Special Issue: “Complexity of Systems Evolution: Requirements Engineering Perspective“

The motivation of this special issue is that many of the RE assumptions are now in suspect or related research delivers decreasing returns. The community has recognized for some time a need for a shift in RE focus which is also amplified by changes in computational paradigms and capabilities that draw upon platform strategies, web services, and virtualization of both application services and development platforms. These trends have significant implications for views of modularity and requirements evolution, complexity of RE tasks, and the economics and costs related to application and service use and development. The aim of the proposed special issue is to introduce, refine, validate models and theories around system complexity, evolution and requirements.

The proposed special issue has three distinguishing features in its effort to frame, influence, and direct the discourse around requirements engineering.  First, it examines RE as shaping “socio-technical systems,” reflecting the emerging interactions of people and technology that need to be recognized in system requirements. This requires simultaneous understanding of both the social and the technical.  Second, it addresses evolutionary and complexity aspects of RE that affect development, adoption, mutual-adaptation, and co-evolution of increasingly multifaceted socio-technical systems.  We are less interested in discussion of how great some RE methods are or will be and more interested in the mechanisms by which RE activity in complex settings comes to pass. Third, it embraces issues of scalability.  There are some existence proofs that digital infrastructure can enable large-scale RE as for example experiences from open source software development testify.  There is, as yet, little systematic investigation of how scalability occurs in RE for complex settings.

 

In particular the special issue will focus on a series of interrelated questions such as:

§  How to theorize and study complexity within RE tasks? 

§  New perspectives on RE complexity:  biological systems, complexity evolutionary economics

§  What theoretical perspectives can inform how and why complex requirements knowledge evolves as it is generated, validated, and distributed?

§  How requirements, system evolution, and environmental change interact?

§  How different types of knowledge interact to shape requirements and their evolution?

§  What are the origins and flows of influence of requirements knowledge for complex evolving systems? How can non-linear influences be effectively managed in RE evolution?

§  What is the effect of speed and scale in requirements processes?

§  What is the role of goals and constraints and their complex interactions in RE?

§  What are the effects of Governance on requirements complexity?

 

We encourage submissions of high-risk, creative scholarship that include one or more of the following: strong theoretical contributions, attention to design of design, solid quantitative studies, qualitative longitudinal case-based research on RE processes, and attention to challenges of scale and complexity (of people, of artifacts, of world-views, design elements) relevant to the RE. A wide variety of topics might be considered appropriate.  Examples include:

 

• New, alternative, or evolving forms of RE focused on scalability and evolution
• RE for knowledge-intensive, technical fields such as science and engineering, software development, and product design and development
• RE for and during organizational transformation
• RE for digital infrastructures, platforms, and standards
• RE for business innovations
• Organizing large-scale RE teams and related socio-technical arrangements
• The interplay of institutional persistence and change related to large scale RE
• Role of digital infrastructures in organizing RE
• Public policy and RE for large-scale public-private projects
• Relationships between product and software architecture, and organizational and industrial structures and RE
• Organizing for  RE associated with product design and development, research and development activity, or scientific collaboration
• Organizational and technological governance for large scale RE

 

The planned schedule is as follows:

 

April  10, 2013                           Deadline for submissions

June 30, 2013                             First round reviews complete and returned to authors

September 30, 2013                  Revised papers due

December 30, 2013                   Second round reviews complete and returned to authors

February 15, 2014                     Final papers due

March 30, 2014                         Decision on papers for inclusion

June, 2014                                  Special issue published

 

Guest Editors:    Matthias Jarke, RWTH-Aachen (jarke@dbis.rwth-aachen.de)

                           Kalle Lyytinen Case Western Reserve University (kalle@case.edu)

 

 

 

 

Kalle Lyytinen [ mailto: kalle@po.cwru.edu]
Iris S. Wolstein Chair;  Director of Academic Affairs

Doctor of Management Programs: http://weatherhead.case.edu/degrees/doctor-management/
The Weatherhead School of Management
Case Western Reserve University
Cleveland, Ohio 44106-7235
Tel: +1-216-368 5353, fax: +1-216-368 4776, Mobile: +1-216-543 6667
Home page URL: http://home.cwru.edu/~kjl13/
Research Projects: Digitalization of routines: http://www.orgdna.net/the-research-project/; Requirements: http://weatherhead.case.edu/requirements

Publications: scholar.google.com/citations?user=yX-R0QwAAAAJ&hl=en