PROFES is the premier forum for practitioners, researchers, and educators to present and discuss experiences, ideas, innovations, as well as concerns related to software process and product quality improvement. PROFES 2014 will be the 15th gathering of the PROFES community and will take place in Helsinki, Finland.

The technical program will feature keynote talks, research papers, and experience reports on the most relevant topics related to existing and next-generation software processes, practices, and improvement approaches. Empirical studies (experiments, industrial experiences, cases studies, etc.) are welcome. In addition, we plan to host a number of workshops and tutorials. We will also host a Doctoral Symposium.

The proceedings of PROFES 2014 will be published by Springer in the Lecture Notes on Computer Science (LNCS) series.

To ensure that PROFES will retain its high standards and that it will keep focusing on the most relevant research issues, we are looking for original research on software engineering techniques, methods, and technologies for product-focused software development and process improvement as well as their practical application in an industrial setting. The topics of interest include, but are not restricted to, the following:

Practices and tactics for value-driven software development
Processes for software innovation
Infrastructures and processes for iterative or incremental software delivery
Capabilities for fast release cycles
Continuous deployment
Development approaches using real-time feedback
Gaining and analyzing deep customer insight
Product quality models for software, systems, and services
Project management techniques
Service orientation and cloud
Software development for Cyber Physical Systems
Agile and lean processes
Global or distributed software development
Process modeling, management, and assessment
Processes for OSS-based development
Service engineering processes
Software business models
Industrial experiences and case studies on the topics above
Special Theme: Adapting to Radically New Business Conditions in Real-Time

We are facing a fundamental systemic transformation towards a world where digital resources are constantly available on-line, and available for all to use. The complexity and competition around the new Internet infrastructure, services and business environment will increase dramatically which will fundamentally change the way software will be developed, deployed and used to reach business goals. Increasingly, products and services are not developed by a single company but rather by a network of collaborating companies. In addition, in the new real-time digital economy the companies’ ability to gain deep customer insight will significantly mature. In the new global markets companies must better understand not just what features, functions or user interface solutions their products and services should have but, even more, how they could provoke, delight, gratify, shape or touch the users in a totally new way and with totally new products and services. This requires methods and tools to improve innovation as well as as feedback mechanisms to automatically collect, analyze, and visualize data and information of the experiences and needs of the users. The key question is how the companies could adapt to radically new business conditions and opportunities in real-time or even, proactively. The dimensions of the new digital business revolution go broad and deep, even to the traditional industry sectors, and will require that the companies begin to perform software development in significantly different ways than before.

Full Paper Submission

PROFES ’14 invites submissions of full papers related to all the topics of interest of the conference. Papers that address collaborations between industry and academia, case studies as well as experience reports on any of the conference themes are welcome. All submitted papers will undergo a rigorous peer review process. Papers will be selected based on originality, quality, soundness and relevance. All contributions must be original, not published, accepted or submitted for publication elsewhere. All papers should be submitted in PDF format through Easychair (https://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=profes2014). Submitted papers must conform to the Springer LNCS author guidelines. The maximum length of full papers is 15 pages.

Short Paper Submission

PROFES ’14 invites submissions of short papers related to all the topics of interest of the conference. Papers that address collaborations between industry and academia, case studies as well as experience reports on any of the conference themes are welcome. All papers should be submitted in PDF format through Easychair (https://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=profes2014). Submitted papers must conform to the Springer LNCS author guidelines. The maximum length of short papers is 4 pages.

Poster Submission

PROFES ’14 invites submissions of posters related to all the topics of interest of the conference. Posters represent a good way for fast tracking new ideas, and provide an opportunity to present work-in-progress in an informal setting. Topics of interest are the same as the aforementioned research topics. Posters will be presented in a separate “Pitch Session”. A half page description should be submitted no later than November 3, 2014 to Marco Kuhrmann (kuhrmann@in.tum.de). The poster notification will be on November 19, 2014.

PhD Proposal Submission

The submission details for PhD proposals at the PROFES doctoral symposium can be found on the conference website.

Workshop and Tutorial Proposal Submission

The submission details for proposals for workshops and tutorials will soon be available at the conference website.