June 8-10, 2011, Brussels, Belgium

Workshops

Two workshops will be held in conjunction with ICSOB 2011 to encourage the exchange of ideas between academia, industry, and government participants, as well as providing a forum to discuss challenging research issues in the business of software. Workshops will be held before the main conference: on June 7, 2011. Further details regarding the workshops can be accessed on their respective subpages.

EPIC 2011

Third workshop on Leveraging Empirical Research Results for Software Business Success

Maya Daneva, University of Twente, The Netherlands
Andrea Herrmann, Avixion, Germany

The workshop takes place in Room D.3.05.

Collective efforts by software engineering practitioners, consultants and researchers have yielded a huge variety of solutions for improving software processes, products and services. While it is generally known that the suitability and effectiveness of most of these solutions depend on the context where they are applied, only few empirical studies were done to uncover how the current process/product/service-focused approaches used in software businesses yield outcomes that are aligned to the business goals of these organizations. With few exceptions, little is known about the empirical evidence that can possibly confirm or disconfirm the claims of effectiveness of different commercially viable approaches that solve particular process, product or service related problems.

The primary goal of the first EPIC workshop was twofold: to initiate (1) the conversation of leveraging empirical research for software business success and (2) the process of creating a forum and a community to debate the need and value of using empirical/evidence-based approaches to researching aspects of software processes, products and services that contribute to software business success. An outcome of the workshop is the LinkedIn group, EPIC FORUM. The second EPIC event was a panel session that defined some roadblocks to the collaboration of software business practitioners and researchers and some solutions that worked. The third workshop builds upon these first results and will extend the discussion on state-of-the art good practices for empirical research that adds value to both small and large software companies.

IWSECO'11

Third International Workshop on Software Ecosystems: Managing Innovation Networks through Openness

Slinger Jansen, Utrecht University, The Netherlands
Jan Bosch, Intuit, USA
Faheem Ahmed, United Arab Emirates University, UAE
Piers Campbell, United Arab Emirates University, UAE

The workshop takes place in Room D.3.06.

Software vendors no longer function as independent units, where all customers are end-users, where there are no suppliers, and where all software is built in-house. Instead, software vendors have become networked, i.e., software vendors are depending on (communities of) service and software component suppliers, value-added-resellers, and pro-active customers who build and share customizations. Software vendors now have to consider their strategic role in the software ecosystem to survive. With their role in the software ecosystem in mind, software vendors can become more successful by opening up their business, devising new business models, forging long-lasting relationships with partnership networks, and overcoming technical and social challenges that are part of these innovations. The focus of the first workshop was the definition of the research field. The second workshop’s focus was the ‘ideal’ architecture of a software platform. The third workshop on software ecosystems focuses on the management of software ecosystems, i.e., how a software vendor can manage its network of partners, developers, service deliverers, and other third parties that play a role in the software ecosystem.