SAM 2014 - First International Workshop on Software Architecture Metrics (SAM)

Architecting complex software systems faces the challenge of how best to assess the achievement of quality attributes and other key drivers, how to reveal issues and risks early, and how to make decisions on architecture improvement. Software architecture quality has a large impact on this effort but is usually not assessed with quantitative measures. As the pace of software delivery and technology churn increases, organizations need guidance on how to meet business goals (e.g., time to market, cost, productivity, quality) of their software. There is an increasing need to provide ongoing insights into the quality of the system being developed. Additionally, it is highly desirable to accelerate the feedback loop between development and deployment through measurable means for intrinsic quality, value, and cost, and how they vary over time. There is also increasing attention to other fields (such as software analytics as well as empirical software engineering and measurement) that can provide the theory, tooling, or inspiration to develop measurement and analysis frameworks for software architecture. The software engineering community has an opportunity to improve the way architecture is measured reliably, consistently, and with repeatable results.
The goal of this workshop is to discuss progress on architecture metrics, measurement, and analysis; to gather empirical evidence on the use and effectiveness of metrics; and to identify priorities for a research agenda. The workshop addresses both academic researchers and industrial practitioners for an exchange of ideas and collaboration.
Choose a Topic
We are seeking papers on practical experiences and research approaches to evaluate and manage architecture through metrics including, but not limited to, the following topics:
Proposing and validating new metrics
architecture quality, value, cost, and uncertainty
architecture properties: understandability, maintainability, evolvability, concern dispersion, and modularization
architecture models and views: completeness, consistency, and violation of reference models or patterns
traceability: the connection between architecture and other artifacts, such as requirements and code
architecture knowledge and decision models: confidence, completeness, relevance, and coverage
Creating and validating tools and techniques
eliciting and visualizing architecture metrics
composing architecture metrics by aggregating or combining code-level metrics
associating multiple views and quality concerns with metrics
Using architecture metrics
application to software evolution, maintenance, refactoring, or software aging
analytics on software architecture data for managers and software engineers to make better decisions
support for project management with data such as velocity, scrap and rework rates, and uncertainty
use by product management for the software business case
input to economic models: technical debt management, real option analysis, and valuation
Principles and practices
Creating principles for industrial software architecture metrics
Executing empirical studies on how architecture metrics are used in practice and their effectiveness
Select a Submission Category
We invite submissions of papers in any areas related to the themes and goals of the workshop in the following categories:
research papers ? describing innovative and significant original research in the field (8 pages)
industrial papers ? describing industrial experience, case studies, challenges, problems, and solutions (4-8 pages)
position and future-trend papers ? describing ongoing research, new results, and future trends (4 pages)
Propose on EasyChair
Papers must conform to the ACM proceedings format. Papers must be original and not under consideration for publication elsewhere. All submissions will be reviewed by members of the program committee for quality and relevance. Accepted papers will become part of the workshop proceedings and published in the WICSA companion proceedings. Submit your paper electronically via EasyChair.