Requirements Targeting Software and Systems Engineering International Workshop Rtse'97, Bernried, Germany, October 12-14, 1997 : P Roceedings

Software engineering research has di?erent pro?les in Europe and North Am- ica.WhileinNorthAmericathere isalotofknowhowinthepractical,technical, and organizational aspects of software engineering, in Europe the work conc- trates more on foundations and formal modeling of software engineering issues. Bothapproacheshavetheirindividualstrengthsandweaknesses. Researchdriven solelyby practice insoftware engineering runs in the danger ofdevelopinginto a shallow ?eld failing to ?nd a solid scienti?c basis or to contribute substantially to the progress in software engineering. Work concentrating on formal aspects alone is in the danger of becoming too theoretical and isolated from practice so that any transfer into practical application will fail. Substantial progress in software engineering can be achieved, however, by bringing together pragmatic and foundational work in software engineering - search. This can provide a step towards a common scienti?c basis for software engineering that allows us to integrate the various research results, leading to fruitful synergetic e?ects. It will also help to identify critical research paths and to develop an adequate paradigm for the scienti?c discipline of software en- neering. In software and systems engineering it is necessary to distinguish the en- mous di?erence between the dynamics in development we refer to and the l- ited scope assumed by manyof today’ssoftware managerswho stilluse outdated techniques. Many of the unsolved problems associated with the old techniques are symptoms of a lack of formalization and a lack of automation support. It was the goal of this workshop to bring together experts from science and practice in software and systems engineering from North America and Europe.