The Third IEEE International Workshop on Requirements Engineering For Services (REFS'09)

MOTIVATIONS AND BACKGROUND

Service orientation is rapidly emerging as the leading network computing paradigm. At the same time, services have become the dominant form of economic activity and increasingly the basis for socio-economic organization. The commonalities and synergies among service concepts across the levels of IT infrastructure and business and social organization will lead to powerful innovations and new developments, triggering a call to establish a new discipline of “Services Science, Management, and Engineering (SSME)”. A common feature of service orientation across all levels is the need to understand and characterize what the customer wants, including socio-technical constraints, and to design services that can meet those requirements effectively.

CALL FOR PAPERS

Requirements engineering (RE) has emerged as a critical area in software and systems engineering, as many systems fail due to poorly understood, ill-defined or ill-conceived requirements.  Much of the same concepts and techniques could potentially be applied to services, with the benefit of systematic methods and scientific inquiry. However, service orientation introduces many new challenges. Service providers and service users interact much more closely. Knowledge is created and exchanged among customers and suppliers. Instead of a single set of requirements on a technical system, there are networks of providers and users, each with requirements and expectations on each other – some based on tacit social conventions, and each with requirements on their technical IT systems. Service design and operation often proceed in parallel, as new knowledge and experiences are incorporated into service systems and processes on an ongoing basis. Automated processes are richly interwoven with human action, decision, and judgment. Some of the interactions will adhere to open standards, while others may be informally negotiated. There are highly dynamic on-the-fly network configurations as well as long-term stable relationships.

To continue the on going discussions from the REFS 2007 and REFS 2008 workshop amongst active researchers and practitioners all over the world, we expect to again gather enthusiastic participants this year in Seattle,  who will take the opportunity to share their knowledge in intensive informal discussion to develop new ideas, new strategies and new collaborations on relevant topics: What existing and new requirements engineering methods and techniques are suitable for a service oriented environment? What adaptations, extensions or re-conceptualizations will be needed? How can requirements engineering contribute to a new discipline of services science, management, and engineering? Will service orientation lead to a rethinking of the field of requirements engineering? These are some of the key questions to be explored at this workshop.

SCOPE OF THE WORKSHOP AND EXPECTED CONTRIBUTIONS

.       Service requirements models and descriptions

.       Service requirements identification, elicitation, and acquisition

.       Service requirements communication, negotiation, and validation

.       Service requirements analysis and design methods

.       Service engineering and management processes

.       Knowledge engineering and management for Services

.       Service ontologies, metrics, and benchmarks

.       Service design, management and manufacturing

.       QoS modeling and evaluation frameworks

.       Trust, delegation, and negotiation models for services

.       Security, privacy, and safety for services

.       Services related architecture – Web Service Architecture, Service-Oriented Architecture

.       Service enabling technologies

.       RE techniques for business process redesign

.       RE techniques for business model and value analysis

.       RE techniques for services discovery and composition

.       RE techniques for service quality

.       Conceptual modeling for services management and engineering

.       Empirical evaluation of RE for services

.       Conceptual frameworks for RE and Services

.       RE techniques for aligning business services and computational services

.       RE techniques for Service-Oriented Computing & Service-Oriented Architecture

.       RE techniques for adaptiveness and agility in services

.       RE techniques for socio-technical analysis and design of services

.       Services and requirements engineering for pervasive computing and ambient intelligence

.       RE and SSME techniques for user experience

.       RE and SSME techniques for lifecycle management

PROGRAMME COMMITTEE

Marco Aiello, University of Groningen, Netherlands

Grigoris Antoniou, FORTH, Greece

Luciano Baresi, Polit. of Milano, Italy

Chi-hung Chi, Tsinghua University, China

Vincenzo D'Andrea, University of Trento, Italy

Eric Dubois, CRP Henry Tudor, Luxembourg

Schahram Dustdar, Vienna University of Technology, Austria

Geoffrey Fox, Indiana University, USA

Xavier Franch, Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya, Spain

Yanbo Han, Chinese Academy of Sciences, China

Paul Johanesson, University of Stockholm, Sweden

Michael Maximilien, IBM Almaden Research Center, USA

Massimo Mecella, University of Roma "La Sapienza", Italy

Sotirios Liaskos, York University, Canada

Enrico Nardelli, University of Roma "Tor Vergata", Italy

Selmin Nurcan, University of Paris I Panthéon Sorbonne, France

Dimitris Plexousakis, FORTH, Greece

Pascal van Eck, University of Twente, Netherlands

Carson Woo, University of British Columbia, Canada

Haiyan Zhao, Peking University, China

Jelena Zdravkovic, Royal Institute of Technology (KTH), Stockholm, Sweden

Andrea Zisman, City University, UK

More to be announced…

IMPORTANT DATES

Paper Abstract Submission:                                                         March 1, 2009

Full Paper Submission:                                                                 March 7, 2009

Paper Notification:                                                                          March 30, 2009

Camera Ready Paper Submission and Author Registration:          April 30, 2009

PAPER SUBMISSION

Papers must be submitted electronically via the REFS 2009 Submission Page. Please follow the instructions posted on the web site. The format of submitted papers should follow the guidelines for IEEE conference proceedings. All papers will be carefully reviewed by at least three reviewers. Papers will be accepted (and can be submitted) as regular papers, short papers, or fast abstracts. Acceptance and final category depends on reviewer feedback. Contributions may include:

·        Full research papers: 6 pages, up to 2 extra pages for no more than 8 pages total. Note: there is a 250 USD charge per extra page to complete the paper registration

·        Short papers – research-in-progress, industrial experience, problem description: 4 pages, no extra page allowed

·        Fast abstract: 2 pages, no extra page allowed

·        Keynote/Invited paper: if approved/applicable. No more than 6 pages

·        Panel description and position statement: ONE page. No extra page allowed

For Camera-ready upload, please follow the naming convention on the COMPSAC submission page.  Remember that you will need to register and submit your Camera-Ready Copy to both

1.     REFS 2009 Submission Page &

2.     IEEE Conference Publishing Service for COMPSAC2009.

PAPER PUBLICATION

Accepted papers will be published in the Workshop Proceedings of the 33rd IEEE Computer Software and Applications Conference (COMPSAC 2009). At least one of the authors of each accepted paper must register as a full participant in the workshop to have the paper published in the COMPSAC 2009 Proceedings.

The authors of a number of selected papers of special merit will be invited to submit a revised and extended version of their papers for possible publication in a special issue in a Journal such as IEEE Transactions on Services Computing.

WORKSHOP FORMAT

This one-day workshop will include keynote(s), presentation sessions, a moderated panel session, and open discussions on relevant Requirements Engineering for Services topics.

WORKSHOP ORGANIZATION

WORKSHOP INFORMATION AND GENERAL INQUIRIES

Please contact Lin Liu (linliu[at]tsinghua.edu.cn)