Call for Papers

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1st Workshop on Assessment of Contemporary Modularization Techniques (ACoM.07)
22 May 2007, Minneapolis, USA
Co-located with the 29th Int. Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE.07)

A plethora of new modularization techniques are emerging to cope with the challenges of contemporary software engineering, thereby addressing shortcomings of established development paradigms, such as object-oriented and component-based software engineering. For example, modern programming languages and modeling techniques (e.g. UML) are being enhanced with additional modularity mechanisms and abstractions, such as aspects, features, and the like. With new software engineering paradigms fast gaining wide attention in both research and industry environments, there is a pressing need to define proper assessment mechanisms, techniques and methods.

Effective evaluation of contemporary modularity techniques has imposed deep concerns on software engineering researchers and practitioners and can be characterized according to two different perspectives: an inter-paradigm perspective, and an intra-paradigm perspective. In the first perspective, empirical studies along with supporting assessment techniques provide the basic means to improve our understanding of the benefits and drawbacks of new software decomposition techniques, especially when compared to techniques from other development paradigms. According to an intra-paradigm perspective, systematic assessment of artefacts decomposed according to a specific paradigm is imperative through all the software lifecycle phases, from requirements engineering to implementation and maintenance. For example, estimation models and measures of software internal properties are useful assessment techniques that can assist software developers, managers, and customers to characterize and improve the software modularity attributes.

Since new modularization techniques - such as object-oriented design patterns, aspect-oriented software development, feature-oriented software development - are starting to reach some level of maturity, assessment is becoming a central issue to software engineering researchers and practitioners. The relevance of the topic becomes even more evident when we look at the number of qualitative and quantitative case studies, software metrics, and assessment frameworks involving new modularity techniques. They are consistently appearing in the software engineering literature.

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.

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. Papers should be submitted electronically to CyberChairPRO in either Postscript (PS) or PDF format. The CyberChairPRO submission page is available at http://cyberchair.acm.org/acompapers/submit/.

We are soliciting the submission of two categories of position papers:

1. Traditional position papers (up to 6 pages) related to workshop topics
2. 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 (1) 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 (2) 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.

Submission Deadline: 1 February 2007 23:59 SST (Apia - Samoa)
Notification of Acceptance: 20 February 2007
Camera-ready: 5 March 2007
Workshop: 22 May 2007

Mehmet Aksit, University of Twente, The Netherlands
James Bieman, Colorado State University, USA
Paulo Borba, UFPE, Brazil
Gerardo Canfora, University of Sannio, Italy
Christina Chavez, UFBA, Brazil
Yvonne Coady, University of Victoria, Canada
Robert France, Colorado State University, USA
Holger Giese, University of Paderborn, Germany
Ian Gorton, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, Australia
Rachel Harrison, Stratton Edge Consulting, UK
Arno Jacobsen, University of Toronto, Canada
Mira Mezini, T.U. Darmstadt, Germany
Awais Rashid, Lancaster University, UK
Peri Tarr, IBM Watson Research Center, USA
Tom Tourwe, CWI, The Netherlands
Robert Walker, University of Calgary, Canada

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

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