[aosd-announce] CFP - Assessment of Contemporary Modularization Techniques (ACoM.07) at ICSE'07

[Cláudio Sant'Anna]

CALL FOR PAPERS

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1st WORKSHOP ON ASSESSMENT OF CONTEMPORARY
MODULARIZATION TECHNIQUES (ACoM.07)

May 2007, Minneapolis, USA
Co-located with the 29th Intl. Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE’07)

http://www.comp.lancs.ac.uk/computing/ACoM.07/
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MOTIVATION

A number of new modularization techniques are emerging to cope with the
challenges of contemporary software engineering, such as object-oriented
design patterns, aspect-oriented software development, feature-oriented
programming, and the like. The effective assessment of such emerging
modularization technologies plays a pivotal role on: (i) a better
understanding of their real benefits and drawbacks when compared to
conventional development techniques, and (ii) their effective transfer to
mainstream software development. However, there is no standard
approach or even any 'rules of thumb' for assessing such new software
development approaches. This means that the evaluation of a technique
is relatively arbitrarily chosen and made in an idiosyncratic manner.

GOALS

The main goal of this workshop is to put together researchers and
practitioners with different backgrounds in order to discuss open issues
on the assessment of contemporary modularization techniques, such as:

- what are the proper assessment mechanisms and methods to compare
new modularity techniques and conventional ones (e.g. OO)?
- how to empirically assess the usability and usefulness of new
modularization techniques within industrial settings and cost bounds?
- how to support the quality assessment of artefacts decomposed according to
new modularity mechanisms through the software lifecycle?
- to what extent software engineers using such contemporary modularity
techniques should rely on traditional metrics and quality indicators?
- how to validate new assessment mechanisms?

The workshop also aims at: (i) bringing the attention of the software
engineering community to the importance of rigorous evaluation of emerging
modularization techniques; (ii) motivating the expansion of research and
practice associated with assessment of emerging modularization technologies;
and (iii) fostering a collaborative environment for both practitioners and
researchers interested in effective assessment of new development techniques.

TOPICS OF INTEREST

The workshop is intended to cover a wide range of topics, from theoretical
foundations to assessment frameworks and empirical studies involving
contemporary software modularity techniques. Topics of interest include
the following (but not limited to):
- Lessons learned from assessing new modularization techniques
- Empirical studies
- Comparative studies between new modularization techniques and
conventional ones
- Assessment frameworks
- Software metrics and quality models
- Estimation models
- Validation of assessment techniques and mechanisms
- Assessment techniques, methods and tools to different phases of the
software lifecycle
- Development of predictive models of defect 
rates and reliability from real data
- Infrastructure issues, such as measurement theory, experimental design,
and analysis approaches

WORKSHOP FORMAT AND SUBMISSIONS

ACoM is a one-day long workshop and is strongly focused on discussion.
Authors who plan to contribute with a paper are requested to submit a
position paper in PDF through the workshop website. The paper format
must follow the ICSE style guidelines. We are soliciting the submission
of two categories of position papers:

(i) traditional position papers (up to 6 pages) related to workshop topics;
(ii) very short position statement (1-2 pages), 
where the authors describe their
"innovative thoughts", lessons learned, or points 
of view with respect to one or
more workshop topics.

Papers in the category (i) will be refereed by at least three reviewers, and
should describe work that is not yet advanced enough for a full conference
paper. They are expected to have a more solid idea, even though it does not
require strong validation ingredients. Papers in 
the category (ii) will be mainly
reviewed for topicality, i.e. checked if they fit into the workshop topics,
including some feedback from reviewers. Moreover we *especially* encourage
authors to present their experience and/or novel ideas on how to assess new
modularization techniques (shorter paper format). The selected papers should
offer different or novel perspectives on the workshop topics and they must
have a high potential for generating issues that will stimulate the workshop
discussions.

IMPORTANT DATES

Submission Deadline: January 20 2007 23:59 SST (Apia - Samoa)
Notification of Acceptance: February 20 2007
Camera-ready: March 5 2007

WORKSHOP CO-CHAIRS

Alessandro Garcia, Lancaster University, UK
Elisa Baniassad, Chinese University of Hong Kong
Cristina Videira Lopes, University of California at Irvine, USA
Christa Schwanninger, Siemens AG, Germany
Jianjun Zhao, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, China

ORGANIZING COMMITTEE

Alessandro Garcia, Lancaster University, UK
Elisa Baniassad, Chinese University of Hong Kong
Cristina Videira Lopes, University of California at Irvine, USA
Christa Schwanninger, Siemens AG, Germany
Jianjun Zhao, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, China
Eduardo Figueiredo, Lancaster University, UK
Cláudio Sant'Anna, PUC-Rio, Brazil