Introduction to the REFSQ 2011 special issue

Abstract

This special issue of Requirements Engineering Journal contains the four best papers among the nineteen papers presented at the 17th Working Conference on Requirements Engineering: Foundation for Software Quality (REFSQ 2011), held in Essen, Germany, during March 28–31, 2011. We, the guest editors of this special issue were the co-chairs of the conference’s program committee. Since the beginning of computing, long before the first REFSQ took place in 1994, requirements engineering (RE) has always been a major factor determining the quality of software-intensive, computer-based systems and services. From REFSQ’s beginnings as a workshop, the REFSQ working conference series has steadily established itself as a leading international forum in which to discuss RE in its many relations to computer-based system quality. REFSQ seeks reports of novel ideas and techniques that enhance RE processes and artifacts as well as reflections on current research and industrial practice about and in RE. Probably, the most appreciated characteristic of a REFSQ working conference is its format in which, unlike most conferences and workshops, the discussion following a paper’s presentation is as long as the presentation itself. One intended benefit of this discussion is helping the authors improve their papers for later submission to an archival journal such as this one. We selected the four best papers, starting from recommendations sent to us after the conference by conference attendees, who had read the papers, heard the presentations, and attended the discussions. We had assigned ourselves to attend every session; whenever there were parallel sessions, each of us was at a different session. Therefore, at least one of us had heard every presentation at the conference. We considered also the original reviews and the contents of the discussion about each accepted paper both before and during the program committee meeting. Soon after the conference, we announced the four best papers and invited the authors of each to submit their paper to this special issue to be subjected a standard Requirements Engineering Journal reviewing process with no guarantee of acceptance. To be accepted to this special issue, each conference paper had to be enhanced by at least 40%, with material that had not appeared in the conference paper. We instructed authors to, at the very least, deal with issues raised by reviewers for which there was no room in the page-restricted conference papers. We suggested that they consider the questions and issues that came up during the post-presentation question-and-answer and discussion sessions and during informal conversations during breaks and meals. Of course, the authors could bring in any new research that they might have done since sending in the final version of the conference paper some 3 months before the conference. Each paper was reviewed by three reviewers with instructions to apply Requirements Engineering Journal standards. In the interest of speedier reviews of only 1 month, we invited the reviewers of each new paper’s conference version to review the new paper. To replace the decliners among these invitations, we found some other experts not on the program committee who were willing to D. M. Berry (&) Cheriton School of Computer Science, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, ON N2L 3G1, Canada e-mail: dberry@uwaterloo.ca