Registration is now open through our website: http://icsa-conferences.org/2017/

Direct registration page: http://icsa-conferences.org/2017/attending/registration/

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Combined Call for Contributions (Papers, Workshops, Tutorials, Young researchers forum)

ICSA 2017: IEEE International Conference on Software Architecture

Gothenburg, Sweden
5-7 April 2017
http://icsa2017.org/

ICSA cordially invites contributions related to all aspects of software architecture!

The International Conference on Software Architecture (ICSA 2017) extends the WICSA and CompArch history and tradition as the premier gathering of practitioners and researchers interested in software architecture, in component-based software engineering and in quality aspects of software and how these relate to the design of software architectures.

ICSA will keep the characteristic of a working conference, where researchers meet practitioners and where software architects can explain the problems they face in their day-to-day work and try to influence the future of the field. Interactive working sessions will be the place where researchers meet practitioners to identify opportunities to create the future.

The increasing size of software systems and the emergence of increasingly autonomous systems is asking for innovative software engineering practices. The way software is developed and maintained is rapidly changing and must take into account multifaceted constraints like fast-changing and unpredictable markets, complex and changing customer requirements, pressures of shorter time-to-market, rapidly advancing information technologies, just to name a few of these new aspects. To cope with such constraints, software is increasingly produced according to rapid continuous software engineering development processes. The theme of ICSA 2017 is “Continuous architecting” – exploring the role, importance, and characteristics of architecture in continuous software engineering development processes.

We welcome original contributions that explore and explain the role of architecture in current systems as well as in near future systems, with special focus on self-adaptive, smart, and autonomous systems. This conference looks at what can be learned from our software architecture history, experience, studies, and best practices.

We invite you to contribute to ICSA 2017 and we welcome you to Gothenburg where the collaboration between academy and industry is one of the main drivers for innovation.

---------------
Call for Papers
---------------

*Technical Papers*
We solicit the software architecture community for two types of submissions: full technical papers and short technical papers.

1. Full technical papers should describe original and significant results of theoretical, empirical, conceptual, or experimental research and industrial practice in software architecture. Full technical papers are limited to 10 proceedings pages.

2. Short technical papers present not yet fully mature research results that can stimulate discussions. Short technical papers are limited to 4 proceedings pages. Papers should trigger discussion and raise awareness and reflection on specific topics, in research and/or industrial practice.

Papers must not have been previously published or be under consideration elsewhere for publication. All papers should explicitly state the goals of the systems or approaches described, discuss relationships to previous work, and should use accepted and standard terminology.

Depending on their ability to trigger discussion, both full and short accepted papers can be clustered and discussed in working sessions, always an integral part of the ICSA program.

*Industry Track*
The Industry Track at ICSA focuses on presenting and discussing current challenges and state-of-the-art solutions and innovations by enabling dialogue between software architects and engineers and the research community. The industry track will focus on concrete software architecture problems, and descriptions of applied case studies and success stories. Following its tradition, the track will gather highly-qualified industrial and research participants that are eager to communicate and share common interests in software architecture. The track will be composed of invited talks, paper presentations, and panel discussions, with a strong focus on software architecture in practice.
The industry track welcomes four types of submissions:
1. Experience report and case studies papers (4 pages): Each paper should provide a clear take-away value. It should describe the context of a problem of practical importance; discuss why the solution of the problem is innovative, effective, or efficient; provide a concise explanation of the approach, techniques, and methodologies employed; and explain the best practices that emerged, the tools that were developed, and/or the processes that were involved. Accepted papers will be presented at the conference and included in the ICSA 2017 Proceedings.
2. Technology opportunities or needs (4 pages): Each paper should raise a current challenge, unsolved problem or opportunity, a trend or new technology area on which researchers and practitioners could fruitfully engage. Accepted papers will be the bases for working sessions at the conference and included in the ICSA 2017 Proceedings.
3. Tutorials (60 min presentation): We seek proposals for 60 minute architecture-related tutorials, providing the audience with new knowledge in a specific area of knowledge and/or technology. Proposals should be 2 pages in length (maximum), and give a clear overview and outline of the topic to be presented, along with a description of the presenters' credentials. Tutorials may optionally be accompanied by a 2 page overview for publication in the ICSA 2017 Proceedings.
4. Technical talks (30 min presentations): Presentation proposals should be 1 page (500 words or less) describing first-hand experiences, lessons learned, or practitioner-focused research. Presentations may also provide research challenges or vision statements.

*New and Emerging Ideas*
The goal of the New and Emerging Ideas (NEMI) track at ICSA 2017 is to encourage the software architecture community to propose radical new software architecture research directions that represent disruptive innovations in the making, which can challenge the status quo of the software architecture discipline.

To support that goal, the NEMI 2017 track will publish two kinds of papers:

1. Reflections (on the past) such as:
- Bold arguments against current research directions;
- Results that challenge established results or beliefs giving evidence that call for fundamentally new directions.
2. Visions and New Directions (of the future):
- Bold visions of new directions which may not yet be supported by solid results but rather by a strong and well motivated scientific intuition. An example of such a vision can be unusual synergies with other disciplines, or the importance of software engineering in problems whose software engineering aspects have not been studied earlier.
- Totally new approaches, techniques, or theories, never published before, that can bring new results to a field of research;

NEMI submissions must clearly motivate and illustrate a rationale for changing current practice and/or research in software architecture. Note that evaluation results are not required for NEMI papers (but if such results exist, then they may be presented, if only to give the reviewers a feel about the evaluation plan). Strong argumentation and reasoning is expected to inspire the readers.

Scope
NEMI provides a forum for innovative, thought-provoking research in software architecture in order to accelerate the exposure of the community to early yet promising and potentially inspiring research efforts.
NEMI papers are not second-class ICSA research track papers. NEMI is a forum for first-class contributions that provide novel, soundly motivated research directions and emerging results.
In principle, the track addresses the same topics of interest as those of the technical research paper track. However, NEMI authors are encouraged to combine these topics in new ways, to establish connections to other fields outside of classical software architecture, as well as to argue for the importance of software architecture research in areas not explicitly listed.

Out of scope
A NEMI submission should not be just a position statement, research submissions lacking an evaluation, nor disguised advertisements for previously published results. For such out-of-scope submissions, authors should consider submitting to the main ICSA conference, one of the many ICSA workshops, or another track.

Evaluation
All papers will be evaluated in terms of the following criteria.
- Value: the problem is worth exploring;
- Impact: the potential for disruption of current practice;
- Scope: software architecture related topics
- Originality: new insight;
- Rationale: soundness of the rationale and argumentation;
- Evaluation: appropriate consideration of relevant literature and/or research evaluation to demonstrate originality and arguments;

*Tool Papers*
The ICSA 2017 Tool Demonstrations track provides researchers, practitioners, and educators with a platform to present and discuss the most recent innovations and findings in the field of software architecture by means of live tool presentations. We distinguish two categories of tool demo submissions addressing any aspect of tool support to help software architects, researchers, and practitioners:

- Tools used in practice, either from commercial vendors or open-source projects. These demonstrations should focus on practical applications within the different activities of software architecting and should particularly show how they advance the current state of the practice. New ideas and features are particularly welcome.
- Research tools from academic or industrial research environments. These demonstrations are intended to highlight underlying scientific contributions and show how scientific approaches have been transferred into a working tool.
- Both categories may range from early prototypes to in-house or pre-commercialized products. Authors of regular ICSA papers are also welcome to submit an accompanying tool paper by adding information regarding the actual demo as an appendix, as described further under submission requirements.

We especially appreciate tool demos in line with the theme of ICSA 2017, which is “Continuous architecting” – exploring the role, importance, and characteristics of architecture in continuous software engineering development processes. Of course tool demos on other topics of Software Architecture are welcome too.

Submissions of papers for tool demonstrations must:
- Have a maximum length of 4 pages, describing the technology or approach, how it relates to other industrial or research efforts, including references, and what the expected benefits are.
- Have an appendix of maximum 2 pages (not included in the page count) that provides a brief description of how the presentation will be conducted, information on tool availability, maturity and the web-page for the tool (if one exists).
- Clearly state the tool category: in-practice or research.
- Optionally, the submission can be accompanied with a video (maximum length of 5 minutes) in high resolution. In this case, a link to a page where the video can be viewed needs to be included in the appendix. Note that the video is not mandatory, but if it is available, it will be used to the benefit of the evaluation of the submission.

Tool demos papers and accompanying artifacts will go through a peer review process and accepted papers will be included in the main conference proceedings.

*Young Researchers Forum*
The aim of the Young Researchers Forum is to inspire and bring together young researchers in the field of software architecture. The forum provides a vibrant place for discussing potential and ongoing research in any stage, from idea to results. The forum strives to provide a friendly environment to allow young researchers to get feedback on their work, exchange experience, ask questions, explore pathways open to them. In addition, the forum stimulates interaction between young researchers, experienced researchers and industry. Each author, in addition to reviewers relevant to their work, will be assigned an industrial mentor who will also assess and suggest improvements to their submissions.

Participation is open to anyone who considers himself/herself a ‘young’ researcher, wanting to share research ideas and (preliminary or mature) results with their peers and looking for an opportunity to inspire and be inspired and learn about research paths. Ph.D. candidates, young researchers in any stage of their research (including undergraduate students), young researchers in industry research pathways are all most welcomed to participate. In addition, we specifically invite Ph.D. candidates and young researchers presenting their work in the main ICSA conference to participate in this forum.

ICSA Young Researcher Best Paper Award
The Young Researcher Best Paper Award may be given to the author(s) of an outstanding idea/contribution presented at the Young Researchers Forum. The award winner will be given the opportunity to present their work within the main conference program.

Types of Submissions
There are two ways of contributing to the program of the forum:
- ongoing research papers (4 to 6 pages) presenting previously unpublished motivations, goals, preliminary results, planned next steps, and industrial impacts of an ongoing research
- research abstracts (2 pages) outlining (preferably more mature) research of young authors (possibly presenting also in the 2017 ICSA main program), who would like to actively engage in the forum.

In both types of submissions, we challenge the authors to think about the potential impact of their research on industrial practice (whether in the near or far future based on the nature of the research), and to dedicate a section to the Industrial Impact of their work. The authors of ongoing research papers will be assigned an industrial mentor who will assess the industrial impact of their work, and advise on potential impacts that the authors may be missing. The mentor’s feedback will need to be reflected in the revised submission as a condition to the paper being accepted.

*Topics of Interest*
Topics of interest for the conference include (but are not limited to) the following themes:
- Architecture and CI&D, DevOps, and/or Microservices
- Model driven engineering for continuous architecting
- Up-front architecture and agile development
- Architecting Systems of Systems, IoT systems, CPSs, software ecosystems, self-adaptive systems, or autonomous systems
- Component based software engineering and architecture design
- Architecture evaluation and quality aspects of software architectures
- Automatic extraction and generation of software architecture descriptions
- Re-factoring and evolving architecture design decisions and solutions
- Architecture frameworks and architecture description languages
- Linking architecture to requirements and/or implementation
- Preserving architecture quality throughout the system lifetime
- Reusable architectural solutions
- Software architecture knowledge management
- Software architecture for legacy systems and systems integration
- Architecting families of products
- Cultural, economic, business and managerial aspects of software architecture
- Software architects roles and responsibilities
- Training, education, and certification of software architects
- State-of-the-art and state-of-practice in software architecture
- Industrial experiments and case studies

*Formatting and Submission Instructions*
All papers must conform, at time of submission, to the IEEE Formatting Guidelines (http://www.ieee.org/conferences_events/conferences/publishing/templates.html), use the letter page format, and be submitted electronically through the Online Submission Site: https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=ICSA2017.
All accepted contributions will be published in the ICSA 2017 Proceedings and in the IEEE Digital Library.

*Proceedings*
At least one author of an accepted contribution is required to register, present the work and participate during the discussions at the forum. All accepted contributions will be published in the 2017 ICSA Proceedings and in the IEEE Digital Library.

*Special issue at the Journal of Systems and Software (JSS)*

Best papers will be invited to submit a revised version to the upcoming special issue on Architecting Autonomous and Smart Systems of the Journal of Systems and Software.

------------------
Call for Tutorials
------------------

Tutorials at the International Conference on Software Architecture (ICSA 2017) provide a valuable opportunity for conference participants to expand their software architecture knowledge and skills. They allow practitioners and researchers to learn from each other about cutting edge tools and methods. Tutorials will be held before the main ICSA 2017 conference in half-day or full-day sessions.

A tutorial proposal consists of 2-4 pages containing sections that describe the topic, the implementation of the planned tutorial session, the background of the presenter(s), and the background of the tutorial.

- The Topic section should include the tutorial’s title (one line), a summary of 350 words (maximum) suitable for posting on the conference web site; a description of the goals and intended audience (profile of the ideal targets for the tutorial). The topic should be described in detail, stressing its importance and timeliness, including the 2 or 3 key take-away messages the audience should leave with.
- The Implementation section should include the duration of the proposed tutorial (half or full day, if both durations are suitable submit two proposals with different outlines), a preliminary schedule of events including estimated times, a detailed description of what the tutorial will cover, a justification of the tutorial for the expected audience, and an explanation of how the tutorial will be conducted (lecture, hands on exercise, facilitated discussion, group activity, role playing, game, etc), including sample materials to be included in the tutorial notes.
- The Presenters’ Backgrounds section should include affiliation, relevant biographical information (250 words maximum), as well as summaries of the presenters’ technical, presentation, and tutorial qualification and experience.
- The Tutorial Background section should include a description of where and when the tutorial has been offered previously and the past number of attendees.

*Formatting and Submission Instructions*
All papers must conform, at the time of submission, to the IEEE Formatting Guidelines ((http://www.ieee.org/conferences_events/conferences/publishing/templates.html), use the letter page format, and be submitted by email directly to the Tutorial chairs at rdeboer(at)archixl.nl and noel.plouzeau(at)inria.fr. All accepted contributions will be published in the ICSA 2017 proceedings and in the IEEE Digital Library.

Tutorial proposals will be reviewed separately from research papers, although likely by a small subset of the main conference’s program committee. Acceptance will be based on:
- Evaluation of the tutorial’s interest to the community (research and/or practice)
- Timeliness and expected interest in the topic
- Organizer’s ability to lead a successful tutorial
- Balance and synergy with other ICSA 2017 events

------------------
Call for Workshops
------------------

ICSA 2017 workshops provide a unique forum for researchers and practitioners to present and discuss the latest R&D results, experiences, trends, and challenges in the field of software architecture.

Workshops may be half-day or one-day events, and will be held before the main conference.
Potential topics for workshops are the same as, but not limited to, the ones of the ICSA 2017 conference.

Workshop chairs are responsible for submission and selection of papers. Submissions must follow the IEEE Computer Science proceedings format, as workshop proceedings will be published by IEEE CS Digital Library. Workshop organizers may allow for different types of contributions (e.g., short and long papers), but a workshop paper should not exceed a maximum of 8 pages in IEEE format.

*Formatting and Submission Instructions*
All workshop proposals must conform, at time of submission, to the IEEE Formatting Guidelines (http://www.ieee.org/conferences_events/conferences/publishing/templates.html) and use the letter page format. Proposals must not exceed four pages and must be submitted as PDFs to https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=icsa-w-2017. All accepted contributions will be published in the ICSA 2017 Proceedings and in the IEEE Digital Library.

Proposals must be written in English and not exceed four pages in length. Proposals should contain:

1. Motivation and objectives of the workshop
- Title and acronym of the workshop
- 300 words with the motivation and objectives of the workshop topic. (Note: If your workshop is accepted then this description will be used as early publicity for the workshop.)
- A more detailed discussion of the anticipated outcomes of the workshop (e.g., open research problems to pursue, validation objectives, empirical studies, etc.)
- Information about previous editions of the same workshop (if any)
- Potential connection with other ICSA events (if any)

2. Workshop format and needed services
- What will be the format for the workshop (e.g., paper presentation and discussion, keynotes, breakout sessions, panel-like discussions, experiments, or a combination thereof)?
- What are the requirements in terms of rooms, equipment, and support staff (i.e., student volunteers)?

3. Target audience
- What backgrounds should the workshop attendees have?
- What is the range (min, max) for number of attendees for the workshop?
- What mix of industry and research participants is being sought?
- Strong and proactive publicity plan, including information about the expected number of submissions and the initial acceptance rate
- Potential Keynote speakers, in particular from industry

4. Workshop contributions and evaluation
- What types of contribution are being solicited for the workshop (e.g., full papers, position papers, posters, demos, experiments, or other interactive sessions)?
- What type of evaluation process will be used?

5. Workshop duration
- Indicate if you plan for a half-day or a full-day workshop

6. Organizers and program committee
- Names and bios of organizers
- List of the potential program committee members

7. Draft call for papers for the workshop (a one page call for papers that you intend to send out if your workshop is accepted)

*Evaluation Criteria*
Workshop proposals will be reviewed in a separate evaluation process from research papers. Acceptance will be based on:
- evaluation of the workshop’s potential to advance the state of research and/or practice or bridging disciplines, between research and practice;
- timeliness and expected interest in the topic;
- relevance to the conference topics (See the topics of interest in the ICSA 2017 conference site);
- potential for attracting an appropriate number of participants;
- organizers’ ability to lead a successful workshop and attract submissions;
- balance and synergy with other ICSA events.

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

Technical Papers (Foundations and P&I)
- Abstract (mandatory) submission: 5 January 2017
- Paper submission: 10 January 2017
- Notification: 13 February 2017
Tool Papers, New and Emerging Ideas, and Young Researchers Forum
- Abstract (mandatory) submission: 18 February 2017
- Paper submission: 23 February 2017
- Notification: 10 March 2017
Tutorials
- Proposal submission: 2 December 2016
- Proposal notification: 9 December 2016
- Tutorial handouts: 21 March 2017
- Tutorial days: 4-5 April 2017
Workshops
- Proposal submission: 14 November 2016
- Proposal notification: 21 November 2016
- Papers submission: 23 February 2017
- Papers notification: 10 March 2017

For more information about the evaluation process, specific instructions for submission for ICSA 2017, please visit http://icsa2017.org/.

-------------
Organization
-------------

General Chair
Jan Bosch, Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden

Program Co-Chairs
Patrizio Pelliccione, University of Gothenburg, Sweden
Marija Mikic, Google, USA

Tutorial Co-Chairs
Remco De Boer, ArchiXL, Netherlands
Noel Plouzeau, Inria, France

Workshops Co-Chairs
Ivano Malavolta, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Netherlands
Rafael Capilla Sevilla, Rey Juan Carlos University, Spain

New and Emerging Ideas Co-Chairs
Henry Muccini, University of L'Aquila, Italy
Antony Tang, Swinburne University of Technology, Australia

Tool Demonstrations Co-Chairs
Paris Avgeriou, University of Groningen, Netherlands
Barbara Buhnova, Masaryk University, Czech Republic

Young Researchers Forum Co-Chairs
Christian Berger, University of Gothenburg, Sweden
Ipek Ozkaya, Carnegie Mellon SEI, USA

Industrial Track Co-Chairs
Heiko Koziolek, ABB, Germany
Rich Hilliard, [independent], USA

Publication Chair
Robert Heinrich, KIT, Karlsruhe, Germany

Publicity Co-Chairs
Federico Ciccozzi, Mälardalen University, Sweden
Davide Falessi, Cal Poly, USA

Local Chair
Antonio Martini, Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden

Financial Co-Chairs
Sara Kanhede, Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden
Philippe Kruchten, University of British Columbia, Canada

Volunteers Chair
Terese Besker, Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden

Web Chair
Hugo Andrade, Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden

------------
Social media
------------

Twitter: @icsa2017conf
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/groups/7061970
Facebook: @icsa2017conf

------------------------------------

Federico Ciccozzi and Davide Falessi
ICSA 2017 Publicity Co-Chairs