CALL FOR PAPERS

SPICE 2016 - The 16th International Conference Process Improvement and Capability dEtermination

9-10 June 2016
Dublin City University, Dublin, Ireland
http://www.spiceconference.com

The SPICE User Group is pleased to announce the sixteenth International Conference on Process Improvement and Capability dEtermination in Software, Systems Engineering and Service Management, to be held at Dublin, Ireland from 9-10 June 2016. The conference will be preceded by the second International Workshop on "Software Process Education, Training and Professionalism"; a separate call for submissions for the SPETP Workshop will be released.

This major conference is hosted on behalf of The SPICE User Group by Dublin City University, Ireland (www.dcu.ie). The conference marks 23 years since the beginning of the SPICE Project.

The 2016 Conference will have a particular focus on Agility – on the application of assessment-based improvement to agile development, and on the definition and implementation of flexible and agile processes. It is intended to have an intensive session on Agility on the second day of the conference.

In addition, the conference will focus on the emerging ISO/IEC 3300xx series which is the revision of the ISO/IEC 15504 family of related Standards; since key documents from this Standards suite have now been published, a significant focus for the Conference will be the transition from ISO/IEC 15504 to ISO/IEC 330xx. There will also be special tracks for assessment of Management systems; Functional safety and security; and Medical and Healthcare technology. Contributions examining the role of situational context in software process definition, adaptation or assessment are welcome.

Papers and presentations related to process assessment, improvement and risk determination are specifically invited for the 2016 SPICE conference. Submissions are sought in the following categories:

Research Papers (full papers)
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Research papers should describe innovative and significant work in process modelling, assessment and improvement, particularly relating to the application of the Standards for Process Assessment, which is relevant across the information technology industry generally. Papers should comprise 12 - 14 pages.

Industrial Experience Reports (short papers)
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Reports on practical experiences related to process assessment and improvement across the domains of software engineering, systems engineering and IT service management are sought; an extended abstract (6 - 8 pages) should be submitted.

The programme committee welcome high quality contributions to the conference on the following related topics:
* Case studies on model-based improvement;
* Knowledge and skills for process assessment and improvement;
* Assessment approaches applied to agile development;
* Lean process improvement;
* Process improvement in SMEs and VSEs;
* Definition of process quality characteristics to support process improvement;
* Empirical studies on characteristics of high maturity organizations;
* Processes and process models applicable to integrated management systems;
* Emerging Process Reference Models and Process Assessment Models;
* Use of process assessment in domains outside software, systems engineering and service management;
* Conformity assessment approaches and schemes for process assessment;
* New measurement and rating frameworks;
* The role of situational context in process definition and adaptation.

The breadth of the application of the standardised approach to process assessment remains a topic of considerable interest, from both a practical and theoretical perspective; and so, accordingly, the SPICE 2016 Conference seeks contributions specifically relating to the following areas of application:
* Automotive systems and software;
* Aerospace systems and software;
* Medical device and healthcare systems and software;
* Innovation, knowledge and technology transfer;
* Enterprise systems;
* IT service management;
* IT security;
* Safety-related systems and software;
* Test process improvement;
* Financial institutions and banks;
* Small and very small enterprises;
* IT and public procurement.


SUBMISSIONS:
Contributions will be accepted in following formats:
* Full papers (12 - 14 pages)
* Short papers presenting Industrial Experience reports (6-8 pages)

All papers must be submitted electronically as MS-Word or Latex files through the Easychair conference portal https://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=spice2016 and a copy sent by email to papers@spiceconference.com.

All paper submissions will be reviewed by members of the Programme Committee, with those judged best to meet the aims of the Conference selected for presentation.

All accepted research papers and industrial experience reports will be published in the Conference Proceedings by Springer-Verlag as part of the as part of the CCIS (Communications in Computer and Information Science) book series.

Accordingly papers must conform to the Springer CCIS format, identical to the LNCS (Lecture Notes in Computer Science) format. Please see the SPICE 2016 website (http://www.spiceconference.com) for complete author guidelines. Full Papers must not exceed 14 pages and Industry Experience papers must not exceed 8 pages.

Note: For a paper to be published in the proceedings, Springer requires one author to sign a copyright release form. In addition, at least one of the authors must register (paid in full) to attend SPICE 2016 to present the paper. All papers will be published in both print and digital format (therefore all digital source files (doc/docx/latex/pictures, etc.) must be submitted).

SCHEDULE:
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Full paper and extended abstracts submission 29 February, 2016
Notification of acceptance 21 March, 2016
Deadline for author registration 1 April 2016
Preliminary programme 1 April, 2016
Final copy of paper due 4 April, 2016
SPETP Workshop 8 June, 2016
Conference 9-10 June, 2016


CONFERENCE COMMITTEE:
General Chair: Alec Dorling (Impronova, Sweden)
Program Chair: Terry Rout (Griffith University, Australia)
Industry Chair: Dr. Paul M. Clarke, Dublin City University, Ireland
Proceedings Editor: Prof. Rory O’Connor, Dublin City University, Ireland

PROGRAM COMMITTEE:
Béatrix Barafort (Luxembourg)
Luigi Buglione (Italy)
Gerhard Chroust (Austria)
François Coallier (Canada)
Antonio Coletta (Italy)
Onur Demirors (Turkey)
Fabrizio Fabbrini (Italy)
Dennis Goldenson (USA)
Christiane Gresse von Wangenheim (Brazil)
Victora Hailey (Canada)
Linda Ibrahim (USA)
Jørn Johansen (Denmark)
Ravindra Joshi (India)
Ho-Won Jung (South Korea)
Giuseppe Lami (Italy)
Marion Lepmets (Ireland)
Catriona Mackie (United Kingdom)
Antonia Mas Pichaco (Spain)
Fergal McCaffery (Ireland)
Tom McBride (Australia)
Antanas Mitasiunas (Lithuania)
Takeshige Miyoshi (Japan)
Risto Nevalainen (Finland)
Mark Paulk (USA)
Saulius Ragaisos (Lithuania)
Alain Renault (Luxembourg)
Patricia Rodriguez-Dapena (Spain)
Clenio Salviano (Brazil)
Jean-Martin Simon (France)
Fritz Stallinger (Austria)
Timo Varkoi (Finland)
Bharathi Vijayakumar (India)
Murat Yilmaz (Turkey)


CONTACTS:
For technical matters
Terry Rout
Software Quality Institute
Griffith University
Queensland 4111
Australia

Email: T.Rout@griffith.edu.au
https://www.griffith.edu.au/engineering-information-technology/software-quality-institute
Alec Dorling
Impronova AB
Gothenburg
Sweden

Email: alec.dorling@spiceconference.com
http://www.impronova.com

For local arrangements
Dr. Paul M. Clarke,
Dublin City University
Dublin
Ireland
Email: spice@computing.dcu.ie

For proceedings matters
Prof. Rory O'Connor
Dublin City University
Dublin
Ireland
Email: spice@computing.dcu.ie

For more information see the conference website http://www.spiceconference.com