Workshop Overview
Commercial Off-The-Shelf (COTS) software products play an increasingly important role in software systems development. The adoption of this technology
raises many challenges in software engineering activities among which we find requirements engineering. The interests of both
communities of researchers, requirements engineers and COTS-based systems developers, have therefore a point of convergence.
With the aim of putting together these communities, discover their common interests and facilitating synergies, a first edition
of the RECOTS workshop was held last year during RE'03 at Monterey (CA, USA). The focus of RECOTS'03 was on the challenges
found by requirements engineers when they believe that there are COTS software products available in the market.
The workshop identified many open issues which have been reported in the workshop website.
The starting point for RECOTS 2004 will be a review of these issues.
Goals
This workshop aims at bringing together researchers and practitioners from the Requirements Engineering and COTS-based System Engineers communities to discuss and examine system requirements engineering processes given the constraints
placed upon the scope and functionality of the system by existing COTS products.
The objectives of the workshop are to:
- develop a common understanding from different perspectives of the problems and typical solutions when performing requirements engineering during COTS-based system development,
- identify a roadmap for research for both communities,
- provide a forum for members from different research communities to engage on a common research theme,
- publish workshop proceedings both in paper and electronic formats,
- produce a summary of the workshop development and main conclusions, available in electronic form that could be added to the electronic form of the proceedings when available.
Scope
The workshop is intended to cover topics of requirements engineering in relation with COTS and product software, from theoretical foundations to empirical studies. We welcome the submission of papers in all aspects of requirements engineering bound to COTS and product software, including the following (but are not limited to):
- requirements elicitation techniques
- requirements negotiation
- integration and other COTS-specific requirements
- requirement-oriented COTS architecture configuration
- market-driven requirements evolution
- evaluating COTS product descriptions
- prioritization, planning, quality and measurement of requirements for product software
- requirements-based release planning
- requirements engineering as a decision process
- requirements interdependencies management
Format
The workshop will include a keynote talk, short paper presentations based on author submissions, and focused parallel working groups on topics of
importance to the practitioner and research communities. The workshop will be open to all participants interested in the topic.