C A L L   F O R   P A P E R S :
R E F S Q ' 9 8

Fourth International Workshop on Requirements Engineering:
Foundation for Software Quality

June 8-9 1998
Pisa, Italy
(preceding the CAiSE*98 conference)

The workshop programme is available here and the preparation kit here.

P U R P O S E

The ultimate measure of software quality is the degree to which user requirements are fulfilled by a system, its fitness for use. Early elicitation and correct definition of requirements prevents costly rework during later development stages and provides the foundation for building high quality systems. Therefore, requirements engineering is considered as a more and more crucial part of the system life cycle.

During requirements engineering the users and engineers have to find a way from an initially opaque and diverse system understanding to exact, reconciled and at least partially formalized software specifications. A multitude of methods from software engineering, ethnology, social sciences and psychology have been adapted to support this process, and to improve the requirements specification as a foundation for higher software quality. Most of these methods are relying on adequate specification languages which are expressive and formal enough so that the represented quality requirements can be verified or validated.

At the REFSQ'94, REFSQ'95 and REFSQ'97 workshops researchers and practitioners from various disciplines presented approaches to improve the definition and implementation of quality requirements. The success of the earlier REFSQ's has encouraged us to provide a follow-up workshop REFSQ'98 as a stage for the discussion of quality-related problems in requirements engineering as they have developed over the last year. In particular, we like to encourage people from the requirements engineering, software engineering and information systems fields to present their approaches to higher software quality and to discuss how requirements engineering can contribute to it.

G O A L

The main goal of REFSQ'98 is to bring together people working in the fields of requirements engineering, software engineering and information systems focussing on the

• specification of quality requirements;
• their traceability back to user needs and forward to the design;
• their realization by SE and IS development methods;
• the measurement of their achievement, as well as
• consolidating the achievements of the three previous REFSQ workshops.

T H E M E S

REFSQ'98 invites contributions from research and industry within the following four main themes:

1. Embedding RE in the organisational context.
   Relevant topics include: change management, procurement, organisational learning, business processes, etc.

2. Managing the quality of RE processes.
   Relevant topics include: traceability, process modelling and monitoring, RE project organisation, quality models of RE and the RE process, environments for supporting RE processes, CAME environments, etc.

3. Quality assurance and RE.
   Relevant topics include: models for quality assurance, considering quality assurance in RE, software quality and RE, specification of software quality requirements, measuring the quality of requirements, etc.

4. Mapping requirements specifications to software architecture and design.
   Relevant topics include: transformation and mapping methods, the interplay between requirements and software quality features, formal representation methods, etc.

Note that the lists of topics mentioned for each theme are not intended to be exhaustive. High-quality papers on other topics within any of the four themes are also welcomed.

P A P E R S

Papers of three types can be submitted to the workshop:

• Full papers
  Full papers should emphasize what is new and significant about the chosen approach and adequately compare it with similar work. Integration of the contributions with mainstream SE and RE methods and products (like SA, OMT, ER, and the like) are especially encouraged.

  The maximum length of a full paper is 6000 words.

• Position papers
  Position papers should state the author's research position with respect to view of current RE practice, relations between current RE practice and RE research, and/or research methodology and ontological assumptions. Papers should emphasise which topics that are of particular concern to the RE community at present, and why.

  The maximum length of a position paper is 2000 words.

• Industrial problem statements
  People from industry are especially encouraged to submit problem statements. Industrial problem statements should focus on perceived mis-matches between current RE practice and research and/or on emerging areas of concern for RE practitioners.

  An industrial problem statement may be about one page long, but more comprehensive statements will also be considered.

W O R K S H O P   F O R M A T

The workshop will be an interactive forum. Attendance will be limited to 30 people and all participants must have a paper accepted for the workshop. The workshop language is English.

The workshop will be organized in conjunction with the CAiSE*98 conference, and all workshop participants must also attend the main conference.

The accepted papers will be made available electronically to all workshop participants before the workshop, so that presentations can be kept short. Each presentation will be summarized and commented on by a discussant, on behalf of all the other authors in the same session. The discussant will be followed by a plenary discussion of the paper. In addition, there will be a plenary discussion at the end of each session.

At the end of the workshop there will be a general discussion, including a brainstorming session about areas or topics the participants would like to see more RE research on.

Email sessions between the participants will be organised before the workshop to prepare for fruitful and focussed plenary discussions and brainstorms.

I N S T R U C T I O N S   F O R   A U T H O R S

Send your full paper (max. 6000 words), position paper (max. 2000 words) or industrial problem statement (approx. 1 page) by e-mail or via normal post before March 9th (arrival date) to:

Andreas.Opdahl@ifi.uib.no

REFSQ'98
Department of Information Science
University of Bergen
N-5020 Bergen
Norway

Email submission is encouraged, as the accepted papers will later be distributed to the other participants electronically.

Papers will be published in the REFSQ'98 workshop proceedings, and the papers will be made available electronically for the participants before the workshop. We also intend to provide paper preprints at the beginning of the workshop, but this is dependent on the funding we receive.

I M P O R T A N T   D A T E S

O R G A N I Z A T I O N

Email:	edu@info.fundp.ac.be
	Andreas.Opdahl@ifi.uib.no
	pohl@informatik.rwth-aachen.de