ICSE 2010 Workshop on Flexible Modeling Tools
(FlexiTools2010)
Sunday, May 2, 2010 in Cape Town, South Africa
http://www.ics.uci.edu/~tproenca/icse2010/flexitools
Call for Position 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 infrastructure 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 CyberChairPro 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: February 19, 2010
Notification of acceptance: March 19, 2010
Workshop: May 2, 2010
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 Belamy, 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
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