The following topics are dealt with: formal specification; systems analysis; software maintenance; learning (artificial intelligence); security of data; software quality; data privacy; Internet; social networking (online); formal verification.

Follow-the-sun has evolved to follow-the-talent. Managing a product thus has a true global perspective. Products increasingly are developed in virtual teams using agile set-up and gig economy practices. The success of a product or service depends on its product management. Recently software product management has moved closer to software development in its understanding that market decisions have technical impact, and vice versa. This research provides results from an empirical field study with twenty companies on software product management in its global context. The empirical study provides concrete practices to fertilize and evolve software product management in global teams and thus the success of products in terms of predictability, quality and efficiency. We show that with institutionalization of a consistent and empowered product management role, global product development benefits in terms of schedule, quality and duration.

Many companies work with suppliers to increase flexibility, focus on their own core competencies and improve efficiency and cost along the supply chain. Working with suppliers and effectively integrating them to complex software supply chains is far from easy. Savings are much smaller and problems are more difficult to cure than with internal development. Obviously suppliers need to optimize both on content and business and thus do not necessarily deliver according to initial commitments. Such diverging optimization needs by suppliers and their clients can be overcome with a Win-win strategy of transparency, controlling and expectation management. This article provides experiences and empirical evidence from global software engineering and supplier management over several years in different context and companies. We illustrate effects of supplier management based on described quantitative methods by looking into two industry case studies. This will allow transfer of results to other companies.

Industry and society are facing radical changes due to fast growing digital technologies and its ubiquity. Products and services will increasingly augment and integrate the real world with the digital world. This digital transformation has reached all business areas. Companies and consumers expect to obtain innovation, market penetration, cost reductions and more flexibility. The relationship between RE and society is bi-directional. In this talk, we discuss the evolving role of RE by referring to a quarter century of impressive research. We discuss the increasing scope and responsibility of our discipline, serving as the bridge between the general public and technical teams and providing a response to the dramatic changes in our society.

Professional software products and IT systems and services today are developed mostly by globally distributed teams, projects, and companies. Successfully orchestrating Global Software Engineering (GSE) has become the major success factor both for organizations and practitioners. Yet, more than a half of all distributed projects does not achieve the intended objectives and is canceled. This paper summarizes experiences from academia and industry in a way to facilitate knowledge and technology transfer. It is based on an evaluation of 10 years of research, and industry collaboration and experience reported at the IEEE International Conference on Software Engineering (ICGSE) series. The outcomes of our analysis show GSE as a field highly attached to industry and, thus, a considerable share of ICGSE papers address the transfer of Software Engineering concepts and solutions to the global stage. We found collaboration and teams, processes and organization, sourcing and supplier management, and success factors to be the topics gaining the most interest of researchers and practitioners. Beyond the analysis of the past conferences, we also look at current trends in GSE to motivate further research and industrial collaboration.

The main purpose of this paper is to describe the design objectives that were set when work started on developing the COSMIC method of measuring a functional size of software requirements, the problems that were tackled during the development and some measurement results that demonstrate that the method has met its objectives. The paper begins by setting two main general objectives for software measurement, namely to help control software activities and to estimate future activities. Various approaches to software size measurement are described and the reasons are given why the COSMIC method was developed. The method is briefly described, followed by an account of advances by the COSMIC community. The paper concludes by discussing the main technical challenges that must still be tackled (principally measurement automation) and the organizational challenges (principally gaining a wider acceptance of the benefits of software measurement).

Industry and society as a whole are facing radical changes due to fast growing digital technologies and their penetration of practically all areas. Products and services will increasingly augment and integrate the real world with the digital world. This digital transformation has reached all business areas. The role of Requirements Engineering is therefore changing in becoming even more ubiquitous: Changing value chains and production processes, as well as new business models and innovative IT and software systems, need to be developed and operated in even shorter time frames. No wonder that project managers and IT departments feel unable to cope with the challenges on their own. We propose a panel in order to look into the role of requirements engineering in making digital transformations successful. It will address process, culture and technology dimensions.

The current challenges in Global Software Development (GSD) necessitate support from software tools with special features. In this work, we explain which features are desirable for these tools in the context of GSD and how these features are related to the principal challenges in this environment. We shall therefore present a survey of the tools that provide these features. The tools included in the survey were classified through the use of the ISO/IEC 12207 standard processes to determine which process is supported by each tool. A classification of the tools according to their features is also included, in which the specific features of each tool are shown.

Increasingly complex supplier-relationships dominate product development, independent of industries and products. Mostly the primary source of risks and later problems is insufficient coherence with requirements engineering methodology and collaboration between different business partners during the project. This article based on experiences from various industries and projects provides insight into how to effectively collaborate in requirements engineering. Methods and tools are one side of the medal, but true collaboration also means having a platform to effectively and efficiently exchange requirements, specifications and their entire change management across impacted stakeholders. The requirements interchange format (RIF) has quickly moved forward over the past two years first in automotive and currently starting in domains such as medical and aerospace. This paper describes typical RE collaboration scenarios and what we recommend in order to mitigate risks and thus effectively manage complex supplier relationships. We will not ldquosellrdquo any tool but rather indicate how RIF is applied in order to share, communicate and collaborate across different tools.

Globally distributed software development poses substantial risks to project and product management. Not all eventualities can however be buffered, because in the global economy, developing and implementing products must be fast, cost effective and adaptive to changing needs. Therefore, there is a need to utilize different techniques to effectively and efficiently mitigate risks. This article systematically introduces risk management in global software engineering (GSE) for development projects and product evolution. Methods include using basic project, supplier and quality management techniques, process frameworks (e.g., CMMI), product life-cycle management, effective communication processes, SLA based escalation, competence management, and innovation management. A longitudinal empirical field study over several years from a captive SW center of a worldwide leading ICT company in India provides practical experiences and indicates how to effectively apply GSE risk management practices.

Requirements engineering is recognized as one of the most critical parts of the software development life cycle. The goal of RE is to develop good-not perfect-requirements and to manage them during development with respect to risks and quality. RE is the discipline within systems and software engineering that bridges the entire life cycle and thus determines success or failure of a product or project. From a business perspective, it is what makes the difference between a winning product and a mere set of features. Good requirements engineering practices in industry are critical to succeed-and survive-in ever-changing markets. Current trends are making effective requirements practices even more important. First, the demand for high quality and reliable software is growing rapidly. Second, we see an increasing number of projects being developed with different suppliers having a multitude of stakeholders with different needs and ambitions that have to cooperate to achieve a shared objective. Last but not least, global delivery models rely on the ability to efficiently distribute the software life cycle across locations.

Global software engineering is the consequence of the rather friction-free economic principles of the entire software industry. Many companies start global software engineering (GSE) due to perceived cost differences. Most of these companies engage globally active outsourcing companies to achieve fastest ramp-up of their globalization targets. After a while into that business they realize that savings are much smaller and problems are more difficult to cure than before. Disillusioned many abandon their GSE activities. What has gotten wrong? GSE bears many challenges, specifically if done with an external supplier. We will look in this article to lessons learned from GSE to effectively and successfully manage supplier relationships. Specifically we use process maturity and CMMI as a guidance how to improve supplier relationships. Both experiences and practical guidance result from our work with clients in automotive and telecommunication industries. They can be readily implemented, specifically our checklists for effective supplier management.

Global software engineering is of growing importance due to reasons of skills, load balancing, response time, local presence and efficiency. However, many GSE projects have run into roadblocks with severe performance impacts. Working in a global context obviously has advantages but also drawbacks. While the positive side accounts for time-zone effectiveness or reduced cost in various countries, we should not close our eyes in front of the severe disadvantages. In fact the business case is surely not a simple trade-off of different cost of engineering in different regions. Working in a globally distributed project means overheads for planning and managing people. It means language and cultural barriers. It creates jealousy between the more expensive engineers being afraid of loosing their jobs, while forced to train their much cheaper counterparts.

This International Workshop on Global Software Development for the Practitioner (GSD2006) was held in conjunction with the 28th International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE 2006) on May 23rd, 2006 in Shanghai, China. The workshop was motivated by the industry trend towards developing software in globally distributed settings: geographically distributed teams, or outsourcing parts of the software development to other organizations in other parts of the world. Topics presented and discussed in the workshop focused on grounded, practical strategies and techniques that address the geographic, temporal, organizational, and cultural boundaries inherent in global software projects.

This paper review and discuss software product management as a discipline, the need for it, and how it relates to RE. Given the relevance of product management in IT and software companies, and the rather unexplored body of knowledge in this field, the panel delivers a brief overview of software product management and its relationship to requirements engineering. Specifically the panel builds upon the workshop on software product management held before the RE'06 conference and outlines areas for further growth, both in academia and practice

Practically all industry studies on software project results conclude that good requirements engineering plays a pivotal role for successful projects. A key reason for project failures is insufficient management of changing requirements during all stages of the project life cycle. This article investigates one of the root causes for changing requirements, namely requirements uncertainty. In an experimental field study we looked into four underlying drivers for requirements uncertainty. We found several techniques must be used simultaneously to see tangible success. Using only one such technique in isolation doesn't make a difference. The field study is supported by extensive data from well over 200 projects stemming from very different business areas of Alcatel over a period of two years. Results are presented with practical experiences to allow effective transfer.

Being successful in product development means to deliver the right products or solutions at the right time for the right markets. While requirements engineering (RE) plays a key role in selecting and managing requirements for a given project, the "upstream process" before the project start often remains vague. Typically this upstream process is decoupled from the project related RE processes, which creates lots of project deficiencies, such as changes in requirements, and ultimately delayed release. We take the position that only by integrating upstream (e.g., roadmap) and downstream (i.e., project) processes, projects are successful. This field study is supported by data from 246 industry projects over a period of two years. We found that four described techniques must be used simultaneously in order to see tangible performance improvement. Each technique is explained by concrete and practical experiences.

Many industries are hampered with introducing the product line concept into already existing products. Though appealing, the concept is very difficult to introduce specifically into a legacy environment. All too often the impacts and risks are not considered adequately. This article describes the introduction of a product line approach in Alcatel's S12 Voice Switching System Business Unit. Practical impacts during the introduction are described as well as tricks and traps. The article not only summarizes the key software engineering principles, but also provides empirical evidence and practical techniques on which to build.

Summary form only given. The product line approach is a major reuse concept that has shown concrete commercial results over the past years. Product lines achieve reuse in the functionality and solution space, and thus improve quality, cycle time and cost. They are specifically promising in cases where many variants are produced almost simultaneously, such as in telecommunication systems. Though appealing, the concept is difficult to introduce specifically into an existing development environment. All too often the impacts on requirements management are not considered globally enough. The opposite of a product line concept is to allow every variant of a product to implement its own requirements only loosely coupled to the base product. This article describes the introduction of a product line approach in Alcatel's S12 Switching System Business Unit. Success factors are described related to the interface with marketing, requirements definition, roadmapping and portfolio management, requirements reuse, planning and prioritization incremental development, and configuration management are explained. Practical impacts are described as well as tricks and traps.

Global software development challenges traditional techniques of software engineering, such as peer reviews or teamwork. Effective teamwork and coaching of engineers contribute highly towards successful projects. In this case study, we evaluate experiences with validation activities in a global setting within Alcatel's switching and routing business. We investigate three hypotheses related to the effects of (a) collocated inspections, (b) intensive coaching and (c) feature-oriented development teams on globally distributed projects. As all these activities mean an initial investment compared to a standard process with scattered activities, the major validation criteria for the three hypotheses are: (1) cost reduction due to earlier defect detection and (2) less defects introduced. The data is taken from a sample of over 60 international projects of various sizes, from which we have collected all types of product and process metrics over the past four years.

Cost-effective software project management has the serious need to focus resources on areas where they have biggest impact. Criticality predictions are typically applied for finding out such high-impact areas in terms of most effective defect detection. The paper investigates two related questions in the context of real projects, namely the selection of the best classification technique and the use of its results in directing management decisions. Results from a current large-scale switching project are included to show practical benefits. Fuzzy classification yielded best results and is in a second study enhanced with genetic algorithms to improve overall prediction effectiveness.

Computer systems in today's society require an increasing amount of embedded software and hardware systems. Their application has introduced new problems for the software engineer combined with the complexity of such systems. In particular, the early stages of the software development process are vital for the successful implementation of computer systems. High order Petri nets are introduced and extended as a powerful formalism for the specification and analysis of concurrent systems. A tool called SystemSpecs has been applied that supports rapid system prototyping with such nets. This survey article provides techniques for early systems analysis that can be used as a real time system prototype for customer presentations. Small examples are extracted from industrial applications to indicate how the described techniques can be used. While the major disadvantage of typical net descriptions is their visual complexity that makes them useless for large distributed systems, the paper also describes how to find overly complex structures, and describes selected methods of how to refine such structures.

Selected results of a research project are presented that investigate complexity growth during the complete development process of real-time systems. Our approach is to measure complexity factors independent of underlying development processes, specification methods, and development environments. We explain how the metrics are selected and then integrated into different modeling techniques. Metrics are collected automatically in a CASE environment and thus exemplified for real-time automation projects. Some typical complexity traces are provided and described. Based on such tracing plots it is possible to characterize projects, to compare different projects, and to control projects early depending on the evolvement of complexity.

The paper provides insight in techniques for criticality prediction as they are applied within the development of Alcatel 1000 S12 switching software. The primary goal is to identify critical components and to make failure predictions as early as possible during the life cycle and hence reduce managerial risk combined with too early or too late release. The approach is integrated in the development process and starts with complexity based criticality prediction of modules. Modules identified as overly complex are given additional tests or review efforts. Release time prediction and field performance prediction are both based on tailored ENHPP reliability models. For the complete approach of criticality prediction, recent data from the development of a switching system with around 2 MLOC is provided. The switching system is currently in operational use, thus allowing for validation and tuning of the prediction models.

Specification and design have a decisive influence over the quality of software systems. The article is based on a classification of design aspects. Design decisions that determine the design and specification products are derived by a selection process according to the functional specification and a set of non-functional constraints. The techniques of a CASE tool as a constructive approach and those of software metrics as an analytic approach have been combined to support quality management early in the development process.>