The goal of QoSA (Quality of Software Architectures) is to address the quality aspects of software architecture, focusing broadly on its quality characteristics and how these relate to the design of software architectures. Specific issues of interest are defining and modelling quality measures, evaluating and managing architecture quality, linking architecture to requirements and implementation, and preserving architecture quality throughout the system lifetime.  QoSA is the premier forum for the presentation of new results in the area of software architecture quality. It brings together researchers, practitioners and students who are concerned with software architecture quality in a holistic way. As a working conference QoSA has a strong practical bias, encompassing research papers, industrial reports and invited talks from renowned speakers.

This year the main theme of QoSA is “Architecting for Deployability”. Building software systems in a service-oriented manner and using cloud environments promises many benefits, however, raises new challenges for software architecture by increased complexity and fragility during operation. These rapidly changing systems require collaboration between software developers and operators, a strong integration of building, evolving and operating activities, as well as architectures which satisfy deployability as quality attribute in heterogeneous contexts. In this year's QoSA we particularly solicit contributions that explore the various implications of these upcoming architectures. This includes reference architectures, software architectures adapting at run time, architecture styles and patterns to foster deployability, as well as approaches exploring other critical quality properties, such as performance, reliability, security, safety, maintainability, and usability. At the same time, submissions related to the general topic of the conference are welcome.

Topics of interest for the conference include (but are not limited to) the following themes:

Architecture Design and Implementation

• design alternatives, trade-offs, and their influence on the quality of software architecture
• adapting software architectures to address changes in software and its environment
• architectural refactoring and its implications for quality
• architectural standards and reference architectures
• model-driven methods and tools for architecture design and implementation
• architecture patterns and styles improving various quality attributes

Architecture Evaluation

• empirical validation, testing, prototyping and simulation for assessing architecture quality
• performance, reliability, maintainability, security and other quality attribute evaluations
• methods and processes for evaluating architecture quality (also in presence of the change)
• model-driven evaluation of software architecture quality
• evaluating the effects of architectural adaptations at run-time
• lessons learned and empirical validation of theories and frameworks on architecture quality
• quality assessment of legacy systems and third party applications

Architecting for Deployability

• methods and tools for architecture instrumentation and monitoring
• run-time architecture modelling and analysis
• architectures supporting DevOps concepts
• methods and processes for adaptation and evolution of architectures
• architectures for self-adapting software-intensive system

Architecture Management

• assessment and enforcement of architectural conformance throughout the software lifecycle
• traceability of software architecture to requirements and implementation
• models and tools for coping with software architecture evolution

We solicit two types of submissions: regular papers and position papers.

• Regular papers should describe original and significant results of theoretical, empirical, conceptual, or experimental research or of experience from industrial practice. Reflecting the practical emphasis of QoSA, papers showcasing applications along with a sound conceptual contribution are welcome. Regular papers are limited to 10 pages.
• Position papers describe novel ideas or innovative proposals whose aim is to stimulate discussion related to experiences and ideas, rather than to present mature results. Position papers are limited to 6 pages.

Papers should follow the standard IEEE format for conference proceedings (alternate style) and submitted online via the EasyChair Conference Management System:
https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=wicsaandcomparch2016