Abstract
Some claim that especially in the field of agile software development the research lags years behind of the practice. In this paper, we characterize the status and main challenges for research on agile software development, and propose a preliminary roadmap, focusing on providing more empirical research, primarily on experienced agile teams and organizations, connecting better to existing streams of research in more established fields, giving more attention to management-oriented approaches, and finally give more emphasis to core ideas in agile software development in order to increase our understanding. We hope that this preliminary roadmap serves as a starting point for creating a common research agenda and enables the generation of more fruitful discussions and research results from the field.