We need research that helps establish a scientific and engineering basis for the software engineering field. To this end researchers need to build, analyze and evaluate models of the software process and products as well as various aspects of and the environment in which the software is being built, e.g. the people, the organization, etc. It is especially important to study the interactions of these models. The goal is to develop the conceptual scientific foundations of software engineering upon which future researchers can build. This is often a process of discovering and validating small but important concepts that can be applied in many different ways and that can be used to build more complex and advanced ideas rather than merely providing a tool or methodology without experimental validation of its underlying assumptions or careful analysis and verification of its properties.