Call for Papers: Special Issue on Software Design Trends Supporting Multi-Concern Assurance

Submissions due: 8 November 2021
Publication: July/August 2022

As complex software systems have become increasingly entwined in a wide variety of systems such as critical infrastructure, industrial control systems, medical devices, automobiles, airplanes, and spacecraft, assuring the security and safety, as well as other dependability aspects such as availability, robustness, and reliability of software-intensive systems remains among the top priorities for governments and providers of critical systems and services. Manufacturers, owners, and operators of the components and devices that make up these software systems strive to ensure that they have adequately addressed emerging concerns related to safety hazards, security threats, and performance challenges, among others. For this reason, there is a need to
address these various concerns within the architecture and design of these systems in the context of the subjective and often contradicting, competing, and conflicting needs and beliefs of stakeholders, and to do so with a level of confidence that is commensurate with the tolerable loss consequences associated with each of these objectives. Hence, the whole concept of assurance and certification needs to be rethought, taking into account the nature and the full range of design concerns of software-intensive systems.

For this theme issue of IEEE Software, we invite authors to submit technical articles around architecture and design trends supporting multi-concern assurance of software-intensive systems of high relevance to software practitioners. We ask for high-quality, original contributions, including ideas, methods, experimental and ongoing project results, and insightful experiences with a focus on explaining the value to software engineers, system evaluators and certifiers, and even government regulators and policy makers. We specifically encourage submissions on any aspect of software architecture and design supporting multi-concern assurance including, but not limited to:

Multi-concern assurance for co-analysis, co-engineering and/or co-assurance of multiple system characteristics, including those provided in the ISO/IEC 25000 series of standards (such as security, safety, reliability, availability, robustness, functional suitability, performance efficiency, compatibility, usability, maintainability, and portability)
Defining resilient architectures for achieving multiple system characteristics, including analysis and management of trade-offs among multiple competing system characteristics, and validation of system characteristics upon integration
Approaches for multi-concern assurance, including architecture-driven assurance, contract-based assurance, design-centered assurance, model-based assurance, and argument-based assurance
Multi-concern assurance case development, including modular, compositional, and/or incremental approaches, and tool support for representation and reasoning
Development processes integrating multi-concern assurance, including flexible processes allowing detailed reasoning on multiple system qualities and concerns, and customization of application domain-specific processes
Quality assurance techniques such as testing, simulation, and analysis
Interoperability between assurance and engineering activities along with external assessments and supplier assurance
Standards, regulations, and guidelines pertaining to development, evaluation, compliance, and certification
Case studies, empirical results, experience reports, best practices, benchmarks, and reusable artifacts (documents, models, and codes)
Industry case studies with hands-on experiences and empirical data

The guest editors of this theme issue particularly invite practitioners from industry to contribute, as articles presenting results about industrial applications will be preferred and will be judged on their industrial impact.

Submission Guidelines

Please read the Author Information page. Submit your article through ScholarOne.

Manuscripts must not exceed 3,000 words, including figures and tables, which count for 250 words each. Submissions in excess of these limits may be rejected without refereeing. The articles we deem within the theme and scope will be peer reviewed and are subject to editing for magazine style, clarity, organization, and space. Be sure to include the name of the theme you’re submitting for. Articles should have a practical orientation and be written in a style accessible to practitioners. Overly complex, purely research-oriented or theoretical treatments aren’t appropriate. Articles should be novel. IEEE Software doesn’t republish material published previously in other venues, including other periodicals and formal conference or workshop proceedings, whether previous publication was in print or electronic form.