Call For Papers

Workshop theme

Software architecting shapes a software product and development process in both social and organizational contexts. Architects operate in these contexts, influenced by different stakeholders and other organizational and socio-technical forces. However, there is still no clear consensus of what makes an architect, e.g., in contrast to a developer. Also, social and organizational impacts on the architect and the resulting architecture are poorly understood and often neglected, e.g., since they are difficult to measure and quantify. Social aspects and the role of different players in the software development process have been previously examined within the broader context of software engineering (e.g., CHASE and CSD workshop series at ICSE). The SODA workshop on the other hand focuses on the social and organizational dimensions in which architects operate and produce their outputs. It focuses on the architect, the surrounding organization, and the process rather than on the architecture as the output of the architecting process. SODA offers a venue for researchers, practitioners and educators within the software architecture domain to share knowledge, experiences, tools and techniques, forge new collaborations, and explore innovative solutions. This edition of SODA focuses on: (1) Tasks performed and skills required from architects; (2) the wider social and organizational contexts of the architect. SODA 2020 will be a “hybrid” event and support full or partial remote participation.

Topics

• Evidence for the relevance of skills of architects and their impact on project success and product quality
• Identification of architecture skills within organizations
• Impact of experience on how well architects perform
• Tasks and skills of developers and their relation to other roles
• Architect in highly iterative/incremental development contexts, continuous delivery, DevOps
• Change of the architect's role due to the inversion of specialization and division of labor
• Personality and personality traits of architects, in particular in their social and organizational context
• Socio-technical and organizational relationships of architects at the crossroads of organization, architecture and social development networks, patterns/anti-patterns
• Impact of culture on architects and architecting
• Social and organizational pitfalls and conflicts of interests faced by architects (and how to handle them)
• Community smells in organizational context
• Social-technical project cost and social debt
• Job performance of architects, evaluation and assessment of architects and their skills and skill level
• Implications of skills and social/organizational context on career paths, tertiary education and professional training

Paper categories

• Notes, position and vision papers (1-8 pages): On-going research, new challenges, emerging trends; tools, novel solutions, new ideas; future research, statements from practitioners.
• Reference problem papers (1-8 pages): Descriptions or examples of problems in real-life settings that pose fundamental or characteristic challenges.
• Full papers (12-14 pages): Innovative, original research, empirical studies, systematic literature studies, etc.
• Industry and experience papers (2-8 pages): Industrial experience, case studies, challenges, problems, solutions, tools.
• Education and training papers (2-8 pages): Experiences, approaches and tools for academic courses or industrial training (e.g., lesson plans, assignments).

Each submission must clearly include and elaborate on at least one "position" or "argument" - something that the authors feel strongly about in the context of SODA.

Papers must conform to the Springer CCIS Guidelines. Submit your contribution via EasyChair. Each paper will be reviewed by three members of the program committee. Papers must present novel material and not under review elsewhere at the time of submission. Accepted papers will be published in the Springer Communications in Computer and Information Science volume (CCIS) and presented at the workshop.