EDSER 8: The 8th International Workshop on Economics-Driven  Software Engineering Research
                                  http://www.cs.virginia.edu/~sullivan/EDSER-8

In conjunction with the 28th International Conference on  Software Engineering (ICSE 2006),
                                        Shanghai,  China, 20-28 May 2006

                                           *** Call for  Position Papers ***


Motivation

Software development activities increasingly determine the economic success of costly initiatives, yet important software decisions having significant economic implications continue to be made under largely value-neutral criteria by engineers with little or no training in, or ability to make decisions in terms of, economic goals. At  the same time, managers often lack an understanding of issues in software development to adequately evaluate technical proposals in terms  of their business implications. The upshot is that there is little  reason to believe that most software development projects are run in an  economically efficient manner.

The goal of the EDSER series of workshops is to improve the quality of decision making in software engineering based on sound economic justifications. To that end, EDSER-8 will provide an interactive forum to discuss and advance the state-of-the-art research and practice in economics-driven software engineering. Work in this area utilizes methods and theories from different disciplines, such as decision theory, game theory, economics, and finance to solve technical and
managerial problems in software engineering.   While other forums address software business issues more broadly, EDSER seeks to foster research in which economic concepts, models, and tools are employed to advance our understanding of, and improve the development of software-intensive systems, and the technical organizations that produce  them. We seek contributions within this broad but clearly software-engineering-oriented scope.

As with previous EDSER workshops, EDSER-8 will take place in conjunction  with ICSE 2006 (in Shanghai, China) and will bring together many leading  researchers from throughout the world.


Participation

Participation in the EDSER workshop is generally by invitation.  Invitations are based on evidence of research interest and activity within the
technical  scope of the workshop.  Evidence is provided in the form of a short (2-5  page) position paper. A position paper should clearly
identify the  technical problem being addressed; an economics-oriented approach to  analyzing or addressing it; and argumentation, analysis,
experimental  data, or other preliminary evidence to support the plausibility of the  proposed approach. Mature research results are
not expected, but  plausibility at the level of a proposal sketch would be appropriate.   Position papers will be accepted according to
the guidelines of the  International Conference on Software Engineering. To submit your paper,  please email it to the workshop
chairs. Publication-ready versions of  papers will be required to conform to ICSE-defined formats.


Important Dates

SUBMISSION OF WORKSHOP PAPERS:                                1 February 2006
NOTIFICATION OF WORKSHOP PAPERS :                           1 March 2006
CAMERA-READY COPY (OF WORKSHOP PAPERS) DUE:   14 March 2006

All accepted papers and position statements will be posted on the conference workshop web-site
(http://www.cs.virginia.edu/~sullivan/EDSER-8) and published in the workshop proceedings.


Submission

All submissions will be via email directly to the workshop organizers: edser8@cs.virginia.edu


Workshop Organizers:

* Rick Kazman, University of Hawaii and SEI/CMU
* Kevin Sullivan, University of Virginia


Workshop Steering Committee:

* Barry Boehm, University of Southern California
* Hakan Erdogmus, National Research Council of Canada
* Jyrki Kontio, Helsinki University of Technology
* Mary Shaw, Carnegie Mellon University