Introduction to the RE’11 special issue: requirements in motion

Abstract

In 2002, the IEEE Symposium on Requirements Engineering (created in 1993) and the Conference on Requirements Engineering (created in 1994) were merged into a single conference series to form the IEEE International Requirements Engineering Conference, which is commonly referred to as RE. Ever since then, RE is premier forum for researchers and practitioners to exchange on the latest developments in the field of Requirements Engineering. It has now become a tradition that the best research papers of each yearly edition of RE are identified by the programme committee, and their authors are invited to submit and extended version for a special issue of the Requirements Engineering Journal (REJ), the leading specialized archival publication in the field. As the Program Chair of the 19th IEEE International Requirements Engineering Conference (RE’11), it is my privilege and pleasure to introduce this special issue of the REJ which features extended versions of four distinguished papers from RE’11. RE’11 was held in the beautiful medieval town of Trento, Italy, from August 29 to September 2, 2011. The main conference attracted 230 delegates from all over the world. It was preceded by 2 days of tutorials and workshops as well as the RE doctoral symposium. This year, we had 12 workshops and two co-located 2-day events, namely FMICS’11 (the 16th International Workshop on Formal Methods for Industrial Critical Systems) and IStar’11 (the 5th International i* Workshop). The total number of attendants, including all co-located events, amounts to 300. Overall, these statistics are excellent and demonstrate the healthy status of the RE community. The special theme for this edition of the conference was ‘‘Requirements in Motion.’’ As systems grow ever more complex, are developed globally, and become more interconnected, the impacts of changes are harder to analyse and control. In these settings, ensuring that software will continue to exhibit its intended properties becomes trickier. Efficient management of change in the broad diversity of RE contexts and across the whole RE process continuously calls for novel research ideas. For this reason, RE’11 specifically encouraged submissions that address requirements change and evolution. This year, the research track received 138 submissions, from which we accepted 23 full-length papers, resulting in an acceptance rate of 16,7 %. The papers were selected using the multi-tiered blind review process developed over the years. Each paper was carefully reviewed by at least three program committee members. All papers with at least one positive review were then discussed by program committee and program board members using Cyberchair. Approximately one-third of the submissions eventually made it to the program board meeting in Namur, Belgium, where the final decisions were made. The 23 research papers were divided into eight paper sessions which showcased ground-breaking research on a rich variety of topics. Two of these sessions were devoted to the special theme. Out of these 23 already highly select papers, the program committee nominated one best paper and five distinguished papers. Their authors were invited to submit a revised and extended version for possible inclusion in the REJ. Four of these papers eventually made it to this special issue after going through a standard journal blind review process with subsequent revisions. Part of the referees were P. Heymans (&) PReCISE Research Centre, University of Namur (FUNDP), Namur, Belgium e-mail: patrick.heymans@fundp.ac.be