W O R K S H O P   P R E P A R A T I O N   K I T :
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 original call for papers here.


An important reason for the success of the three earlier REFSQ workshops has been the rigid workshop structure of short presentations, well-prepared discussants for each paper, plenary discussions, and the fact that the papers are made available to all participants electronically before the workshop. Nevertheless, we think there is still room for improvement, and this preparation kit summarises our experiences from the earlier workshops. You are expected to follow them precisely in preparing for the workshop, as all the attendants did in '94, '95 and '97.

N O T I F I C A T I O N   O F   A C C E P T A N C E   ( A p r i l   1 5 t h )

You will be notified by email whether your paper has been accepted or not before April 15th. Acceptance may be conditional, and in that case you may be requested to contact one of the organisers immediately about the changes you have to do to your paper. In that case, we will need an immediate email statement of your intention to improve the paper. You will then have until May 8th to improve the paper in cooperation with the organiser. This may entail submitting several intermediate versions to the organiser electronically, since we need to know about your progress.

An email list of all the REFSQ'98 authors will later be announced at <mailto:refsq98-participants@ifi.uib.no>.

C O N F I R M A T I O N   O F   P A R T I C I P A T I O N   ( A p r i l   2 4 t h )

We need an email statement about which of the authors who will attend REFSQ'98 by April 24th. The paper will not appear in the workshop proceedings unless at least one author attends. Note that this has nothing to do with registration for REFSQ'98 and CAiSE*98, which you have to do to the CAiSE-organisers directly. Most likely there will be early-registration rates, so hurry up!

C A M E R A   R E A D Y   P A P E R   D U E   ( M a y   8 t h )

We must receive your camera ready paper before May 9th. The formatting instructions are available here.

W O R K S H O P   P R O G R A M M E   A V A I L A B L E   E L E C T R O N I C A L L Y   ( M a y   8 t h )

A preliminary workshop programme will now be made available at <http://www.ifi.uib.no/konf/refsq98/programme98.html> .

W O R K S H O P   P A P E R S   A V A I L A B L E   E L E C T R O N I C A L L Y   ( A r o u n d   M a y   15 t h )

The workshop papers will be made available electronically at <http://www.ifi.uib.no/konf/refsq98/papers/> soon after we receive them. Hopefully we'll establish some password scheme to restrict access.

Don't contact the organisers if you have trouble downloading a paper. Instead, contact the author directly and solve the problem through email.

You must read all the other papers in your own session carefully in order to contribute to the discussion of these papers as explained below. Of course, you are encouraged to read all the other papers as well :-)

F U L L   P A P E R   D I S C U S S I O N   P R E P A R A T I O N S

As the presenter of a full paper, you are responsible for provoking discussions by preparing and presenting a slide for each of the other full papers in your own session. The slide should answer the following five questions:

  • Which quality features are addressed by the paper?
  • What is the main novelty/contribution of the paper?
  • How will this novelty/contribution improve RE practice or RE research?
  • What are the main problems with the novelty/contribution and/or with the paper?
  • Can the proposed approach be expected to scale to real-life problems?

    A PostScript-template for the slide is available at

    The answers to each question should be short - you have little time. Focus on the main ideas!

    D I S C U S S I O N   P R E P A R A T I O N S   D U E   ( M a y   2 4 t h )

    This year we want to improve the discussion at the end of each session by preparing a (very small) number of discussion topics in advance. We therefore ask you to provide a shortlist of topics you think are important for your own session. You may also suggest topics for other sessions if you want to.

    B R A I N S T O R M I N G   P R E P A R A T I O N S   D U E   ( M a y   2 4 t h )

    At the end of all the earlier REFSQ workshops we have had a 30 minute brainstorming about areas or topics the participants would like to see more RE research on. A summary of these brainstorms will become available here.

    This year we want to prepare the brainstorming session somewhat more, by having an initial email round of suggestions. We will summarise the replies, and email them back to you before the workshop.

    It is possible that we will extend this scheme further, and use email questionnaires or brainstorms to prepare for the workshop in other ways too.

    P A P E R   P R E S E N T A T I O N S   ( J u n e   8th   a n d   9 t h )

    The presentation of each talk is restricted to 15 minutes to enable intensive discussions. We are strict about this.

    The first slide of each talk should be a slide which positions your paper relative to the following framework by drawing arrows between the afflicted people and defined products in the RE process: 


    
   People:   User/Customer   Requirements Engineer     Software Architect




 Environment




  Products:     Needs            Specification        Design/Architecture

    ((Explanation of the framework will come here.))

    Be selective - there's no problem drawing a lot of arrows, the problem is choosing the most important ones in relation to your paper... Focus on the main ideas!

    The last slide of your talk should answer the five questions presented above for your own paper. The answers should be short - remember that you don't have much time. Focus on the main ideas!

    PostScript-templates for the slides are available at

    B R A I N S T O R M I N G   S E S S I O N   ( J u n e   9 t h )

    F I N A L   V E R S I O N   O F   P A P E R   ( U n c e r t a i n )

    We aim at publishing the workshop proceedings in a book with an ISBN number like in '94, '95 and '97, maybe in a report series from the institution of one of the organisers.

    There may be an additional deadline after the workshop so you can make some final changes to your paper before the proceedings are printed. We are not sure about this at the moment.


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