RE4SuSy: Requirements Engineering for Sustainable Systems Birgit Penzenstadler Martin Mahaux Camille Salinesi Technische Universität München University of Namur Université Paris 1 - Sorbonne Munich, Germany Namur, Belgium Paris, France penzenst@in.tum.de martin.mahaux@fundp.ac.be camille@univ-paris1.fr Abstract—Research has started investigating the support of B. Objective sustainability within systems and software engineering. Yet there are few workshops that explore the topic, and there is only one The objective of the workshop is to establish a community so far in requirements engineering: RE4SuSy. of researchers interested in collaborating on the topic of The 1st International Workshop on Requirements Engineering sustainability in requirements engineering. The basis for this for Sustainable Systems (RE4SuSy) was held at REFSQ in 2012. is provided by: In order to involve a more international research community, the 1 • the first RE4SuSy and its derived research agenda organisers are intending to hold the workshop at RE in 2013. • various international research collaborations (i.a., with We plan an interactive workshop that engages with authors well before the deadlines and that produces new results already Germany, Spain, Belgium, Brazil, USA, Netherlands) that during the workshop and promote them throughout the con- have started in the past two years ference. This is also the take-off point for new collaborations This objective is reached by the following actions: between participants. • provide a platform for researchers where they can present their current work and trigger discussion I. M OTIVATION AND OBJECTIVES • revisit and add to last year’s defined research agenda A. Motivation • identify and link contributions to that agenda where there has already been work done or work is in progress Researchers have recently started to explore the concept of • trigger discussions in small groups on favored topics of ”sustainability requirements”, and how to support the elicita- the research agenda tion and documentation of such requirements. They are show- • kickstart new collaborations in between the workshop ing that requirements engineers have indeed a very important participants role to play in order to ensure that future socio-technical • spread the word about the workshop and its results at the systems are sustainable. For example, requirements have an main conference important impact on the potential premature obsolescence of hardware, on the electricity consumption of software or on How the actions are realized within the workshop is described the number of servers needed to offer a service. Further, as in the following section. ubiquitous socio-technical systems alter the way we live, the II. H ISTORY OF THE WORKSHOP requirements of those systems have to be carefully written Related workshop on sustainability, green software, and such that those new ways of living are more sustainable. software engineering are GREENS2 (at ICSE’12 and ’13), In the industry, companies not only want to be “ecologically WSRCC3 (at OOPSLA’09, ICSE’10, CAISE’11), and GIBSE4 trendy”, but also become aware that sustainability require- (AOSD’13), but none of them explicitly considers require- ments will have strategic impacts on business organization and ments engineering. value creation, as with zero paper projects that revolutionize The 1st Intl. Workshop on RE4SuSy5 was held at the enterprise architectures, or intelligent powergrids that lead to International Working Conference on REFSQ6 in March 2012. delivering innovative services. We had 8 contributions that were presented at the workshop This workshop provides an interactive stage for researchers and 14 attendees.7 Much of the workshop was dedicated to to share and exchange about their latest works, to collabora- tively define a research agenda in RE for sustainable systems, 1 Identified Research Agenda Items 2012 at and also to jumpstart collaboration through the live creation https://sustainability.wiki.tum.de/Research+Agenda+Items 2 http://greens.cs.vu.nl/ of teams that commit to work together on concrete points of 3 http://www.cs.toronto.edu/wsrcc/Previous.html this agenda. 4 http://trese.ewi.utwente.nl/workshops/GIBSE/ 5 https://sustainability.wiki.tum.de/RE4SuSy 6 http://refsq.org Copyright c 2013 for the individual papers by the papers’ authors. Copying permitted only for private and academic purposes. This volume is 7 The results of the discussion on the research agenda are available at published and copyrighted by its editors. https://sustainability.wiki.tum.de/Research+Agenda+Items. the collaborative building of a first research agenda for the Second, in a pre-workshop reading phase from June 7th discipline. (CR deadline) until the workshop, we provided the camera- ready version papers in a protected download area for authors III. W ORKSHOP CONTRIBUTIONS AND EVALUATION and PC members. Apart from encouraging them to read the A. Contribution types papers before coming to the workshop, we will assign two The types of contribution are short papers of 6 pages, posters discussants to each paper that kick off an online discussion. with a 2-page abstract, and videos of up to 5 minutes (also 2 The discussion furthermore facilitated providing a framework pages abstract). of 3-4 topics that mirror a coarse-grained classification of We encouraged the submission of new and interactive submitted contribution topics. That way participants already formats (e.g., we had an interactive poster realized with engaged with the contents before the actual workshop and Flash at RE4SuSy’12), but are aware that publication in the discussion is facilitated. Consequently, we assign shorter slots standardised conference ways requires a textual version. for presentation by the authors and can thereby leave more room for discussion. B. Evaluation process B. Workshop format The evaluation was organised exclusively by our program a) Warm-up and intro: The workshop is kicked off with chair, Camille Salinesi. This explicit role distinction will an interactive warm-up exercise to let the participants get into allow the organisers Birgit and Martin to submit their own an active workshop mode and make them feel like a group. We contributions to RE4SuSy as authors, which is important to start with a short introduction by the organisers on the history strengthen the growing community. of the workshop and the agenda for the day, which consists of Camille assigned peer reviews by three PC members and contribution presentations and discussion in the morning, and moderate the discussion between PC members in case of interactive sessions in the afternoon. strongly diverging reviews or borderline assessments. The b) Contribution presentations: The format of last year submission, review process, and communication was per- with lightning talks and assigned discussants has allowed for formed via the Easychair system. The contribution ratings allocating time to presentations as well as discussion. As we included the option of a conditional accept as we consider have a full day in our second iteration of the workshop, we it more sustainable to request specific improvements instead have presentations of 10 to 15 minutes for each contribution of rejections of potentially good contributions. plus 10 to 15 minutes of discussion. To facilitate discussion, C. Program committee we will make the papers available in advance as password- secured download and assign two discussants for each paper. The program committee is a mixture of academia and indus- In parallel, we are taking notes in a shared online document try, experienced and young researchers, and the two domains as living protocol of the workshop. Presenters of papers that the workshop combines: requirements engineering and are encouraged to use a poster instead of a slideshow to sustainability. support their presentation. This ensures the presentation is • Wolfgang Lohmann, University of Zürich, Switzerland more oriented towards the audience and, as we hang all • Debra Richardson, University of California, Irvine workshop posters to walls, this enables participants to add • Ruzanna Chitchyan, Leicester University, UK ideas and comments to them during breaks, lunchtime, or after • Stefan Naumann, FH Trier, Germany the workshop. This increases the likelihood of identifying new • Emmanuel Letier, University College London, UK collaboration potential. • Alistair Mavin, Rolls Royce, UK c) Intermediate Wrap-up: Before lunch, we wrap up the • Xavier Franch, UPC Barcelona, Spain presentations with a recapitulation of the discussions in the • Letı́cia Duboc, State Univ. of Rio de Janeiro, Brasil online protocol and review whether we can include some of • Jean-Christophe Deprez, CETIC, France these in the afternoon breakout sessions. • Konstantin Hoesch-Klohe, Univ. Wollongong, Australia d) Research Agenda and BOK: In the afternoon, there • Christian Manteuffel, Univ. of Groningen, Netherlands is a short review of the research agenda of 2012 and then an • Patricia Lago, VU University Amsterdam, Netherlands update and/or extension of that research agenda. In a second • Henning Femmer, TUM, Germany step, we identify contributions that have already been made IV. W ORKSHOP FORMAT AND NEEDED SERVICES to a specific topic, thereby providing a very first draft of an emerging body of knowledge. A. Pre-workshop activities e) Concepts, Collaboration, and Studies: We prepare There are two phases of pre-workshop activities: First, from topics for breakout sessions with discussion facilitation (e.g. April 9th - 28th (submission deadline), we invited authors creativity techniques like the Osborne checklist, role-play, etc.) to upload preliminary abstracts, outlines, or papers for a but also include topics that arose during discussion at the constructive feedback phase. Other authors and interested PC workshop. The breakout sessions are also used to identify members can comment on them so the authors can improve new collaborations amongst attendees. Specific attention is their papers before the actual submission. also given to study design to evaluate concepts early on. f) Experiments: Furthermore, we provide authors with the option to perform small experiments with their research work if applicable, i.e., they may try out a specific technique that they presented in the morning with willing participants of the audience. For example, if an author presents a goal mod- eling technique specifically designed to model sustainability goals, an experiment could be modeling a small case study within half an hour among a group of 5 workshop attendees. g) Final Wrap-up: In a final come together, we recollect the major discussion points and contributions of the day on a poster to be presented at the main conference. Fig. 1. “SuSy” reminds us of why we want to develop sustainable systems h) Results: The results of the day are: • Posters augmented with ideas and discussion notes • A readily available online protocol of the workshop • An extended research agenda for RE4SuSy [5] Birgit Penzenstadler. Towards a definition of sustainability in and for software engineering. In 28th Annual ACM Symposium on Applied • A very first draft of a body of knowledge on RE4SuSy Computing (SAC), 2013. • New research collaborations [6] Birgit Penzenstadler. What does sustainability mean in and for software • New concepts and study designs engineering? In 1st International Conference on ICT for Sustainability (ICT4S), 2013. • Small experiments with case studies [7] Birgit Penzenstadler and Veronika Bauer. Jumpstart sustainability in • A wrap-up of results in form of a poster to be presented seminars: Hands-on experiences in class. In 2nd Intl. Computer Science at the main conference (most likely in a designated area Education Research Conference (CSERC), 2012. [8] Birgit Penzenstadler, Veronika Bauer, Coral Calero, and Xavier Franch. along with the poster sessions) Sustainability in software engineering: A systematic literature review. • An emerging community of actively collaborating re- In International Conference on Evaluation and Assessment in Software searchers Engineering (EASE), 2012. [9] Birgit Penzenstadler and Henning Femmer. A generic model for sustain- C. Post-workshop activities ability. Technical report, Technische Universität München, November 2012. The post-workshop activities involve spreading the word at [10] Birgit Penzenstadler and Andreas Fleischmann. Teach sustainability in the conference and intensifying collaborations that originated software engineering? In 24th IEEE Conf. on Software Engineering Education and Training, 2011. during the workshop. “Spreading the word” will be facilitated [11] Birgit Penzenstadler, Bill Tomlinson, and Debra Richardson. Support by a poster in the Posters and Demos session and by providing environmental sustainability by requirements engineering. In Interna- the results online for download by participants and other tional Workshop on Requirements Engineering for Sustainable Systems, 2012. interested community members. We will lead a joint effort [12] Penzenstadler, B., Fleischmann, A. and Bauer, V. (eds.). Sustainabil- for all interested contributors for collecting an emerging body ity in software engineering. Technical report, Technische Universität of knowledge. München, 2011. [13] Alejandra Rodriguez and Birgit Penzenstadler. An assessment technique “Intensifying collaborations” is initiated during the work- for sustainability: Applying the imagine approach to software systems. shop in the breakout sessions and their wrap-up presentations. Technical report, Technische Universität München, November 2012. From there on, participants will be encouraged to follow up on the discussions and strengthen the growing community by networking and joining forces on intersecting research topics. V. W ORKSHOP PUBLICATION PLANS In a first step, we make the workshop results visible at the conference along with the poster sessions. In a second step, the organising team will write a workshop report and make it available in an adequate publication. The workshop report is based on the protocol elaborated collectively online during the day and participants are welcome to co-author. R EFERENCES [1] Oliver Feldmann. Sustainability aspects in specifying a car sharing platform, 2012. [2] Martin Mahaux, Patrick Heymans, and Germain Saval. Discovering Sustainability Requirements: an Experience Report. In 17th REFSQ, 2011. [3] Birgit Penzenstadler. DeSyRe - Decomposition of Systems and their Requirements. PhD thesis, Technische Universität München, 2011. [4] Birgit Penzenstadler. Supporting sustainability aspects in software engineering. In 3rd International Conference on Computational Sus- tainability (CompSust), 2012.