Dear friends and colleagues:

We are pleased to inform you of recent news from CeBASE (http://www.cebase.org):

·         CeBASE primary partners are planning the Empirical Software Engineering International Week (ESEIWeek, pronounced "easy week") that will take place August 16-20 in Los Angeles, California. Among the events of ESEIWeek are the IASESE (the International Advanced School of Empirical Software Engineering) and ISESE (the International Symposium on Empirical Software Engineering).

o        The goal of IASESE is to provide a one-day overview of how to conduct empirical software engineering research. Lecture on advanced topics will be alternated with hands-on sessions. This daylong course will provide instruction on a variety of topics such as:

1.       When & how to use empirical studies to best advantage

2.       Types of empirical designs and their appropriateness for different research questions

3.       How to augment studies with qualitative data analysis to get a richer understanding of phenomena

4.       How to integrate empirical studies into a research program

o        The objective of ISESE is to provide a forum where researchers and practitioners can report on and discuss new research results in the area of empirical software engineering. The symposium encourages the exchange of ideas to understand, from an empirical viewpoint, the strengths and weaknesses of software engineering technologies. The symposium focuses on the processes, design and structure of empirical studies as well as the results of specific studies. These studies may vary from controlled experiments to field studies, from quantitative to qualitative studies. Although submission for technical papers has closed, ISESE is still accepting posters and fast abstracts. A fast abstract describes an ongoing research work, not mature enough to be presented as a regular paper, but useful to start a discussion about new research ideas.

For more information about ESEIWeek location and event registration, or specifics about submission to ISESE, please see http://www.isese.org/meetings.htm.

• On March 17-19, CeBASE primary member, USC, hosted the Agile Experiences Workshop. The workshop discussed the results and feedback received by Barry Boehm and Rich Turner from their book: “Balancing Agility and Discipline: A Guide for the Perplexed”. Further lessons learned from experiences with combinations of agile and disciplined techniques were also presented and discussed. According to Dr. Boehm, “one aspect of the feedback is that it is important to balance agility and discipline in agile processes, plan-driven processes, and combinations of the two, and that techniques for fitting the balance to the situation are most prized.”  The Workshop featured presentations by agile method leaders and researchers, including David Anderson, Alistair Cockburn, John Manzo, Mary Poppendieck, Ken Schwaber, and Laurie Williams; plan-driven process leaders, including Rick Hefner, Philippe Kruchten, and Mark Paulk; and agile experience reports by Affiliates from Freshwater Partners, Motorola, Northrop Grumman, and SAIC. Slides from these presentations will be available soon at the Agenda area of the CSE-Annual Research Review website at: http://cse.usc.edu/events/2004/arr/index.html

• Please remember to visit our reports repository at http://www.cebase.org/www/Resources/reports/index.asp. The repository is always updated with papers and reports related to empirical methodology as well as specific practices. Some of the latest additions to the repository include:
•  Carver J., Shull F., and Basili V. R., "Observational Studies to Accelerate Process Experience in Classroom Studies: An Evaluation", In Proceedings of 2003 ACM-IEEE International Symposium of Empirical Software Engineering (ISESE 2003), Rome, Italy, September 2003, pp. 72-79. Available at: http://fc-md.umd.edu/fcmd/papers/carverj_observation.pdf
• Cohen D., Lindvall M., and Costa P., "Agile Software Development", Tech Report Number: DACS-SOAR-11 , DACS State-of-the-Art-Report. The Data & Analysis Center for Software (DACS) is a Department of Defense (DoD) Information Analysis Center (IAC). 2003. Available at: http://fc-md.umd.edu/fcmd/papers/DACS-SOAR-AgileSoftwareDevelopment.pdf.
• Turner R. and Boehm B., "People factors in software management: Lessons from comparing agile and plan-driven methods," Crosstalk, no. December 2003, pp. 4-8, December 2003. Available at: http://www.stsc.hill.af.mil/crosstalk/2003/12/0312Turner.pdf

Please remember you can always contribute to our website and this newsletter. If you believe you have papers, tools, and/or events that might interest the CeBASE community, please let us know, and we can add a link to your publication or tool from the website.

This update and future ones will be achieved in: http://www.cebase.org/www/AboutCeBASE/newsletter/index.htm

We would like to hear from you! Let us know your feedback and your suggestion for improving the website to help you…

If you don’t want to receive future updates, or, if you received multiple updates, please send a message to pcosta@fc-md.umd.edu.

Looking forward to “talking” to you again!

Patricia Costa
From the CeBASE team