies. Example questions addressed:

    o Have you tried to introduce a technology and wanted to base
your decision on empirical findings?
    o Which types of empirical studies were helpful?
    o Which were not? For which reasons (e.g., wrong type of study,
or unhelpfully reported)?
    o Under which conditions are studies helpful to practitioners?
    o How does empirical research have to adapt to industrial needs?

• Weaknesses in current empirical methodology. Example questions addressed:

    o Where do we need to improve existing empirical practice, and
how?

• Conditions under which can we integrate/synthesize evidence. Example questions addressed:

    o Which kind of evidence can be integrated?
    o Which information is of interest?

• Handling of context information. Example questions addressed:

    o How can we specify for which context areas an analysis is
valid?
    o Can we define a "standard" set of metrics that are relevant to
measure context in every situation?

Organization
The workshop will start with an opening session, where the key issues
will be presented. The accepted papers will be categorized and
summarized with regard to the key issues. In the following, working
groups for identified issues will be formed. Accepted papers will be
presented (10 minutes per paper) in the working groups to drive the
discussion. In the final session, the results from the working groups
will be presented and further steps will be discussed.

Target Groups
The workshop addresses practitioners and/or researchers who are
interested in empirical software engineering, software process
improvement, and quality management.
Practitioners are being addressed specifically, since this workshop is
also intended to find out what kind of information practitioners need,
which kind of support they expect from research regarding the
aggregation of information, and how they select software engineering
technology.

Submissions
Papers length should not exceed eight pages. Position statements are
welcome.
Submissions have to be formatted in Springer LNCS style. Guidelines and
templates are available at the Springer website
(http://www.springeronline.com/sgw/cda/frontpage/0,11855,3-164-2-72376-0
,00.html). Only electronic submissions in PDF (.pdf) will be accepted.
Please email your compressed file (only gzip or winzip compressed files
will be accepted) to info@esernet.org. Please make only one submission
per email message. The email subject should be "[WSESE2007] paper
submission"; the message should include the name of your submitted file,
the title of the paper, and its authors. Papers will be reviewed by at
least two members of the program committee.

Important Dates
05 June 2006 Submission of Papers
11 June 2007 Notification of acceptance/rejection
25 June 2007 Deadline for camera-ready copy
2 July 2007 Workshop

Program Committee

Reidar Conradi, NTNU
Tore Dyba, SINTEF
Tracy Hall, University of Hertfordshire
Natalia Juristo, UPM
Barbara Kitchenham, Keele Univ.
Dietmar Pfahl, University of Calgary
Per Runeson, Lund Univ.
Helen Sharp, Open University
Silke Steinbach-Nordmann, Fh IESE
Mikael Svahnberg, BTH
Guilherme Travassos, COPPE/UFR
Sira Vegas. UPM
Alf Inge Wang, NTNU

Workshop Chairs
Marcus Ciolkowski (University Kaiserslautern)
Andreas Jedlitschka (Fraunhofer IESE)

References
1. Basili, V.R., Rombach, D., Schneider, K., Kitchenham, B., Pfahl,
D., Selby, R.W. (Eds.): Empirical Software Engineering Issues: Critical
Assessment and Future Directions, International Workshop Dagstuhl
Castle, Germany, January 2007, Springer Verlag, LNCS 4336 (to appear)
2. Basili, V.R., Rombach, D., Schneider: Preface; in [1] pp. V-XI