Sebis Research News

Our first research paper on the topic of Scaled Agile IT Organizations and Enterprise Architecture Management was accepted by the IEEE 21st International Enterprise Distributed Object Computing Conference. The conference took place from October 10th to October 13th in Québec City, Canada. The aim of the paper was to describe different architect roles in scaling agile frameworks with the help of a structured literature review. On the second day of the conference, a banquet dinner took place in the Parliament Building of the Canadian Province of Québec.

 Picture on the Château Frontenac

 Picture on the presentation of the paper results at the EDOC conference

 Picture from the Banquet Dinner in the Parliament Building of the Canadian Province of Québec

Software architecture is considered as a set of architectural design decisions. The recent trends, both in research and industry, call for improved tool support for software architects and developers to manage architectural design decisions and its associated concepts. As part of our ongoing work, we propose a framework for managing architectural design decisions in large software-intensive projects. Each component within this framework addresses specific use cases including (a) extraction and classification of design decisions from issue management systems, (b) annotation of architectural elements, (c) recommendation of alternative decision options, (d) reasoning about decisions’ rationale, and (e) recommendation of experts for addressing design decisions. These components are planned to be iteratively realized and evaluated using the design science research approach. We believe that the realization of such a framework will allow an architectural knowledge management systems to integrate with the design, development, and maintenance phases to support stakeholders not only to document design decisions but also to learn from decisions made in the past projects.

Abstract: Over the past two decades, agile software development methods have been adopted by an increasing number of organizations to improve their software development processes. In contrast to traditional methods, agile methods place more emphasis on flexible processes than on detailed upfront plans and heavy documentations. Since agile methods have proved to be successful at the team level, large organizations are now aiming to scale agile methods to the enterprise level by adopting so-called scaling agile frameworks. Scaling agile methods at the enterprise level with some amount of architectural planning prevents excessive redesign efforts and functional redundancy in application architectures. An effective evolution of application architectures requires the right trade-off between emergent and intentional architectural design and a close collaboration between agile and architecture teams. Although there is a growing body of literature on scaling agile frameworks, literature documenting the deployment of architect roles in scaling agile frameworks is still scarce.

This study describes the roles of architects in scaling agile frameworks with the help of a structured literature review. We aim to provide a primary analysis of 20 identified scaling agile frameworks. Subsequently, we thoroughly describe three popular scaling agile frameworks: Scaled Agile Framework, Large Scale Scrum, and Disciplined Agile 2.0. After specifying the main concepts of scaling agile frameworks, we characterize roles of enterprise, software, solution, and information architects, as identified in four scaling agile frameworks. Finally, we provide a discussion of generalizable findings on the role of architects in scaling agile frameworks

About the Conference

IEEE EDOC 2017 (http://edoc2017.ca) is the twenty-first conference in a series that provides the key forum for researchers and practitioners in the field of enterprise computing. EDOC conferences address the full range of models, methodologies, and engineering technologies contributing to intra- and inter-enterprise application systems. Since 1997, EDOC has brought together leading computer scientists, IT decision makers, enterprise architects, solution designers, and practitioners to discuss enterprise computing challenges, models and solutions from the perspectives of academia, industry, and government. The IEEE EDOC conference series emphasizes a holistic view on enterprise applications engineering and management, fostering integrated approaches that address and relate business processes, people and technology. EDOC’17 welcomes high quality scientific submissions as well as experience papers on enterprise computing from industry. Expert panel discussions and keynotes will address current topics and issues in this domain.

Topics
The IEEE EDOC conference seeks high-quality contributions addressing the domains, life-cycle issues, and realization technologies involved in building, deploying and operating enterprise computing systems. Suggested areas include, but are not limited to:

- Enterprise Architecture and Enterprise Application Architecture

- Model-Based Approaches

- Service-Oriented Architectures (SOA) and Enterprise Service Architectures (ESA)

- Business Process Management (BPM)

- Business Analytics

- Business Rules

- Information Integration and Interoperability

- Networked Enterprise Solutions

- Enterprise Applications Deployment and Governance

- Emerging Trends in Distributed Enterprise Applications

Submission Guidelines
Two types of paper submissions are solicited: a) scientific research papers, and b) industry experience reports or case studies. Scientific research papers should describe original results not been accepted or submitted for publication elsewhere. These papers will be evaluated based on their scientific and technical contribution, originality, and relevance. In turn, industry experience reports should provide new insights gained in case studies or when applying enterprise computing technology in practice; industry experience reports shall further provide important feedback about the state of practice and pose challenges for researchers. These papers will be evaluated based on their appropriateness, significance, and clarity.

Submissions should be full papers with 8-10 pages. All submissions must be made in PDF format and comply with the IEEE Computer

They should be made via the electronic submission system of the EDOC Conference Management system hosted on EasyChair: https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=edoc17   

All papers will be refereed by at least 3 members of the international program committee. The conference proceedings will be published by the IEEE Computer Society Press and be made accessible through IEEE Xplore and the IEEE Computer Society Digital Library.

Post Conference Publication
The authors of a collection of selected papers will be invited to prepare a substantially revised and extended version of their papers for publication in a special journal issue. The journal will be announced in due course.

Important Dates

Conference paper abstract submission (optional): April 30, 2017

Conference full paper submission due: May 7, 2017

Conference paper acceptance notifications: June 25, 2017

Conference camera ready papers due: August 6, 2017

Workshop proposal submissions: February 19, 2017

Workshop proposal acceptance notification: March 5, 2017

Workshop paper submissions: May 7, 2017

Workshops paper acceptance notifications: July 16, 2017

Workshops camera-ready papers due: August 6, 2017 

Conference: October 10-13, 2017

EDOC 2017 Committee

General Chair

Sylvain Hallé, Université du Québec à Chicoutimi, Canada

Program Committee Chairs

Roger Villemaire, Université du Québec à Montréal, Canada

Robert Lagerström, KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Sweden

Workshop Chairs

James Lapalme, École polytechnique de Montréal, Canada

Remco Dijkman, TU Eindhoven, Netherlands

Demo Chair

Raphaël Khoury, Université du Québec à Chicoutimi, Canada

Web and Publicity Chair

Quentin Betti, Université du Québec à Chicoutimi, Canada

A paper has been accepted for publication at the International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE). In the paper entitled Lessons Learned in Aligning Data and Model Evolution in Collaborative Information Systems, the author team consisting of Thomas Reschenhofer, Manoj Bhat, Adrian Hernandez-Mendez, and Florian Matthes elaborate on exprienced challenges in more than 5 years of applying a collaborative information system in research and industry projects. The goal of this paper is to provide a set of lessons learned which can serve as guidelines for the development of similar software systems.