Goal

The objective of the Experience Track is to establish a meaningful dialog between software practitioners and software engineering researchers on the results (both good and bad), obstacles, and lessons learned associated with applying software development practices in various environments. The Experience Track will provide accounts of the application of software engineering practices (which may be principles, techniques, tools, methods, processes, etc.) to a specific domain or to the development of a significant software system.

Important Dates

• SUBMISSION: 30 October 2005
• NOTIFICATION OF ACCEPTANCE: 20 December 2005
• CAMERA-READY COPY DUE: 24 February 2006

Submissions

• CLOSED: Experience Track Submissions (via CyberChairPRO)

Contact

• Forrest Shull, Fraunhofer Center, fshull@fc-md.umd.edu

Scope

Submissions are solicited which discuss lessons learned and experiences of benefit to researchers and practitioners. We invite original, unpublished submissions in the following categories:

• Case studies of practices describe the application of one or more software engineering practice(s) in an industrial or organizational setting. A case study provides a detailed description of how the practice was applied and why (what problems it was intended to address), along with the results achieved.
• Experience reports of projects provide a critical review of experiences during one or more phases of a software development project, and draw lessons learned from that experience. A good experience report describes as completely as possible the factors that influenced those experiences and reports the final results as rigorously as possible, so that the impact of those experiences on project success or failure can be understood. Experience reports may focus on problems encountered during development along with discussions of what principles, techniques, methods, processes, or tools were used and whether they were sufficient for solving the problem.

Review and Evaluation Criteria

Each submission will be reviewed by at least three members of the Experience Track program committee. The program committee as a whole will make final decisions about which submissions to accept for presentation at the conference.

Submissions will be evaluated based on the following criteria:

• Clarity of the motivation for the report
• Soundness of the report, which should include:
  1. A description of the context in which the experiences were observed (e.g. problem domain, size of system, size of project team, etc.);
  2. A clear demonstration that the experiences and lessons described are based on observation and analysis, rather than opinion;
  3. Measurement as accurately as possible of important phenomena rather than unsupported estimates.
• Significance and relevance of the lessons learned;
• Quality and clarity of the written presentation.

Submission Structure

Your paper must conform to the ICSE 2006 Format and Submission Guidelines and should not exceed ten pages (including all text, figures, references and appendices). The results described must be unpublished and should not be under review elsewhere. A well-structured experience report will not only describe in appropriate detail the experiences encountered on a software project, but will include rationales for any lessons learned put forward and describe clearly the circumstances under which those lessons held.

Acceptance

Each accepted submission will be allotted a maximum of ten pages in the ICSE 2006 conference proceedings. The final version of accepted papers must conform to the ICSE 2006 Format and Submission Guidelines.

Committee Members

• Forrest Shull (Chair), Fraunhofer Center - Maryland, USA
• Tracy Hall, U. of Hertfordshire, United Kingdom
• Jane Huffman Hayes, U. of Kentucky , USA
• John Hudepohl, Nortel Networks, USA
• Seija Komi-Sirvio, VTT Electronics, Finland
• Timothy Lethbridge, U. of Ottawa, Canada
• José Carlos Maldonado, U. of São Paulo at São Carlos, Brazil
• Ana Moreno, Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, Spain
• Jürgen Münch, Fraunhofer Institut Experimentelles Software Engineering, Germany
• Thomas Pressburger, NASA Ames Research Center, USA
• Bernard Wong, U. of Technology, Sydney, Australia