QoSA is an ACM SIGSOFT (http://www.sigsoft.org) event, part of the CompArch federated conference series -- see http://www.comparch2014.eu for more information.


GOALS

The goal of QoSA (Quality of Software Architectures) is to address the quality aspects of software architecture, focusing broadly on its quality characteristics and how these relate to the design of software architectures. Specific issues of interest are defining and modeling quality measures, evaluating, managing and ensuring architecture quality, linking architecture to requirements and implementation, and preserving architecture quality throughout the system lifetime.

QoSA is the premier forum for the presentation of new results in the area of software architecture quality. It brings together researchers, practitioners and students who are concerned with software architecture quality in a holistic way. As a working conference QoSA has a strong practical bias, encompassing research papers, industrial reports and invited talks from renowned speakers.


ARCHITECTING FOR ADAPTIVITY

This year the main theme of QoSA is «Architecting for adaptivity». With the advances in mobile networks and embedded systems, we see proliferation of systems that are meant to improve human life, increase safety, provide entertainment etc. Examples of such systems include smart homes, intelligent navigation, emergency coordination, etc. A key issue in these systems is the ability to adapt to a current situation in the physical world, such that outputs provided by the system remain relevant. In safety critical systems this is also connected with retaining dependability in changing or even unanticipated situations.

In this year's QoSA we particularly solicit contribution that explore the issue of adaptivity and address various problems connected with adaptivity throughout different design and development stages. At the same time, submissions related to the general topic of the conference are welcome.


TOPICS

Topics of interest for the conference include (but are not limited to) the following themes:

* Architecture Design and Implementation
- design decisions and their influence on the quality of software architecture
- adapting software architectures to address changes in software and its environment
- architectural refactorings and their implications for quality
- architectural standards and reference architectures
- model-driven methods and tools for architecture design and implementation
* Architecture Evaluation
- empirical validation, testing, prototyping and simulation for assessing architecture quality
- quality attributes of software architectures
- methods and processes for evaluating architecture quality (also in presence of the change)
- model-driven evaluation of software architecture quality
- evaluating the effects of architectural adaptations at run-time
- lessons learned and empirical validation of theories and frameworks on architecture quality
- quality assessment of legacy systems and third party applications
- applications to industrial case studies and use cases
* Architecture Management
- assessment and enforcement of architectural conformance throughout the software lifecycle
- traceability of software architecture to requirements and implementation
- models and tools for coping with software architecture evolution


PAPER SUBMISSION

We solicit two types of submissions: regular papers and position papers.

* Regular papers should describe original and significant results of theoretical, empirical, conceptual, or experimental research or of experience from industrial practice. Reflecting the practical emphasis of QoSA, papers showcasing applications along with a sound conceptual contribution are welcome. Regular papers are limited to 10 pages.
* Position papers describe novel ideas or innovative proposals whose aim is to stimulate discussion related to experiences and ideas, rather than to present mature results. Position papers are limited to 6 pages.

All contributions will be subject to a rigorous selection process by the international Program Committee, with an emphasis on originality, usefulness, practicality and overall quality. Papers must not have been previously published or be currently submitted elsewhere. If accepted, the paper must be personally presented at the QoSA 2014 conference by one of the authors in order to appear in the proceedings.


PUBLICATION

All accepted contributions will be published in the ACM digital library. The best contribution of the conference will receive the ACM SIGSOFT Distinguished Paper Award, given by the ACM Special Interest Group on Software Engineering.


IMPORTANT DATES

Abstract submission deadline: February 5, 2014
Papers submission deadline: February 12, 2014
Notification to authors: March 25, 2014
Camera-ready version: April 16, 2014
Conference: June 30 - July 4, 2014

All deadlines are with respect to the UMT/GMT time zone.



COMPARCH GENERAL CHAIR

Lionel Seinturier, University Lille 1 (France)


QoSA PROGRAM CO-CHAIRS

Tomas Bures, Charles University, Czech Republic
John D. McGregor, Clemson University, USA


PROGRAM COMMITTEE

Mehmet Aksit, University of Twente, The Netherlands
Aldeida Aleti, Monash University, Australia
Muhammad Ali Babar, IT University of Copenhagen, Denmark
Steffen Becker, University of Paderborn, Germany
Jan Bosch, Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden
Barbora Buhnova, Masaryk University, Czech Republic
Vittorio Cortellessa, Universita dell'Aquila, Italy
Ivica Crnkovic, Mälardalen University, Sweden
Antinisca Di Marco, University of L'Aquila, Italy
Peter Feiler, SEI, United States
Aniruddha Gokhale, Vanderbilt University, United States
Vincenzo Grassi, University of Roma "Tor Vergata", Italy
Lars Grunske, University of Stuttgart, Germany
Rich Hilliard, IEEE, United States
Samuel Kounev, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), Germany
Heiko Koziolek, ABB Corporate Research, Germany
Patricia Lago, VU University Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Marin Litoiu, York University, Canada
José Merseguer, Universidad de Zaragoza, Spain
Raffaela Mirandola, Politecnico di Milano, Italy
Sven Overhage, University of Bamberg, Germany
Claus Pahl, Dublin City University, Ireland
Dorina Petriu, Carleton University, Canada
Alfonso Pierantonio, University of L'Aquila, Italy
Ralf Reussner, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), Germany
Jose-Raul Romero, University of Cordoba, Spain
Roshanak Roshandel, Seattle University, United States
Antonino Sabetta, SAP Research Sophia-Antipolis, France
Klaus Schmid, University of Hildesheim, Germany
Heinz Schmidt, Computer Science, RMIT University, Australia
Jean-Guy Schneider, Swinburne University of Technology, Australia
Michael Smit, Dalhousie University, Canada
Judith Stafford,University of Colorado Boulder, United States
Clemens Szyperski, Microsoft Research, United States
Bedir Tekinerdogan, Bilkent University, Turkey
Petr Tuma, Charles University, Czech Republic


QoSA is kindly supported by ACM SIGSOFT (http://www.sigsoft.org)