SPICE 2015 Conference, 15, 16-17 June 2015, Gothenburg, Sweden

It is a great pleasure to invite you to the

15^th International SPICE Conference at the Conference Centre Wallenberg in the city of Gothenburg, Sweden during 16-17 June 2015. The Conference will be proceeded by a workshops and tutorials day on 15 June 2015. The Conference Centre Wallenberg is a modern, technologically advanced, multi-function venue for conferences, meetings and events situated in the heart of the medical research campus at Gothenburg University.

Gothenburg as a city, apart from its hospitality, is known for quality and excellence in automotive research and development, as well as innovation in medical research and applications. Swedish software companies are leaders in the uptake of Lean Software Development and Agile methods. Consequently, there will be special conference tracks on Functional safety and security; Medical technology; and Agility in Process Improvement.

We are convinced that Gothenburg, a Scandinavian city on the west coast of Sweden and recognized as a perfect location hosting conferences, can provide the best scientific, technological and social conditions for this conference. We also wish you a pleasant midsummer at the west coast of Sweden, and a safe return home of the Volvo Ocean Race teams.

We therefore encourage all colleagues from all over the world to participate and help us to make this an unforgettable important and enjoyable meeting.

The 15^th International SPICE Conference is co-located with the 1^st International Workshop on Software Process Education, Training and Professionalism, which will take place on the 15 June 2015, and is the subject of a separate call for proposals http://www.iwspetp.com (web site available 11 January)

Alec Dorling, ISO convener Process Assessment Standardization

Take me to the web site

CALL FOR PAPERS

We would like to invite you all to participate in and to submit high quality contributions in the form of papers and industrial experience reports on a wide range of topics to the SPICE 2015 conference. 

We hope to run three tracks dedicated as special session topics reflecting key interests in the community:

Special sessions topics:

• Agility in process improvement;

• Functional safety and security;

• Medical technology.

 Other topics:

• Case studies on model-based improvement

• Knowledge and skills for process assessment and improvement;

• Assessment approaches applied to agile development;

• Definition of novel process quality characteristics to support process improvement;

• Empirical studies on characteristics of high maturity organizations;

• Emerging Process Reference Models and Process Assessment Models;

• Use of process assessment in domains outside software, systems engineering and service management;

• Conformity assessment approaches and schemes for process assessment;

• New measurement and rating frameworks.

The breadth of the application of process assessment and improvement remains a topic of considerable interest, from both a practical and theoretical perspective; and so, accordingly, the SPICE 2015 Conference seeks contributions specifically relating to the following areas of application:

• Automotive systems and software;

• Aerospace systems and software;

• Medical device systems and software;

• Innovation, knowledge and technology transfer

• Enterprise systems;

• IT service management;

• IT Security;

• Safety-related systems and software;

• Test process improvement;

• Financial institutions and banks;

• Small and very small enterprises;

• IT and Public Procurement:

• IT Outsourcing;

SUBMISSIONS

Submissions are sought in the following categories:

·         Full Papers

Research papers should describe innovative and significant work in process modelling, assessment and improvement, particularly relating to the application of the Standards for Process Assessment, which is relevant across the information technology sector.  Papers should comprise 12 - 14 pages.

·         Industrial Experience Reports

Reports on practical experiences related to process assessment and improvement across the domains of software engineering, systems engineering and IT service management are sought; an extended abstract of 4 - 6 pages should be submitted.

·         Posters

Conference attendees and exhibitors and all partner organisations are invited to submit poster abstracts. A poster is a visual presentation where materials are presented on a display board along with textual summaries of the material.

·         Workshops and Tutorials

Conference attendees and exhibitors and all partner organisations are invited to submit poster abstracts. A poster is a visual presentation where materials are presented on a display board along with textual summaries of the material.

All papers must be submitted electronically as MS-Word or Latex files through the Easychair conference portal  https://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=spice2015 and a copy sent by email to papers@spiceconference.com.

All paper submissions will be reviewed by members of the Programme Committee, with those judged best to meet the aims of the Conference selected for presentation.

All accepted papers and extended abstracts of industrial experience reports are planned to be published in the Conference Proceedings by Springer-Verlag as part of the as part of the CCIS (Communications in Computer and Information Science) book series.

Accordingly papers must conform to the Springer CCIS format, identical to the LNCS (Lecture Notes in Computer Science) format. Please visit the SPICE 2015 website (http://www.spiceconference.com) for complete author guidelines.

Note: For a paper to be published in the proceedings, Springer requires one author to sign a copyright release form. In addition, at least one of the authors must agree to attend SPICE 2015 to present the paper. All papers will be published in both print and digital format (therefore all digital source files (doc/docx/latex/pictures, etc.) must be submitted).

The best four conference paper authors will be offered the opportunity to submit a paper for publication to the American Society for Quality (ASQ) Software Quality Journal.

SPICE 2015 is pleased to announce a partnership with ePosters, the Online Journal of Scientific Posters where SPICE 2015 will have a dedicated Gallery where you can digitally share your work with the scientific world. Posters will also be displayed on Poster Panels at the conference in the Exhibit Hall (subject to space availability) and will remain up for the entire length of the conference. Poster copyright remains with the author(s).

Hosting your poster in the Online Journal of Scientific Posters offers significant benefits, including:

• Worldwide exposure – access to your work is no longer restricted to just attendees at the conference

• Increased collaboration – readers can contact you to discuss your work via anonymous email

• Reduced administration – interested viewers can print your poster locally

• Citation –your poster can be cited by its unique reference number and date on your resume

• Easy and free - submission and access are completely free.

Please visit the SPICE 2015 website (http://www.spiceconference.com) for guidelines for developing, printing and delivering you poster as well as instructions on uploading to the Online Journal of Scientific Posters.

Groups interested in organizing a workshop (half day or one day) focusing on topics related to the overall theme of the Conference are invited to provide proposals to the Organising Committee; the proposal should include a two-page abstract providing the workshop title, aims and content, duration and the identity of the workshop moderator. Groups or individuals seeking to submit tutorials (half-day) are invited to submit proposals, including the topic of the tutorial and a biography of the presenters.

SCHEDULE

• Call for Papers   2 January, 2015 

• Full paper and extended abstracts submission  6 March, 2015

• Workshop and tutorial proposal submission      6 March, 2015 

• Notification of acceptance         3 April, 2015 

• Preliminary programme 10 April, 2015 

• Final copy of paper due 17 April, 2015 

• Workshop and Tutorials 15 June, 2015 

• Conference        16-17 June, 2015

CONFERENCE COMMITTEE

• General Chair: Alec Dorling (The SPICE User Group) 

• Program Chair: Terry Rout (Griffith University, Australia)

• Local Organizing Chair: Alec Dorling (Impronova, Sweden)

• Industry Chair: Jørn Johansen (Whitebox, Denmark)

• Tutorial Chair: Terry Rout (Griffith University, Australia)

• Proceedings Editor: Dr. Rory O'Connor (Dublin City University, Ireland)