*** Call for Chapters ***

We invite high-quality chapters to

"Economics-Driven Software Architecture (EDSA)"

A book to be published by Elsevier and edited by:

Ivan Mistrík, Independent Consultant(Germany)
Rami Bahsoon, University of Birmingham (UK)
Rick Kazman, University of Hawaii (USA)
Kevin Sullivan, University of Virginia (USA)
Yuanyuan Zhang, University College London (UK)

OVERVIEW
Architects regularly make architectural design decisions but are usually
unable to evaluate the economic impact of those decisions. Management, on
the other hand, is often interested in product-level decisions (such as
features and quality) but not in the technical details of how those
decisions are achieved. These differing interests lead to inconsistencies
between how managers view value, and how architects can enable or disable
those value propositions through their design decisions. This lack of
communication can result in poor decisions. Clearly it is in the best
interests of all stakeholders to make informed and technically feasible
value-driven design decisions. Thus architects need tools and techniques
for applying economic-driven principles to software architecture to make
better decisions and to better justify those decisions.
Current practice in architecting software systems do not often make
economic and strategic considerations explicit. Architectural design
decisions tend to be driven by ways that are not connected to, and usually
not optimal for value creation. Factors such as flexibility,
time to market, cost and risk reduction often have high impact on value
creation [Boehm and Sullivan, 2000]. Such ignorance is in stark contrast
to the motivation and objectives of architecture-centric approaches to
development and systematic evolution (e.g. Model-Driven Architectures,
domain specific software architectures and product lines, component-based
and middleware-induced architectures etc), where managing complexity, cost
reduction, risk mitigation, evolvability, strategic planning and long-term
value creation are among the major drivers for adopting such approaches.
This urges the need for economics-driven and value-based models and metrics, which provide the architect with insights into the long
term and strategic viability, cost-effectiveness, and sustainability of the
architecture design decisions. We argue that these metrics and models
should be in the heart of the architecting process: inception,
elaboration, composition, evaluation and analysis, implementation
and deployment, maintenance and evolution of architectures. Such provision
is important; it assists the objective assessment of the lifetime costs and
benefits of evolving systems, and the identification of legacy situations,
where an architecture or a component is indispensable but can no longer be
evolved to meet changing needs at economic cost. Such consideration will
form the scientific foundation for reasoning about the economics of non-
functional requirements in the context of architectures and architecting.

BACKGROUND TOPICS
We invite chapters on all aspects of economics-driven and value-based software architecture, including novel and high-quality research related approaches that relate the economics and value-creation to software architecture. All chapters should consider the practical application of the topic through case studies, experiments, empirical validation, or systematic comparisons with other approaches already in practice.
Research questions include:
How software architecture work (design, evaluation, documentation) can be done in a value-based way?
How software architecture work can and should be carried out in an economics-driven development process?
How has the role of software architecture and software architects changed in projects using value-based approaches?
What are the key architecture challenges in implementing value-based processes for developing large scale systems and potential solutions available to practitioners?
What is the role of software architecture in Global Software Development and how can value-based approaches support distributed software development?
What are the prerequisites for integrating value-based methods in software development and potential implications of such integration on the processes and products?
What kind of training needs to be provided in the areas of architecture-centric technologies (methods, techniques, and tools), customization and integration of value-based approaches into existing software development process?
What kinds of tools or techniques could be used to support design of software architecture in value-based development?
What kinds of tools or techniques could be used to support value-based documenting software architectures?
What kinds of tools or techniques could be used to support value-based management of software architecture knowledge?
What kinds of tools or techniques could be used to support value-based software architecture evaluation?

FORMAT

We invite proposals for chapters that synthesize existing knowledge on
relevant background topics and application areas in economics-driven and value-based software architecting. Chapters should be accessible to senior undergraduate students and graduate students with a background in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Software Architecture, Systems Engineering or related disciplines. Chapters are not expected to correspond to the description of a single research project or technique. The proposed Indicative Contents offers suggestions for target topics.

INDICATIVE CONTENTS

Part 1 – Introduction
This is an editorial part which gives the basic understandings of the disciplines and the challenges in economics-driven and value-based software architecting. It will survey the existing state of the art and the state of the practice and provide a conceptual framework that will unify the various topics addressed by the remaining chapters of the book.

Part 2 – Economics-driven Software Architecture Processes

This part considers the management and organization issues in the work related to software architectures in a value-based project context.

Part 3 – Economics-driven Software Architecture Tools and Techniques

This part discusses various tools and techniques that support economics-driven and value-based software architecture.

Part 4 - Industrial Case Studies and Practices

This part presents concrete examples and case studies of value-based software development projects, emphasizing the lessons learned from those practical experiences.
Part 5: Current Challenges and Future Directions
This part discusses, based on practical experience and evidence, the challenges faced by organizations in applying economics-driven and value-based approaches, and explores the basis of future work in this area.

PROCEDURE AND IMPORTANT DATES

To submit a chapter, please submit your chapter (15-20 pages), to

https://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=edsa20122013

Chapters will be initially reviewed by the five editors and if accepted, they will be reviewed by 3-5 independent reviewers, depending upon the quality of submission. The authors participating in this book project will also be asked to review 1-2 chapters by other contributors.

First versions for an initial review: 1 December 2012
Notifications of acceptance; 15 December 2012
1st round of reviews finished: 1 February 2013
Revisions due: 1 March, 2013
2nd round of reviews finished: 1 April, 2013
Reviewing/Revising process finished: 1 May, 2013
Chapters in CRC-format due: 1 June, 2013
Publication: November 2013

For any inquiries please contact:

Ivan Mistrík
i.j.mistrik@t-online.de