Call for Papers

IEE Proceedings - Software
Special Issue on Relating Software Requirements and Architecture

http://www.iee.org/Publish/Journals/Profjourn/Proc/sen/

Requirements Engineering and Software Architecture have become
established areas of Software Engineering research, education, and
practice. Software requirements engineering is concerned with
discovering the purpose of a software system and the contexts in which
it will be used. Software architecture is concerned with the study of
the structure of software, including its topology, properties,
constituent components and their relationships and patterns of
combination.

Since significant research advances have been made in both areas,
exploring the relationships between the processes and the products of
these activities becomes a high priority. This requires a better
understanding than currently exists of the relationships between

* the software problem space and the solution space, including
   requirements and architectures;
* the processes of requirements engineering and architectural design,
   and the iterative, interleaved relationships between them and the
   human communication that drives them;
* the business context, from which requirements will be elicited and in
   which architectural decisions justified.

An improved understanding of the relationships between software
requirements and architectures will have a significant impact on the
quality of a range of industrial software applications. There is a need
to deal with changes and variations in the requirements, which must be
accommodated by explicitly designing architectural flexibility and
variability. For example, the successful development of software product
lines depends on an understanding of the stable aspects of a product's
architecture in the face varying product requirements. Similarly,
managing the evolution of software systems successfully depends on
ensuring stability of software architectures in the face of volatile
requirements, some of which can have detrimental effect on such
stability.

This special issue seeks to bring together key research contributions to
bridge the gap between software requirements engineering and software
architecture, research and practice. This includes contributions on the
alignment of software architecture with business architecture. Archival
quality novel paper submissions are invited that address topics, which
include, but are not restricted to:

* Relationship between software requirements and architectures
* Deriving architecture descriptions in concert with requirements
   specifications
* Requirements and architecture variability for families of similar
   products
* Tracing architectural decisions to requirements
* Alignment between software architecture and business architecture
* Architectural contexts in which requirements are found
* Architectures that support changing requirements
* Relating architecture patterns with requirements patterns
* Bridging the gap between software problems and solutions
* Attribute-based architecture design
* Quality assessment of software architectures
* Business drivers of software architectures
* Specific requirements domain (safety, security, socio-technical
   systems, etc.)
* Joint reuse of requirements and architecture
* Models of the concurrent development of business architecture,
   requirements, and software architecture
* Relationship between requirements notations and design notations
* Driving the design process through the understanding of requirements
   and vice versa
* Requirements and architecture specification languages
* Tools and environments for requirements engineers and software
   architects


Call for Papers and Evaluation
------------------------------

Different kinds of submissions are being solicited. These include:

* Technical research papers that report an original research result.
* Research experience papers that report the application of original
   research results using experimental, empirical, and analytical
   methods.
* Empirical results that report the use of specific techniques for
   relating software requirements and architectures in practical
   settings.
* Case studies that report the use of specific techniques for relating
   software requirements and architectures in practical settings.
* Industry experience reports that communicate the use of specific
   techniques for relating software requirements and architectures in
   practical settings.

All papers will be evaluated for their novelty, correctness,
conciseness, and presentation. Submitted papers must not have been
previously published, nor be under consideration for publication at
another conference or journal.

Submission Information
----------------------

Manuscripts should be submitted to IEE submission and review site at:
http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/sen
and prepared according to the guidelines available at:
http://www.iee.org/Publish/Support/Auth/authproc.cfm

The deadline for submission is 15th October 2004. Authors should clearly
indicate that the manuscript should be considered for inclusion in this
special issue. All submissions will be reviewed according the rigorous
refereeing procedures for IEE Proceedings-Software. Any queries should
be addressed to one of the guest editors.

(A pdf version of this CFP can be found at:
http://www.ls.fi.upm.es/UDIS/miembros/asilva/cfp-softreqsarch.pdf )


Important Dates
---------------

Full paper submissions: 15th October 2004
Notifications sent to authors: 15th December 2004
Revised paper submissions: 15th February 2005
Expected date of publication: mid 2005


Guest Editors
-------------

Jon Hall
Department of Computing
The Open University, UK
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Ivan Mistrik
Fraunhofer Institute (IPSI)
Darmstadt, Germany
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Bashar Nuseibeh
Department of Computing
The Open University, UK
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Andris Silva
Facultad de Informatica,
Universidad Politicnica de Madrid, Spain
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