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 modeling 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 "Evolving Architectures". Papers addressing both novel research results advancing the state-of-the-art of the field and experience learned from industrial case studies are welcome. Reflecting the practical emphasis of QoSA, papers showcasing applications along with a sound conceptual contribution are particularly welcome. In addition to mature research papers this year we also welcome position papers presenting ground-breaking and more risky innovative research ideas, methods, and proposals that address unexplored areas of research and challenge current thinking and/or practices.

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

Architecture Design

• design decisions and their influence on the quality of software architecture
• maintaining software architectures in the presence of change
• architectural refactorings and their implications for quality
• architectural standards and reference architectures
• model-driven methods and tools for architecture design and implementation

Architecture Evaluation

• quality assessment of legacy systems and third party applications
• empirical validation, testing, prototyping and simulation for assessing architecture quality
• quality attributes of software architectures
• methods and processes for evaluating architecture quality
• 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

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
• applications to industrial case studies and use cases

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 and industrial practice. 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.

All accepted contributions will be published in the ACM digital library. Papers should respect the standard ACM format for conference proceedings (see http://www.acm.org/sigs/pubs/proceed/template.html). Manuscripts must be submitted through the Easychair submission system available online at http://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=qosa2012.

All contributions will be subject to a rigorous selection process by the international Program Committee, with a stress on originality, usefulness, practicality and overall quality. Papers must not have been previously published or being currently submitted elsewhere. If accepted, the paper must be personally presented at the QoSA 2012 Conference by one of the authors.

The best contribution of the conference will receive the ACM SIGSOFT Distinguished Paper Award, given by the ACM Special Interest Group on Software Engineering.
In addition, a selection of the best QoSA 2012 papers will be invited to submit extended versions to a dedicated special issue of the Science of Computer Programming journal.

• Abstract submission deadline: February 17, 2012
• Papers submission deadline: February 28, 2012
• Notification to authors: April 9, 2012
• Camera-ready version: April 29, 2012
• Conference: June 26-28, 2012

The accepted contributions will be published in the ACM digital library. Papers should not
exceed 10 pages, must be written in English, and in the standard ACM format for conference
proceedings (guidelines are available at: www.acm.org/sigs/pubs/proceed/template.html).
Papers must not have been previously published or submitted elsewhere. If accepted, the paper
must be personally presented at the QoSA 2011 Conference by one of the authors.
Manuscripts must be submitted through the submission system available online at
www.easychair.org/conferences/.

Extended versions of the best papers will be considered for a theme issue
of the Software and Systems Modeling Journal http://www.sosym.org

Johan Bendz, Convenor, ISO/IEC-JTC1-SC7 Working Group on Architecture