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, managing and ensuring 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 adaptivity”. With the advances in mobile networks and embedded systems, we see proliferation of systems that are meant to improve human life, increase safety, provide entertainment etc. Examples of such systems include smart homes, intelligent navigation, emergency coordination, etc. A key issue in these systems is the ability to adapt to a current situation in the physical world, such that outputs provided by the system remain relevant. In safety critical systems this is also connected with retaining dependability in changing or even unanticipated situations.

In this year’s QoSA we particularly solicit contributions that explore the issue of adaptivity and address various problems connected with architecting for adaptivity. 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 decisions and their influence on the quality of software architecture
• adapting software architectures to address changes in software and its environment
• architectural refactorings and their implications for quality
• architectural standards and reference architectures
• model-driven methods and tools for architecture design and implementation

Architecture Evaluation

• empirical validation, testing, prototyping and simulation for assessing architecture quality
• quality attributes of software architectures
• 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

• applications to industrial case studies and use cases

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.

All accepted contributions will be published in the ACM digital library. Papers should respect the standard ACM format for conference proceedings (alternate style).

All contributions will be subject to a rigorous selection process by the international Program Committee, with an emphasis on originality, usefulness, practicality and overall quality. Papers must not have been previously published or be currently submitted elsewhere. If accepted, the paper must be personally presented at the QoSA 2014 conference by one of the authors in order to appear in the proceedings.

PDF versions of papers should be submitted through the EasyChair submission system.

The best contribution of the conference will receive the ACM SIGSOFT Distinguished Paper Award, given by the ACM Special Interest Group on Software Engineering.

• Abstract submission deadline:February 5February 12, 2014
• Paper submission deadline: February 12February 19, 2014
• Author notification: March 25, 2014
• Final version deadline: April 16, 2014
• Conference: June 30 - July 4, 2014