P R E L I M I N A R Y   C A L L   F O R   P A P E R S :
R E F S Q ' 9 9

Fifth International Workshop on Requirements Engineering:
Foundation for Software Quality

June 14-18 1999
Heidelberg, Germany
(preceding the CAiSE*99 conference)

The workshop programme and the workshop preparation kit will become available here.

P U R P O S E

Achieving high quality means to realise the needs of users and customers. These needs are elicited, negotiated, documented and validated during requirements engineering (RE). RE is therefore the most crucial phase of software development. The goals of RE are:

• To produce a specification that is as consistent and complete as possible;
• To facilitate a cooperative and iterative learning process;
• To produce a traceable requirements specification;
• To document both the specification and the RE process using appropriate representation formats;
• To establish a sufficient common understanding among the stakeholders involved.

G O A L

The goal of the REFSQ workshop series is to improve the understanding of the relations between requirements engineering and software quality. More precisely, REFSQ aims at having intensive discussion provoked by brief presentations about:

• solutions to known RE problems and shortcomings,
• innovative research ideas possibly initiating new research directions,
• industrial problem statements, and
• generalisations from individual industrial experiences.

At the REFSQ'94, '95, '97 and '98 workshops - all arranged in connection with earlier CAiSE-conferences - 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'99 - as a stage for the discussion of quality-related problems in RE 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.

T H E M E S

Relevant topics include, but are not limited to: classification of COTS requirements into domain-specific and standard ones, analysing the impact of requirements changes, support for change management, prioritising requirements for COTS, bundling requirements into COTS releases, configuration management for requirements, consideration of existing systems, and procurement of COTS.

REFSQ'99 also invites contributions from research and industry within other broad themes, such as:

1. Embedding RE in the organisational context.
   Relevant topics include: smoothly extending existing methods, developing techniques that are specific for individual domains and applications, assessing the helpfulness of formal representations, change management, organisational learning, business processes, etc.

2. Managing the quality of RE processes.
   Relevant topics include: resource estimation, establishing and using 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.

Note that the themes and the lists of topics for each theme are not intended to be exhaustive.

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 or other research approaches to SE and RE 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*99 conference, and some earlier CAiSE conferences have required workshop participants to 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 full-paper presentation will be summarized and commented on by all the other authors of full papers in the same session, acting as discussants. The discussants 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, possibly including a brainstorming session about areas or topics of RE research that the participants perceive as important.

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 15th (arrival date) to:

Andreas.Opdahl@ifi.uib.no

Andreas L Opdahl
Department of Commerce (Bldg 39)
University of Queensland
St Lucia 7072 Qld
Australia

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

Papers will be published in the REFSQ'99 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:	Andreas.Opdahl@ifi.uib.no
	pohl@informatik.rwth-aachen.de