[ecoop-info] CFP: Agile Requirements Engineering (Agile RE), an ECOOP 2011 Workshop

[Joao Araujo]

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Call for Papers
Agile Requirements Engineering (Agile RE), an ECOOP 2011 Workshop,
26th July 2011, Lancaster, UK

Workshop website :
http://www.comp.lancs.ac.uk/~gacitur1/AREW11/index.htm
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Ever since agile first emerged in the 1990s, there has been debate
about what role, if any, requirements engineering (RE) can play for
agile practitioners and their customers. That agile development needs
requirements is not disputed, but the relevance of the assumptions,
methodologies, techniques and tools that make up the discipline that
has become known as RE, is. Thus, while agile emphasizes incremental
discovery and satisfaction cycles with face-to-face interaction rather
than documentation, RE has traditionally stressed full understanding
of requirements before commitment to coding and rigorously maintained,
version-managed and traced requirements documents. Yet both of these
views are stereotypes, rendered even less valid by the evolution that
has occurred in both the agile and RE worlds. Thus, for example,
techniques have emerged from the RE community for dealing with
volatile domains where the requirements can’t be fully known before
coding begins; sometimes not even before deployment. Similarly
techniques have been developed in the agile community for modelling,
structuring, and analyzing requirements knowledge.

The aim of the Agile RE workshop is to take stock of the two
worldviews to discover whether agile needs RE, and whether novel RE
practices can deliver what agile needs.

WORKSHOP FORMAT:
We aim to make Agile RE a genuine working event, in which all
attendees actively participate during what we hope will be a really
stimulating day.  We encourage participation from both the agile and
the RE communities as well as from non-aligned but interested people,
from seasoned practitioners and PhD students, from people with
concrete experience to report and people primarily interested in
learning.

The event will begin with a keynote by Wolfgang Emmerich, Professor of
Distributed Computing at University College London and Chairman of
Zuhlke Engineering Ltd, an early adopter and one of the thought
leaders of Agile Development in the UK.

We will use the paper presentations to draw out themes for discussion;
these might be issues needing more research, factors inhibiting
industry take-up or just points of mutual benefit to the RE and agile
communities. The rest of the day will be spent in interactive, plenary
and group discussions of these themes, with the aim of identifying an
agenda for further research, technology transfer or for better
communication and dissemination.

PAPERS
We invite submissions of papers describing experiences, challenges,
vision, and ideas on the need for, or use of requirements engineering
techniques in agile software development projects. Topics of interest
include but are not limited to:

- New requirements techniques, methods or tools aimed at supporting agile
development
- New agile development techniques, methods or tools incorporating novel
requirements handling
- Evaluations of requirements techniques, methods or tools with
implications for the support of agile development
- Evaluations of agile development with implications for requirements
handling
- Experience reports of requirements handling in agile development
- Position statements on the relationship between RE and agile development

Accepted papers will be published in the ACM digital library.
Accordingly, we will ensure a rigorous review process that guarantees
the quality of the accepted papers. To be accepted for the ACM digital
library, authors will be required to revise their papers to address
reviewers’ comments and the outcome of discussions following the
workshop.

We will use the workshop website as the nucleus of a community of
interest, serving as a resource for workshop attendees and other
interested parties, with links to related sites of interest such as
the BCS RESG. A workshop report will be published on the website.


IMPORTANT DATES:
Submission of papers: 15st April 2011
Author notification: 20th May 2011
Workshop: 26th July 2011

Submission of revised papers for ACM digital library: to be confirmed

PAPER SUBMISSION INSTRUCTIONS:
Submissions will be handled by EasyChair. Papers must be written in
English, and be no longer than 6 pages, including references,
appendices and figures, and written using the LNCS style. For more
information about formatting please consult the Springer LNCS web
site.

ORGANIZING COMMITTEE
Emmanuel Letier, University College of London (UK)
Joao Araujo, Universidade Nova de Lisboa (Portugal)
Ricardo Gacitua, Lancaster University (UK)
Pete Sawyer, Lancaster University (UK)

PROGRAM COMMITTEE
Helen Sharp, Open University (UK)
Bashar Nuseibeh, Lero (Ireland) & The Open University (UK)
Julian Holmes, Unified Process Mentor (UK)
Simon Monk, Momote ltd. (UK)
Jutta Eckstein, IT communication (Germany)
Tom Gilb, Result Planning (No)
Ken Boness, University of Reading (UK)
Rachel Harisson, Oxford Brookes University (UK)
Donald Firesmith, SEI (USA)