Call For Papers

1st International Workshop on Volatility and Complexity of Software Systems

VCSS 2012

Satellite event of IEEE CSMR 2011
March 27-30, 2012 in University of Szeged, Szeged, Hungary

http://conferences.ncl.ac.uk/vcss2012/

THEME AND GOALS

Software systems of any significant size bring with them difficulties
due to their complexity. These difficulties may be most reported at
the maintenance and upgrade stage of the lifecycle, as this is the
point at which the expense is typically incurred: however, these
difficulties are often the manifestations of problems that have been
seeded much earlier in development. At the heart of many of the
problems is a failure to deal with the "change-proneness" or
volatility of the software system artefacts. Software volatility is
also an indicator of roots and sources of growth of complexity of the
software system. Thus, understanding better the driving factors behind
software volatility is key to improve the development process of
software systems and also to impose stricter controls on the
complexity of expanding software systems.

A large-scale system may be complex by design, or may have arrived in
that state as a result of integration over time of a number of
component systems, patching of existing systems or wrapping acquired
components-off-the-shelf (COTS) items, or a combination of these
things. As a result, the extent to which the system as a whole can be
understood, and the extent to which interactions between subsystems
can be analysed, is compromised. Overall the complexity of the
software system may hinder considerably the comprehensibility of the
software system, especially the integration of its components and the
evolution of the relationships between these components. Thus, having
more efficient ways to identify, represent, visualise and interpret
complexity aspects of large-scale software systems will help software
engineers to get a handle on such systems, improve their intuitive
understanding of how the system works and evolves, and be more
efficient in limiting and reducing the complexity growth of the
system.

TOPICS

The workshop is concerned with approaches to address, measure, and
control volatility and complexity in complex software systems. Topics
of interest include, but are not limited to:

* The definition and evaluation of metrics for assessment of the
volatility of a software system
* Metrics based on complex systems analysis methods (e.g. network metrics)
* Identification of the most change-prone artefacts of a system
* Architectural approaches for containing the spread of changes
through the system
* Probabilistic reasoning about quality and functionality of software
systems using software complexity and volatility metrics
* Evolution of volatility and complexity of large-scale software
systems
* Dynamic visualisation of the behaviour and evolution of software
systems
* Visualisation supported reasoning about complex software systems

PAPER SUBMISSION

Prospective presenters should submit short position papers or full
papers (max. 10 pages in the format used by the CSMR conference). All
accepted papers will be published online on the workshop website. The
organisers intend to publish formal proceedings after the workshop.

See the workshop website for further submission details.

IMPORTANT DATES

Abstract submission 20 January 2012
Paper submission 27 January 2012
Notification of acceptance 17 February 2012
Camera ready 2 March 2012
Workshop date 27 March 2012

ORGANISERS

Workshop chairs
Peter Andras, School of Computing Science, Newcastle University
Claire Ingram, School of Computing Science, Newcastle University
Anjan Pakhira, School of Computing Science, Newcastle University
Steve Riddle, School of Computing Science, Newcastle University

PROGRAMME COMMITTEE

David Budgen, Durham University,
Filomena Ferrucci, University of Salerno
Wahab Hamou-Lhadj, Concordia University, Montreal
Huzefa Kagdi, Wichita State University
Mircea Lungu, University of Bern
Andrian Marcus, Wayne State University, Detroit
Romain Robbes, University of Chile
David Röthlisberger, University of Bern
Martin Shepperd, Brunel University
Andrea Zisman, City University

CONTACT

For more information please contact: wvcss2012@gmail.com