VACE 2016 - CALL FOR PAPERS
First International Workshop on Variability and Complexity in Software Design

May 15, 2016
Austin, TX, USA
http://vaquita-workshop.org/vace/

Workshop held in conjuction with ICSE 2016
http://2016.icse.cs.txstate.edu/

THEME AND GOAL
Many of today’s software systems must accommodate different usage and deployment scenarios (e.g., product families, self-adaptive systems, configurable or customizable single systems, open platforms, context-aware mobile apps, service-based systems that dynamically compose services). Intentional and unintentional variability in functionality or quality of software tremendously increases the complexity of the problem and design space of those systems. Given the increasing size of software systems (e.g., software ecosystems, systems of systems), emerging and maturing application domains (e.g., UAV, SDN), fast and highly competitive markets (e.g., mobile apps), and last but not least more powerful and versatile hardware, the complexity caused by variability becomes increasingly difficult to handle. Variability has previously been targeted by various software engineering sub-communities (e.g., requirements engineering, software architecture, product lines). The goal of this workshop is therefore to provide one venue for researchers, practitioners and educators from different areas of software engineering to jointly discuss experiences, synergies, forge new collaborations, and explore innovative solutions that address the challenges of engineering for variability in high-quality software.

TOPICS
The workshop addresses software engineering issues related to requirements, design, implementation, evaluation, deployment and maintenance of variability-intensive systems. Topics include (but are not limited to):
*Flexible and lightweight approaches to support variability in problem and solution space and to develop large-scale variability-intensive software
*Conflict between flexibility (agile / lean) and the need for bigger up-front design and design space exploration
*Challenges to balance business value and effort spent on anticipating variability
*Design solutions to enable continuous delivery of variability-intensive systems
*DevOps for developing, deploying and maintaining variability-intensive systems
*Approaches to limit unintentional variability and to better scope intentional variability to manage complexity
*Variability in emerging and maturing domains with potentially large problem and design spaces
*Integration of functional and qualitative variability in general development practices
*Models and mechanisms to model and handle variability across different life cycle stages, from inception to operation
*Practices for requirements engineering, architecting, design, implementation, testing and maintenance of variability-intensive systems
*Methods for quality assurance, process and product metrics for variability-intensive systems
*Reference models / architectures and frameworks to reuse design knowledge when designing with variability in mind
*Training and tools

PAPER CATEGORIES
*Position and vision papers (2-4 pages): On-going research, new challenges and emerging trends; novel solutions and inspiring, new and divisionally ideas; directions for future research, trends.
*Full papers (6-7 pages): Innovative and original research, empirical studies, systematic literature studies, etc.
*Industry and experience papers (up to 7 pages): Industrial experience, case studies, challenges, problems and solutions.
*Education and training papers (up to 7 pages): Experiences, approaches and tools for teaching topics in academic courses or industrial training (e.g., lesson plans, assignments).
*Artifact papers (2 pages): Descriptions of architectures, designs, code, etc. of variability-intensive systems that could help built a corpus for research and education. Papers must include a link to actual artifacts.

Papers should follow the formatting guidelines for ICSE 2016 submissions:
http://2016.icse.cs.txstate.edu/formatInstr

Papers should be submitted through the EasyChair submission system:
https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=vace2016

Each paper will be reviewed by three members of the program committee. Accepted papers will be published as an ICSE 2016 Workshop Proceedings in the ACM and IEEE Digital Libraries and be presented at the workshop. Papers must present novel material and not under review elsewhere at the time of submission. The official publication date of the workshop proceedings is the date the proceedings are available in the ACM Digital Library. This date may be up to two weeks prior to the first day of ICSE 2016. The official publication date affects the deadline of any patent filings related to published work.

IMPORTANT DATES
Submission date: January 22, 2016
Notification: February 19, 2016
Camera-ready: February 26, 2016
Workshop: May 15, 2016

ORGANIZERS
Matthias Galster, University of Canterbury, New Zealand
Michael Goedicke, University of Duisburg-Essen, Germany
Danny Weyns, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium
Uwe Zdun, University of Vienna, Austria

PROGRAM COMMITTEE
Eduardo Almeida, Universidade Federal de Bahia, Brazil
Jesper Andersson, Linnaeus University, Sweden
Martin Becker, Fraunhofer IESE, Germany
David Benavides, University of Seville, Spain
Jan Bosch, Chalmers University, Sweden
Goetz Botterweck, LERO, Ireland
Jens Knodel, Fraunhofer IESE, Germany
Kim Lauenroth, Adesso AG, Germany
John Mylopoulos, University of Toronto, Canada
Elisa Yumi Nakagawa, University of Sao Paulo, Brazil
Claus Pahl, Dublin City University, Ireland
Liliana Pasquale, LERO, Ireland
Gilles Perrouin, PReCISE, University of Namur, Belgium
Klaus Schmid, University of Hildesheim, Germany
Bedir Tekinerdogan, Wageningen University, Netherlands
Eddy Truyen, KU Leuven, Belgium