Acknowlegements

First, I want to thank my PhD students and post-docs for many fruitful discussions, constructive suggestions for improvement, and their commitment which made the German textbook possible, especially Kim Lauenroth, Ernst Sikora, and Thorsten Weyer for their contributions to Part I to VII and Andreas Metzger, Günter Halmans, and Andreas Froese for their contributions to Part VIII. I am indebted to Lero (the Irish Software Engineering Research Centre) for supporting several book meetings and especially to Kevin Ryan who successfully encouraged me to finalise the German book project.

Second, I want to thank the people who supported me in writing the English textbook for their extensive assistance in the translation from German into English as well as for their contributions to the significantly reworked parts of this book and the numerous improvements and extensions throughout the entire book:

• Ernst Sikora
• Nelufar Ulfat-Bunyadi

In addition, I would like to thank my students, industrial partners, and the people attending our tutorials and trainings for continuously asking critical questions – a valuable source for many improvement. I also want to thank Ralf Gerstner, Colin Mash, and Ulrike Stricker from Springer for their support in publishing this book.

My deepest thanks got to my wife Bärbel an to my children Timo and Ella for their incomparable patience, support, and understanding.