It was our great pleasure to extend a welcome to all who participated in SERA 2004, the second International Conference on Software Engineering Research, Management and Applications, held at the Omni Hotel, Los Angeles, California, USA. The conference would not have been possible without the cooperation of Seoul National University, Korea, the University of Lübeck, Germany, and Central Michigan University, USA. SERA 2004 was sponsored by the International Association for Computer and Information Science (ACIS). The conference brought together researchers, practitioners, and advanced graduate students to exchange and share their experiences, new ideas, and research results in all aspects (theory, applications, and tools) of Software Engineering Research and Applications. At this conference, we had keynote speeches by Barry Boehm, C.V. Ramamoorthy, Raymond Yeh, and Con Kenney. We would like to thank the publicity chairs, the members of our program committees, and everyone else who helped with the conference for their hard work and time dedicated to SERA 2004. We hope that SERA 2004 was enjoyable for all participants. Barry Boehm May 2004 Preface The 2nd ACIS International Conference on Software Engineering – Research, Management and Applications (SERA 2004) was held at the Omni Hotel in Los Angeles, California, during May 5–7, 2004. The conference particularly welcomes contributions at the junction of theory and practice disseminating basic research with immediate impact on practical applications. The SERA conference series has witnessed a short, but successful history: