Call for Papers
Continuing the success of previous PROFES conferences, we are arranging the 9th International PROFES (Product Focused Software Development and Process Improvement) conference in Villa Mondragone, the official residence of the University of Roma Tor Vergata, at Frascati-Grottaferrata-Monte Porzio Cantone, located in the hills south of Rome, Italy (Roman Castles) on June 23-25, 2008. PROFES conferences have continuously attracted participants interested in software processes coming in equal numbers from industry, research, and academia, which confirms that the conference provides topics are up-to-date, important, and interesting. Now, the conference is enhancing its scope to also cover collaborative and agile software development.


THEME &SCOPE
The conference themes ‘professional software process improvement (SPI)’, ‘product focused improvement’, ‘collaborative’ and ‘agile software development’ address approaches that cover systems and software quality management and improvement, software development applying agile principles and collaborative software development in a global context. The themes cover both solutions and experiences found in practice as well as research results from academia. The conference deals with SPI extensively including quality engineering and management topics focused on the product to be developed, thus related to processes, methods, techniques, tools, organizations, and enabling SPI technologies ensuring certain characteristics of the product. The conference addresses collaborative development both as “one-roof”, “outsourced”, and “offshored” development, and also deals with different development modes, roles in the value-chain, and stakeholders’ viewpoints, as well as economic and quality aspects. Agile development is considered both as “agile in the small” and “agile in the large”. Agile development shows a tremendous increase in productivity in one-roof development, and is considered for being applied in large projects as well.

The conference provides a variety of up-to-date topics and tackles industry problems. Medical, automotive, space &avionic systems, mobile applications, and critical infrastructures are rapidly growing software application areas with a strong need for professional development and improvement. Nowadays, the majority of embedded software is developed in collaboration, and distribution of embedded software development continues to increase. Therefore, we encourage papers and discussions in various new application domains in addition to papers in more traditional areas such as information or telecommunication systems.


TOPICS
The main topics of the conference include:

* Product Focused SPI
* Systems and Software Process Improvement
* Systems and Software Quality
* SPI Methods and Tools
* Measurement
* Quality Models
* Experimental Software Engineering
* Evidence-based Software Engineering
* Industrial Experiences and Case Studies
* Process Modeling and Management
* Global Development
* Outsourcing, Nearsourcing, Offshoring
* Cultural Factors
* Agile Software Development
* Process Assessment
* Quality Standards
* SPI in Different Software Development Areas
* Cost Estimation
* Risk Management
* Best Practices
* Lessons Learned
* Organizational Learning/Experience Factory

We especially encourage papers in the domains of:

* Automotive and Transportation Systems
* Medical Systems
* Health Care and Well-Being Systems
* Mobile Applications
* Consumer Electronics
* Space and Avionics Systems
* Critical Infrastructures
* Telecommunications
* Embedded systems


PAPER SUBMISSIONS

  
Upload paper submissions or experience reports in PDF format by January 15, 2008.

Accepted contributions will be included in the conference proceedings. Best papers will be invited to submit an extended version to a special edition in the Journal Software Process Improvement and Practice.

The proceedings of PROFES 2008 will be published by Springer in the Lecture Notes of Computer Science (LNCS) series. See also LNCS Forthcoming Proceedings for further details.

Please note that only those papers will be considered for review, which do not exceed 15 pages and adhere to the layout instructions detailed in the layout guidelines. Please download the LNCS authoring guidelines and make sure that your paper fulfils all format requirements. All LNCS volumes are published both in print and in electronic form. Authors of accepted papers will be asked to submit to the conference proceedings editors a signed copyright form together with the camera ready copy of the paper in the conference layout. At least one author must register to the conference before the deadline for camera-ready copies.


PROPOSALS FOR PANELS, WORKSHOPS &TUTORIALS
Panels, workshops, and tutorials are essential to ensure discussion of key issues related to SPI research and practice. We invite you to propose a panel, a workshop or a tutorial on interesting topics from on-going research or industrial projects. We are looking for a description of 2-5 pages including the time requirement. Tutorials should be either half or full day. In the case of panels, each member is encouraged to develop a short position statement. Proposers of panels or workshops are expected to participate in organizing them.
Please send Panel, Workshop &Tutorial proposals to profes2008@iese.fraunhofer.de. In addition, a special event will be held for contributions from industry. Information with respect to this event will be announced on the conference Web site