ICSSP/ ICSSE joint conference

Dear Friends and Colleagues,

For the 2020 edition, the 14th International Conference on Software and Systems Process (ICSSP 2020) will be joining forces with the 15th IEEE/ACM International Conference on Global Software Engineering (ICGSE 2020) to create a joint virtual conference to be held on June 26-28, 2020.

With the aim of bringing together a greater audience of researchers and industry practitioners with complementary interests and backgrounds, the joint conference will cover both 2020 conference themes:

ICSSP Theme: Synergies of AI, Serverless, and Software and Systems Processes

ICGSE Theme: Human-centered Global Software Engineering

The joint ICSSP/ICGSE conference will feature:

• 2 outstanding keynote talks
• 27 technical presentations
• 11 Industry presentations
• 2 Ph.D. track presentations
• 1 Journal first presentation

The conference program and program schedule can be accessed at ICSSP-ICGSE Program or through the Program tab above. The conference program will be comprised of five 3-hour sessions.

PROGRAM SCHEDULE

ICSSP2020 program information can be found on the “Program” tab above and at icssp2020program.html

ICSSP 2020 Theme: Synergies of AI, Serverless, and Software and Systems Processes

Software engineering continuously reinvents the way software and software intensive systems are built. Recently, Bombardier and Siemens announced significant investments in optimizing their product development processes. Tesla is trying to revolutionize the automotive market by implementing continuous delivery in safety critical systems.

Artificial intelligence (AI) techniques are emerging as a transforming force in software development and evolution. These techniques include (but are not limited to) Machine Learning (ML) and Deep Learning (DL), and are redefining how developers build software products. ML and DL are accelerating contemporary software development lifecycles by analyzing huge amounts of data produced and consumed throughout the process. This raises important questions for our field: How will human intelligence be supported and augmented by machine intelligence? With automated toolchains and cloud-based hardware provisioning paradigms driving more rapid and continuous integration and delivery, how will this combination of process, technology and people improve the quality, effectiveness and efficiency of software and systems development?

ICSSP 2020 will provide a special platform for research focusing on software and systems development process as well as the factors driving their evolution. The International Conference on Software and Systems Process (ICSSP 2020)) will be joining forces with the 15th IEEE/ACM International Conference on Global Software Engineering (ICGSE 2020) to create a combined virtual conference to be held on June 26-28. 2020. For the detailed conference information, please visit http://dbsi.hdu.edu.cn/icssp2020.

The ICSSP Conference Series

ICSSP/ICGSE 2020 is the latest in a series of conferences that have been organized by the International Software and Systems Process Association (ISSPA). The ISSPA has sponsored or co-sponsored seven previous ICSSP conferences, held at sites around the world, dating back to 2007. Proceedings of the ICSSP conferences are available through the ACM Digital Library. Extended versions of selected papers from several years have been published in the Journal of Software: Evolution and Process (Wiley). More information about the International Software and Systems Process Association is available here.

The previous conferences:

• ICSSP2019, Montreal, QC, Canada (Co-hosted with ICSE)
• ICSSP2018, Gothenburg, Sweden (Co-hosted with ICSE)
• ICSSP2017, Paris, France
• ICSSP2016, Austin (TX), USA (Co-hosted with ICSE)

Accepted Papers

ICSSP/ICGSE 2020 Keynote Speakers

James Herbsleb

Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA, USA

Title: Global Software Engineering in the Age of GitHub and Zoom. How collaboration technologies and the mainstreaming of open source have changed global software engineering.

Bio

James Herbsleb is a Professor in the Institute for Software Research in the School of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University where he serves as the Director of the department. His research interests lie primarily in the intersection of software engineering, computer-supported cooperative work, and socio-technical systems, focusing on such areas as geographically distributed development teams and large-scale open source development. He holds a PhD in psychology, and an MS in computer science.

His research has won several awards, including the ACM Outstanding Research Award (2016), Alan Newell Award for Research Excellence (2014), Most Influential Paper award (ICSE 2010), Honorable Mention for Most Influential Paper award (ICSE 2011), ACM Distinguished Paper Award (ICSE 2011), Best Paper Award (Academy of Management, 2010), ACM Distinguished Paper Award (ESEM 2008), and Best Paper Award (CSCW 2006).

For about two decades, he has worked with many extraordinary colleagues to try to understand the complex and dynamic relationship between human collaboration and the software that the humans are designing and using. On his optimistic days, he feels he has made a bit of progress.

Yuriy Brun

University of Massachusetts, Amherst, MA, USA

Title: Preventing Undesirable Behavior of Intelligent Machines.

Abstract:

Modern software contributes to important societal decisions, and yet we know very little about its fairness properties. Can software discriminate? Evidence of software discrimination has been found in systems that recommend criminal sentences, grant access to loans and other financial products, transcribe YouTube videos, translate text, and perform facial recognition. Nonetheless, even defining what it means for software to discriminate is a complex task. I will present recent research that defines software fairness and discrimination; develops a testing-based, causality-capturing process for measuring if and how much software discriminates; and provides provable guarantees on software fairness. I will also describe open problems in software fairness and how recent advances in machine learning and natural language modeling can help address them. Overall, I will argue that enabling and ensuring software fairness requires solving research challenges across computer science, including in machine learning, software and systems process, human-computer interaction, and theoretical computer science. The main contributions discussed in this talk can be found in http://doi.org/10.1126/science.aag3311 and https://doi.org/10.1145/3106237.3106277/

Registration for ICSSP/ICGSE will be handled through ICSE, see at https://2020.icse-conferences.org/attending/registration. The ICSE Registration web-site is now open as of June 11. (https://www.cy-mice.org/icse2020/default.php) At present, ICSE has listed ICSSP and ICGSE as separate conferences. Registering for either conference will enable you to be part of the joint event. We have asked ICSE to correct the issue.

ICSSP/ICGSE registered participants will be entitled to attend all the synchronous events on June 26-28, and to see the recorded paper presentations (and recorded keynotes if unable to join the live talks).

What to expect after you register

As we receive notification from ICSE with the names and emails of those who have registered, we will be sending a welcome email to confirm that we have received your information. Please allow a few days for this confirmation. By June 25, we will send out instructions with:

1. Zoom links for all the meetings along with passwords
2. Dropbox links and passwords to all video presentations and papers

Thank you again for your interest and being a member of our community. We look forward to seeing you at the virtual ICSSP/ICGSE 2020 conference and welcoming you as part of this exciting first ever virtual event!

Call for ICSSP 2020 Doctoral Track Submissions

The International Conference on Software and Systems Process (ICSSP 2020) invites submissions for consideration for inclusion in the ICSSP 2020 Doctoral Track which will be hosted as an integral part of the main ICSSP 2020 programme. Successful submissions will present to the main ICSSP 2020 audience and as such offers an excellent opportunity for current Ph.D. candidates to present their work and elicit feedback from the ICSSP community, which is comprised of some of the leading figures in the software and systems process domain.

The goal of the ICSSP community in hosting the Doctoral Track is driven by a keen appreciation of the importance of Doctoral studies and the many benefits that expert community-led constructive feedback can deliver in terms of enhancing Doctoral work, while also supporting leading researchers of the future. Thus, the Track offers a rare opportunity to obtain valuable expert feedback and to get in touch with peer students in the same field of interest. The event is designed with 2nd/3rd year PhD candidates in mind, and particularly where initial results are not yet mature enough for a full conference paper and the work going forward may benefit from feedback from the ICSSP community. The ICSSP Doctoral Track should address topics of interest to ICSSP 2020 and also more generally, all research areas that are in scope of the ICSSP conference series. Successful submissions will be published in the main conference proceedings.

Doctoral Track papers shall present research progress to date, current work-in-progress and plan to completion. Please note that the sole author on the submission must be the doctoral candidate and that advisor(s) should be noted immediately below the author details. Submissions should address the following concerns:

• Motivation: describe the problem that you want to address and briefly summarize existing approaches along with their deficiencies.
• Objectives: outline the key objectives of your PhD research and argue how achieving them will address the problem outlined in the motivation.
• Methodology: identify what methodology you will adopt to meet the objectives of your project. Clearly state on what existing works your work will build.
• Research challenges: outline the technical, methodological, conceptual, or other hurdles faced in completing the research.
• Research Plan: describe what preliminary results – if any – you have already achieved and summarize your plans for future work. Please add a rough schedule that allows to judge whether your research plan is feasible.

Authors of selected submissions will be required to produce and present a Poster to reflect their ICSSP 2020 Doctoral Track paper, which will be displayed alongside the main ICSE 2020 Posters. Details on poster formats will be provided in due course.

Note: All important information specific to the Doctoral Track can be found on this page. Some of this information differs from the corresponding items for the Main Track.

Preconditions for Submission

All submissions must comply with the ACM and IEEE policies on authorship and publication. These include:

• The Policy on Roles and Responsibilities in ACM Publishing as they apply to authors
• The ACM Policy and Procedures on Plagiarism
• The ACM policy on Prior Publication and Simultaneous Submissions
• The IEEE guidance on publishing ethics

Note that submitted papers must reflect the original work of the authors, the authors must be entitled to publish the work, the work must not have been published previously in a refereed or formally reviewed publication, and the work must not be under review or in press elsewhere while under review for ICSSP, among other provisions.

How to Submit

Submissions to ICSSP must not exceed the page limits specified above for the applicable type of submission. Page limits include all text, figures, tables, references, and appendices. All submissions must be in English.

Important: ICSSP is NOT following a double-blind reviewing process, so author names and affiliations should appear beneath the title of a submission. (This is different from the policy followed by ICSE and some other co-located events.)

Formatting instructions are available at https://www.acm.org/publications/proceedings-template for both LaTeX and Word users. LaTeX users must use the provided acmart.cls and ACM-Reference-Format.bst without modification, enable the conference format in the preamble of the document (i.e., \documentclass[sigconf,review]{acmart}), and use the ACM reference format for the bibliography (i.e., \bibliographystyle{ACM-Reference-Format}). The review option adds line numbers, thereby allowing referees to refer to specific lines in their comments.

Submissions must be made through the ICSSP submission site prior to the submission deadline. Be sure to direct your submissions to the Doctoral Track and select “Student doctoral paper” when uploading your submission.

Authors of accepted papers shall prepare a final camera-ready version of the paper, taking into account all feedback from reviewers, and formatted according to the guidelines above.

Requirement for Letter of Recommendation

Each student submission must be supported by a letter of recommendation from the student’s research advisor(s). The letter of recommendation should ideally be brief, indicating that the student will be in a position to attend and present at the conference if their submission is successful, and including an assessment of the current status of the research, including an expected date for the dissertation’s filing (which may be approximate). Note that letters may be shared with reviewers of the submission but will generally be kept confidential.

Letters of recommendation must also be submitted through the ICSSP submission site prior to the submission deadline.Submissions without a supporting letter of recommendation will not be reviewed.

Requirement to Register, Attend and Present

If a submission is accepted, the doctoral candidate must register for and attend the conference and present the paper in person. Failure to meet this requirement may result in the paper being withdrawn from the program and proceedings.

Review Process

Each submission will be reviewed by at least two Doctoral Track Committee members. Submissions will be evaluated based on their relevance, the motivation and quality of the proposed research, as well as the suitability of the chosen methodology. The potential for students to benefit from participation in the Track may also be considered in making the final selection of accepted papers.

Contact Information

For further information, please contact Guoping Rong via ronggp@nju.edu.cn.

ICSSP 2020 will be co-located with ICSE 2020 in Seoul, South Korea and held on May 23 and 24, 2020. As a special treat, ICSSP will hold a joint keynote speaker, a joint panel, and joint reception with the International Conference on Global Software Engineering (ICGSE).

Overview

Techniques under the general heading of artificial intelligence (AI) are transforming many industries. Software development and evolution is no exception. These techniques including (but not limited to) Machine Learning (ML) and Deep Learning (DL) are redefining how developers build software products. ML and DL are accelerating contemporary software development lifecycles by analyzing huge amounts of data produced and consumed throughout the process. Concurrently, hardware provisioning is undergoing fundamental changes. We now see the rise of serverless infrastructure provisioning and a move towards pay-per-use hardware with the invention of microservices and Function-as-a-Service (FaaS) technology.

AI and serverless hardware provisioning are rising trends that warrant careful software and systems process attention. AI can be an aid to software and systems processes, while software and system processes are required to build AI-based systems. This raises an important question for our field: How will human intelligence be supported and augmented by machine intelligence? With automated toolchains and cloud-based hardware provisioning paradigms driving more rapid and continuous integration and delivery, how will this combination of process, technology and people improve the quality, effectiveness and efficiency of software and systems development?

ICSSP 2020 is seeking contributions on research, practice, and compelling new ideas pertaining, but not limited, to the following topics:

• Software and systems processes for AI-based systems
• AI for general software and systems processes
• General software process related studies and research reports
• Measurement for hybrid and evolving processes
• The impact of serverless infrastructure on software and systems processes
• Empirical studies and experience reports on agile or hybrid processes
• Factors affecting selection, design, adoption, management and success of hybrid processes
• Continuous integration and deployment for serverless infrastructure
• Function-as-a-Service software and systems processes
• Impacts of special requirements such as high safety/reliability, globally distributed development, continuous integration, and others
• Evolution or transformation of organizations
• Enterprise processes for advanced development paradigms such as agile, lean, DevOps or customer-centric development
• Data science for analysis and management of hybrid and evolving processes

All accepted papers will be included in the ICSSP Proceedings, which will be published as part of the ICSE companion proceedings. In addition, a selection of the best papers from the ICSSP 2020 conference will appear in a special issue of the Journal of Software Evolution and Process.

We invite the following submissions:

Full papers (10 pages including references) that reflect completed and evaluated research on novel approaches to major software and systems engineering process challenges, especially relating to synergies of AI, serverless, and software and systems Processes. Enhanced versions of the best research papers will be included in a special issue of the Journal of Software: Evolution and Process. Full papers can also be industry experience papers that report and reflect on in-depth experience, potentially including challenges, solutions, lessons, and recommendations, of significance for the research and practice communities.

Short papers (5 pages including references) that present concise research results, describe workin-progress (e.g. Ph. D. research), or conceptual and position papers addressing new perspectives, open questions and future directions. Short papers can also be industrial papers, for instance, describing practical challenges or research needs motivated by experience.

Posters (2 pages extended abstract (including references) + DIN A2 poster draft) for research or industry experience that is not yet ready for publication as a paper, but nevertheless would be of interest to other researchers in terms of ideas, participation, or collaboration.

Submission Format

Preconditions for Submission

All submissions must comply with the ACM and IEEE policies on authorship and publication. These include:

• The Policy on Roles and Responsibilities in ACM Publishing as they apply to authors
• The ACM Policy and Procedures on Plagiarism
• The ACM policy on Prior Publication and Simultaneous Submissions
• The IEEE guidance on publishing ethics

Note that submitted papers must reflect the original work of the authors, the authors must be entitled to publish the work, the work must not have been published previously in a refereed or formally reviewed publication, and the work must not be under review or in press elsewhere while under review for ICSSP, among other provisions.

How to Submit

Submissions to ICSSP must not exceed the page limits specified above for the applicable type of submission. Page limits include all text, figures, tables, references, and appendices. All submissions must be in English.

Important: ICSSP is NOT following a double-blind reviewing process, so author names and affiliations should appear beneath the title of a submission. (This is different from the policy followed by ICSE and some other co-located events.)

Formatting instructions are available at https://www.acm.org/publications/proceedings-template for both LaTeX and Word users. LaTeX users must use the provided acmart.cls and ACM-Reference-Format.bst without modification, enable the conference format in the preamble of the document (i.e., \documentclass[sigconf,review]{acmart}), and use the ACM reference format for the bibliography (i.e., \bibliographystyle{ACM-Reference-Format}). The review option adds line numbers, thereby allowing referees to refer to specific lines in their comments.

Submissions must be made through the ICSSP submission site prior to the submission deadline. Be sure to direct your submissions to the main conference and select the appropriate submission type when uploading your submission.

The official publication date is the date the proceedings are made available in the ACM or IEEE Digital Libraries. This date may be up to two weeks prior to the first day of ICSE 2020. The official publication date affects the deadline for any patent filings related to published work.

Purchases of additional pages in the proceedings is not allowed.

Requirement to Register, Attend and Present

If a submission is accepted, at least one author of the paper must register for and attend the conference and present the paper in person. Failure to meet this requirement may result in the paper being withdrawn from the program and proceedings.

Contact

For further information, please contact Eray Tuzun via eraytuzun@gmail.com or Paul Clarke via Paul.M.Clarke@dcu.ie.