Call for papers

Software product management (SPM) is a scientific discipline within the Requirements Engineering domain with a focus on managing requirements, release planning, product roadmaps and portfolio planning in product-driven software development. Software Producing Organizations - in both the open source as well as proprietary source contexts - integrate technical and business perspectives to guide the creation of a software product. A product manager makes strategic and tactical decisions on what functionality and qualities a product should offer, to which customers, and at what time. To foster SPM excellence in practice and academia, we cordially invite you to contribute your work to the 9th edition of the International Workshop on Software Product Management (IWSPM’16). The special theme for this edition is:
“Delivering Better Requirements By Improving Software Product Management”
The main goals of IWSPM’16 are to:

Contribute to the SPM Body of Knowledge (SPMBoK)
Identify contemporary research challenges that are relevant for SPM practitioners
Strengthen SPM as a research field within the greater field of software engineering and business management
Provide software product managers and researchers a dedicated forum for exchanging ideas and best practices
Encourage industry participants to contribute with articles and participation

We invite you to submit research papers on product management and topics related to product management. This includes but is not limited to:

Gathering the right requirements as a product manager. New techniques, tools or channels for finding the right requirements.
Product management in general for all forms of software products. These can include but are not limited to:

software-intensive systems
information technology
software as a service
cloud computing
APIs

Product portfolio management and life-cycle management: how to foster continuous innovation and new product initiatives?
Strategic Management and innovation in software product management.
Product planning: improving product vision, strategy, roadmapping, and release definition.
Business aspects: business case development, business planning, and marketing.
Product management environments: software ecosystem collaboration, large-scale organizations, cross-company partnerships, and globalization.
Rapid organization and complexity growth: how to ensure that the intended software product qualities are balanced with new innovations - both technical and business development. (see recent zenefits scandal)
Product management performance: measurement, development, and improvement of product management processes, practices, skills, and competence.
Tools for product management: innovative SPM tooling, tool evaluation, tools in industry.
The interplay of SPM with related disciplines such as software architecture, quality assurance and user interface design.

If you are unsure whether your paper is suitable for this workshop, please send an abstract/summary to
"Garm Lucassen", g.lucassen@uu.nl.

Aside from research papers, the workshop welcomes industry papers from daily practitioners as well. In particular, we are looking for industry case studies, experience reports and short position that provide insights or criticism beyond product management theory.

In both categories it is possible to submit:

Full papers (up to 10 pages)
Short/position/vision papers (up to 6 pages)

Note: that papers must describe original work that has not been previously published or submitted elsewhere. Submissions must be written in English and formatted according to the IEEE formatting instructions [ template ]

Committees

Program Chairs

Garm Lucassen, Utrecht University, the Netherlands

Farnaz Fotrousi, Blekinge Institue of Technology, Sweden

Andrey Maglyas, Lappeenranta University of Technology, Finland

Advisory Board

Sjaak Brinkkemper, Utrecht University, the Netherlands

Christof Ebert, Vector Consulting Services, Germany

Samuel Fricker, University of FHNW, Switzerland

Tony Gorschek, Blekinge Institute of Technology, Sweden

Program committee

Sebastian Barney, University of New South Wales, Australia

Sjaak Brinkkemper, Utrecht University, The Netherlands

David Callele, TRLabs Saskatoon, Canada

Jörg Dörr, Fraunhofer-IESE, Germany

Christof Ebert, Vector Consulting Services, Germany

Samuel Fricker, University of FHNW, Switzerland

Tony Gorschek, Blekinge Institute of Technology, Sweden

Slinger Jansen, Utrecht University, The Nethelrands

Hans-Bernd Kittlaus, InnoTivum, Germany

Kari Smolander, Aalto University, Finland

Lili Wang, Beihang University, China

Krzysztof Wnuk, Lund University, Sweden

Peng Xin, Fudan University, China

Wei Zhang, Peking University, China

Submissions

Prospective authors are invited to submit high quality papers written in English via the EasyChair submission system here [ link ].

All submitted papers will be peer-reviewed by at least three members of the program committee and selected based on workshop relevance, academic rigor (only research papers), innovation, industrial applicability, and quality of writing. Accepted papers will appear in the workshop program and proceedings. At least one author is required to register and participate during the workshop.

Program

09:00: Opening, the workshop overview
09:15: Keynote: Chenguangjing, Huawei Co., "Anyone can be a requirement analyst" [PDF]
10:15: Coffee break
11:00: David Callele and Krzysztof Wnuk, "A Process for Product and Service Definition" Discussant: Samuel A. Fricker
11:30: Samuel A. Fricker, "Systematic Mapping of Technology-Enabled Product Innovations" Discussant: David Callele
12:00: Lunch
13:30: Zahra Shakeri Hossein Abad, Alex Shymka, Susant Pant, Ashley Currie and Guenther Ruhe, "What Are Practitioners Asking About Requirements Engineering? An Exploratory Analysis of Social Q&A Sites." Discussant: Krzysztof Wnuk
14:15: Johan Linåker and Krzysztof Wnuk,“Requirements Analysis and Management for Benefiting Openness (RAMBO).” Discussant: Zahra Shakeri Hossein Abad
14:45: Coffee break
15:30: Open discussions
16:30: Closing

The Workshop Proceeding

All papers were peer-reviewed and the accepted papers are appeared in the IEEE digital library. To cite the accepted papers, please use the following citation format:

D. Callele and K. Wnuk (2016). "A Process for Product and Service Definition", International Workshop on Software Product Management (IWSPM 2016), Beijing, China.

S. Fricker (2016). "Systematic Mapping of Technology-Enabled Product Innovations", International Workshop on Software Product Management (IWSPM 2016), Beijing, China.[pdf]

Z. Shakeri, H. Abad, A. Shymka, S. Pant, A. Currie and G. Ruhe, "What Are Practitioners Asking About Requirements Engineering? An Exploratory Analysis of Social Q&A Sites.", International Workshop on Software Product Management (IWSPM 2016), Beijing, China.[pdf]

J. Linåker and K. Wnuk,“Requirements Analysis and Management for Benefiting Openness (RAMBO)” , International Workshop on Software Product Management (IWSPM 2016), Beijing, China.

Format of the workshop

IWSPM 2016 is a highly interactive event planned to provoke discussion among the presenters of papers, discussants and all the other participants. Typically, after a paper is presented, it is immediately discussed by a pre-assigned discussant, then subject to a free discussion involving all participants. At the end of each session (or after a group of sessions), a discussion takes place about all the papers that were presented in this session (or group of sessions).

Three particular roles can be distinguished:

Session Chair (SC)

SC introduces the presenters of the papers in a session. The SC takes care of the time, organises the discussion of a paper after its presentation, and gives the word to speakers in the audience during discussions. He also moderates session and plenary discussions.

Presenter (PR)

PR presents a paper. A PR is also often a discussant (see below).

Discussant (DC)

DC prepares the discussion of a paper. Each paper is assigned one DC. DCs are typically presenters of other papers in the same session, but can also be presenters of papers in another session. The DC gives a critical review of the paper directly after its presentation by presenting a slide that provides answers to a predefined set of questions.

How do I know which role I have and what I have to do?

PR – Your paper has been accepted and you will be the author who presents the paper. It is highly recommended that you attend the full day of the event and take an active part in the discussion of the other papers. Prepare your presentation and bear in mind the available time: full papers (full research papers ) are restricted to 15 min, and short papers (i.e., position papers) are restricted to 10 min.

DC – Please have a look at the programme to check which paper you should discuss. Read the paper you are assigned to. Prepare a one-slide summary answering the following questions, depending on the type of paper you discuss.

For a research paper:

Technical solution:

What can we do now that we could not do before?
How sound is the solution?

Empirical paper:

What do we now know that we did not know before?
How sound is the research method?

What is the next step to take?

Think of the quality attributes of a technical solution or of the external validity of empirical results.
Whose goals are served or helped by this?
What is the most questionable issue of the paper?
Why wouldn’t I use the same approach?

For an experience report:

What are the lessons learnt?
What is the context of the experience?
What are the next or new topics to research based on the reported experiences?
What new solutions are called for based on the reported experiences?
What is the most questionable issue of the paper?
Why is the experience not very representative?

For a vision paper:

So what? In what sense does this vision make a difference to what researchers and practitioners should do?
Is it controversial?
What new avenues of research does this vision imply?
Who would disagree with this vision?
Who would share this vision?
What is the most questionable issue of the paper?
Why this vision is not so visionary?

For a problem statement:

What is next for the research?
In what context can this problem be investigated?
For whom is this problem important?
What is the most questionable issue of the paper?
Why is the addressed problem not so important?

Student Sponsorship by ISPMA

International Software Product Management Association will sponsor the flight, accommodation and RE conference registration of 2 students (Ph.D., master) with an accepted paper at IWSPM’16. All students that submit a paper and whose submission is accepted will be contacted to inquire whether they would like to compete for this opportunity.

With this sponsorship, the ISPMA hopes to encourage young researchers to contribute new exciting findings to this dynamic domain.

Should you have any questions, feel free to ask:
Garm Lucassen, g.lucassen@uu.nl
Farnaz Fotrousi, farnaz.fotrousi@bth.se.

9th International Workshop on Software Product Management (IWSPM 2016)