FlexiTools 2010
ICSE 2010 Workshop on Flexible Modeling Tools
Sunday, May 2, 2010, Cape Town, South Africa
Submission deadline extended to March 9, 2010
Call for Papers
Call for Papers
Most activities during the software lifecycle involve producing and manipulating representations of information. These range from domain analysis (such as business analysis) during the early stages of requirements engineering, through architectural and lower-level design, to coding, testing and beyond. The information representations are models, and hence these are modeling activities, though not typically called that in all cases. Many modeling tools exist to support modeling activities. They have a variety of advantages, such as syntax and semantics checking, providing multiple views of models for visualization and convenience of manipulation, providing domain-specific assistance (e.g., "content assist") based on model structure, providing documentation of the modeling decisions, ensuring consistency of the models, and facilitating integration with other formal tools and processes, such as model driving engineering (MDE) and model checking.
Despite these advantages, however, formal modeling tools are usually not used for many of these activities. During the exploratory phases of design, it is more common to use white boards, pen and paper or other informal mechanisms. Free-form diagrams drawn there serve as the centerpiece of discussion and can easily evolve as discussion proceeds. During the early stages of requirements engineering, when stakeholders are being interviewed and domain understanding is being built, it is more common to use office tools (word processors, spreadsheets and drawing/presentation tools). Free-form textual documents, tables and diagrams serve as working documents and can easily be fashioned into presentations to stakeholders that are such an important part of this activity. The documents are easy to share with stakeholders. Users are also not forced to commit too early to specific choices, and thus have freedom during highly iterative, exploratory activities. Other examples exist as well.
Formal modeling tools and more informal but flexible, free-form approaches thus have complementary strengths and weaknesses. Practitioners throughout the software lifecycle are currently forced to choose between them. Whichever they choose, they lose the advantages of the other, with attendant frustration, loss of productivity and sometimes of traceability and even quality.
What can be done about this unfortunate dichotomy? Tools that blend the advantages of modeling tools and the more free-form approaches offer the prospect of allowing users to make tradeoffs between flexibility and precision/formality and to move smoothly between them. We call these flexible modeling tools. They might be modeling tools with added flexibility, or office tools with added modeling support, or tools of a new kind.
This workshop will bring together people who understand tool users' needs, usability, user interface design and tool infra-structure to explore these questions. The concrete goals of this workshop are to explore in depth the current dichotomy and its implications for users, leading to a list of key issues, and to discuss obstacles to flexible modeling and means to overcome them, leading to a shared understanding of the state-of-the-art and a new research agenda in flexible modeling tools.
Prospective participants are invited to submit 2-5 page position papers on any topic relevant to the dichotomy between modeling tools and more free-form tools. In particular, papers analyzing specific problems with existing tools, detailing requirements for flexible modeling tools, analyzing the usability tradeoffs involved in flexible modeling (e.g., using cognitive dimensions), describing approaches for architecting and building flexible modeling tools, and actual examples of such tools are all appropriate.
Position papers must conform to the ICSE 2010 Format and Submission Guidelines and must be submitted through Cyber-ChairPro by the submission deadline noted below. Position papers will be judged based on novelty, insightfulness, quality, relevance to the workshop, and potential to spark discussion. Accepted position papers will be posted on the workshop website. Depending on the number and quality of submissions, a magazine or journal special issue may be organized post-workshop.
The workshop will consist of a few, brief presentations of a subset of the accepted position papers, and considerable discussion. To fuel this discussion, all participants will be asked prepare:
- Two problems they have experienced with existing modeling tools, or two tasks or situations for which modeling tools would be helpful but are not used typically used; and
- Two features/differences in behavior or ideas for radical new tools they would really like to see.
Important Dates
| Position paper submission: | |
| Notification of acceptance: | March 19, 2010 (for papers received by the original deadline, February 19. Notification for papers received after that may be delayed.) |
| Workshop: | Sunday, May 2, 2010 |
Submission
The submission URL is: http://cyberchairpro3.borbala.net/flexitoolspapers/submit/Organizers
- Harold Ossher, IBM T.J. Watson Research Center, USA
- André van der Hoek, University of California, Irvine, USA
- Margaret-Anne Storey, University of Victoria, Canada
- John Grundy, Swinburne University of Technology, Australia
- Rachel Bellamy, IBM T.J. Watson Research Center, USA
Program Committee:
- Steve Abrams, IBM Rational, USA
- Jo Atlee, University of Waterloo, Canada
- Margaret Burnett, Oregon State University, USA
- Krzysztof Czarnecki, University of Waterloo, Canada
- Rob DeLine, Microsoft, USA
- Anthony Finkelstein, University College London, UK
- John Hosking, University of Auckland, New Zealand
- David Ing, IBM, Canada
- Nenad Medvidovic, University of Southern California, USA
- Gail Murphy, University of British Columbia, Canada
- Marian Petre, Open University, UK