CfP: Twin Peaks of Requirements and Architecture - Fifth International
Workshop @ ICSE 2015

***CALL FOR PAPERS***

Fifth International Workshop on the Twin Peaks of Requirements and
Architecture in conjunction with the 37th International Conference on
Software Engineering (ICSE), May 17, 2015 in Florence, Italy

http://re.cs.depaul.edu/twinpeaks


WORKSHOP THEME
======================
The disciplines of requirements engineering (RE) and software architecture
(SA) are fundamental to the success of software projects. Even through RE
and SA are often considered separately, the Twin Peaks model acknowledges
that treating RE and SA separately is neither feasible nor reasonable since
requirements and architecture impact each other. Requirements are
constrained by what is technically and economically feasible. On the other
hand, feedback from the architecture requires renegotiating architecturally
significant requirements with stakeholders. The topic of bridging RE and SA
has been discussed in both the RE and SA communities, but mostly
independently. Therefore, the motivation for this ICSE workshop is to bring
both communities together to explore the state of the art in research and
practice, methods, technologies and tools, and to identify emerging trends
related to the transition and the relationship between RE and SA.
Based on the outcomes of the earlier editions of the TwinPeaks workshop the
main theme of TwinPeaks 2015 will be "TwinPeaks goes Agile". A recent
survey amongst practitioners from all over the world indicates that 88% use
some sort of agile software development. Agile breaks with linear
development in which either the requirements are specified and frozen
without considering the implications on architectural design, or the
architecture is designed without negotiating and resolving emerged
conflicts and trade-offs. This iterative and incremental nature reflects
also the idea of the Twin Peaks model.

TOPICS
================
In 2015, TwinPeaks will explore lightweight techniques for integrating
requirements and architectural thinking into the agile process, when to
engage in upfront requirements analysis and architectural design, and
techniques for incremental delivery. Topics covered by this theme include
(but are not limited to):
- Traceability: Traceability links between key architectural decisions and
requirements strengthen the relationship between requirements and
architecture, and support software evaluation and maintenance. However,
traceability information is often not captured in the minimalistic type of
documentation produced in agile projects.
- Knowledge reuse: Utilizing knowledge from previous projects about
requirements, architectures and their relationship may support the
transition from requirements to architectures in future projects. Capturing
such knowledge seems to contradict agile practices that tend to keep
documentation and activities that do not result in immediate customer value
to the minimum.
Formalization: Formal approaches can help rigorously define and describing
requirements, as well as evaluate software architectures. However, formal
notations and techniques do not fit well with the usually flexible
practices in agile projects.
- Product platforms and variability-intensive systems: In agile practices,
the lack of thorough up-front planning makes it hard to design a common
platform that is shared by different (but related) products. In particular,
achieving consistency between core requirements of a product platform,
variable requirements, platform architectures and product architectures
remains a big challenge.
- General role of requirements and architecture in agile development: Agile
software development may help bridge the requirements architecture gap.
However, the role of requirements in agile development is often subject of
heated discussions. Similarly, the role of software architecture in agile
practices is a topic of debate recently received attention in books and
journals.


PAPER CATEGORIES
===============
- Position papers (2-4 pages)
- Full papers (6-7 pages)
- Industry papers (up to 7 pages)
- Experience reports (up to 7 pages)
- Education and training papers (up to 7 pages)


IMPORTANT DATES
=================
- Paper submission: January 23, 2015
- Notification: February 18, 2015
- Camera-ready: February 27, 2015
- Workshop: May 17, 2015


SUBMISSIONS AND ACCEPTED CONTRIBUTIONS
======================================
Submissions are required to be uploaded electronically in pdf form at the
Easychair workshop submission site,
https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=twinpeaks2015. Submissions must be
formatted according to ICSE 2015 guidelines (see
http://2015.icse-conferences.org/submission-guidelines for instructions and
templates). All accepted contributions will be published in the ICSE
companion and in the ACM Digital Library. At least one of the authors of an
accepted paper is expected to register and be present at the workshop.


COMMITTEES
=============

Organizing Committee
-----------------------

Maya Daneva, University of Twente, Netherlands
Matthias Galster, University of Canterbury, New Zealand
Mehdi Mirakhorli, Rochester Institute of Technology, USA

Steering Committee
-----------------------

Jane Cleland-Huang, DePaul University, USA
Xavier Franch, Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya, Spain

Program Committee (to be completed)
---------------------------------------------------

Pekka Abrahamsson, University of Bolzano, Italy
Muhammad Ali Babar, University of Adelaide, Australia
Jan Bosch, Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden
Sjaak Brinkkemper, University of Utrecht, Netherlands
Oliver Creigthon, Siemens, Germany
Christof Ebert, Vector Consulting, Germany
Neil Ernst, Software Engineering Institute, USA
Smita Ghaisas, Tata Consulting Services, R&D, India
Scott Hawker, Rochester Institute of Technology, USA
Rashina Hoda, University of Auckland, New Zealand
Anne Koziolek, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Germany
Patrick Mader, TU Ilmenau, Germany
Nenad Medvidovic, University of Southern California, USA
Eltjo Poort, CGI, Netherlands