FROM THE EDITOR
Editor in Chief: Forrest Shull
Carnegie Mellon University,
[email protected]
Passing the Baton
Forrest Shull
IT SEEMS FITTING to use my last column as editor in
chief (EIC) to report on the results of our 2014 board
meeting. One of my guiding touch points as EIC has always been my memory of the fi rst IEEE Software board
meeting I attended, in 2007. Given the involvement of
so many recognized names in the field, I expected to
fi nd a lot of pontificating and some strong personalities
to navigate around. What I found instead was a group
of forward-thinking, passionate, and collaborative contributors, who were anxious to roll up their sleeves and
and share their own experience to make Software what it
is today. (You can fi nd the names of our board members
on page 1.)
During my tenure, I’ve much appreciated the perspectives and intelligence that the boards contribute, and
I’ve strived to maintain this community as an energetic
group that covers a diverse cross-section of the software
industry. Our members cover industries ranging from
defense to Silicon Valley; represent universities on five
continents; include organizations ranging in size from
Google and Microsoft to independent consultants; and cover a geographic spread that includes North
America, South America, Europe,
During my tenure, I’ve much
Australia, India, and China.
appreciated the perspectives and
Software already has a reviewer
appreciation
program, which highintelligence that the boards contribute.
lights the many professionals who
give their time and effort to ensure
the quality of our content through
peer review. I hope this column can
get to work. In the years since, members have retired serve in a way as a board member appreciation as well,
and new ones have taken their places (see the sidebar to in recognition that their generosity is responsible for
meet Software’s new EIC, Diomidis Spinellis). We’ve also many of the good things that Software offers.
grown the size of the editorial and advisory boards, welcoming members with perspectives and experiences we What We’ve Accomplished
felt were missing. But I’ve been very proud that, through- The annual board meeting is a good opportunity for me
out all these changes, we’ve always managed to maintain to take stock of our progress and understand where more
that initial sense of constructive collaboration.
effort is needed. The metrics we’ve been tracking painted
Software’s board members are the volunteers who a positive and energizing picture this year and represented
write the departments, recruit authors and guest editors, a continuation of trends over the past several years:
produce multimedia, oversee peer review, and provide
guidance and perspective from different communities. In
• Although we primarily aim to reach practitioners,
short, they’re the people who spend their personal time
our impact factor (a measure of how often the
IEEE Software
Mission Statement
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IEEE SOFTWARE
To be the best source of reliable, useful, peer-reviewed information for leading software practitioners—
the developers and managers who want to keep up with rapid technology change.
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PUBLISHED BY THE IEEE COMPUTER SOCIETY
0740-7459/14/$31.00 © 2014 IEEE
10/3/14 1:28 PM
NEW EDITOR IN CHIEF
H OW T O
R E AC H US
As part of the countdown toward the end
of my term, I’m happy to announce that
the president of the Computer Society
has accepted our selection committee’s
recommendation. Starting in January
2015, the editor in chief will be Diomidis
Spinellis, a volunteer who has been very
active already with IEEE Software. Diomidis
has been an important contributor to Software’s success. He has been, at various
times, an author, a department editor, and a guest editor for multiple special issues, so he knows many parts of the magazine inside and out.
He has also produced compelling contributions to the field as a software developer, consultant, educator, and author. He has received an impressive set of
recognitions and awards for his professional activities and publications. His CV
shows him to be well suited to lead a publication such as Software, which aims
to better connect research and practice. He has the proven ability to perform
impactful research and work on timely and relevant problems and has garnered
a compelling set of accomplishments in the private and government sectors.
In his application for the position, he laid out a vision for the magazine that
I found energizing. I’m sure you will, too, but I’ll leave it to Diomidis to tell you
more about his initiatives over time.
WRITERS
For detailed information on submitting articles,
write for our editorial guidelines
([email protected]) or access
www.computer.org/software/author.htm.
L E T T E R S T O TH E EDITOR
Send letters to
Editor, IEEE Software
10662 Los Vaqueros Circle
Los Alamitos, CA 90720
[email protected]
Please provide an email address
or daytime phone number with your letter.
ON TH E WEB
www.computer.org/software
SUBSC RIBE
www.computer.org/software/subscribe
S U B SC RIP TION
C H A N G E OF ADDRESS
research literature cites our
content) has always remained
competitive with many of the
software engineering research
journals, such as the Journal of
Empirical Software Engineering,
ACM Transactions on Software
Engineering and Methodology, Information and Software
Technology, and the Journal of
Statistical Software.
• Over the past several years, our
article influence rating (which
weights citations by the reputation of the citing journal, hence
measuring the prestige of a
periodical) has risen sharply and
is higher than our competitor
journals and magazines.
• The total number of subscriptions is up, owing largely to the
digital edition we launched. In
the past few years, we’ve added
thousands of subscribers.
• Although the previous metrics
are important, our content is
also accessed through our digital
library archives. In 2013, we
had 180,000 downloads of our
content, on par with prestigious
journals such as Transactions on
Software Engineering.
Over the past four years, I’ve been
pleased to have overseen the launch
of our digital edition, the annual
Software Experts Summit (the latest
of which drew a gratifyingly large
crowd in Bangalore this year—see
the related sidebar), and our move
into multimedia offerings. We’ve
made important strides in achieving
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I E E E S O F T WA R E
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R E P R IN T P ERM ISSION
To obtain permission to reprint an article,
contact the Intellectual Property Rights Office
at [email protected].
5
10/3/14 1:28 PM
FROM THE EDITOR
SOFTWARE EXPERTS SUMMIT 2014
The first Software Experts Summit to take place in India
was an outstanding success. The event occurred on 30 May
in Electronic City, Bangalore. With 254 attendees, the summit increased Software’s visibility in a location with a large,
vibrant software development community, but in which we
haven’t historically been very visible.
This year’s speakers weighed heavily on the practitioner
side, with representation from experts and thought leaders
associated with the magazine and drawn from the local software community. Presenters included
•
•
•
•
Grady Booch of IBM,
Gerd Hoefner of Siemens Technology and Services,
Tom Zimmermann of Microsoft Research,
Jan Bosch of Chalmers University of Technology (for-
merly Vice President of Engineering Process at Intuit),
• Michiel van Genuchten of VitalHealth Software, and
• Jayant Prabhu of Wipro.
A panel discussion I led made further connections to local industry with participation from Girish Krishnamurthy
(vice president, Tata Consultancy Services), Mandar Mutalikdesai (head of engineering, DataWeave), C.N. Raghupathi
(vice president and head, India Business Unit, Infosys), and
Sreedhara Narayanaswamy (executive director, Dell R&D).
Involvement from the IEEE Software editorial and
advisory boards has always been critical to the event’s
success. This year was no exception, as ed board member Girish Suryanarayana of Siemens was the event’s
general chair.
FIGURE A. The event drew a record crowd of 254
attendees. Here, the audience reacts appreciatively to
remarks by speaker and advisory board member Jan
Bosch.
FIGURE B. Speaker and editorial board member Tom
Zimmermann references a point about software analytics in
our 2013 dual issue on the topic.
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FROM THE EDITOR
my vision of making Software more
than a collection of printed pages
that arrives in subscribers’ mailboxes every two months. I’m sure
that these channels for reaching our
audience will continue to innovate
and adapt and become even more
exciting. I’ll continue watching with
great interest.
These results are possible only
because of community involvement
and volunteer effort. The chance to
work with such a professional, impressive, and generous set of board
members over the past four years
has been a highlight of my career.
My gratitude for all this effort is immense—I hope the board members
are as happy with what we’ve built
together as I am.
security, design principles or patterns,
security requirements, and tradeoffs
regarding privacy for any of the previous solutions.
Scaling and Agility
Agile software development is part
of the mainstream. This special issue would focus on concrete experiences and lessons learned (both
positive and negative) and viable
Security by Design
What robust, usable principles can
help build secure systems from the
ground up? Topics of interest might include API design principles (especially
those that balance security effectiveness versus usability), mobile security,
software architecture implications for
This special issue would focus on
methods for building the software
(and applications of the software)
that’s powering the revolution in
industrial automation. Topics of interest might include cyberphysical
industry, safety-critical software (especially regarding assurance), online
or physical connections, and the Internet of Things.
These results are possible
only because of community
involvement and volunteer effort.
Looking into the Future
One of the most important things
we do at every board meeting is
brainstorm priority topics for the
coming year’s special issues. These
aren’t binding recommendations—
some won’t come together in the
way we would like, and others will
be superseded by new topics. But it’s
a useful exercise that helps keep us
focused on, and cognizant of, the
cutting-edge topics of interest to our
readers. I always fi nd it particularly
useful to see which priorities emerge
from such a diverse cross-section of
the software field.
This time around, our wish list
included the following special-issue
topics.
Software for Smart Industry
strategies for teams trying to apply agile at scale. Topics of interest
might include applying agile on large
teams or teams of teams, agility in
software system acquisition, architectural tradeoffs in agile, and the
interfaces between agile teams and
the rest of the organization.
Raising Your Organization’s
Software IQ
There’s no shortage of software
practices that claim to be best practices, but how do organizations
(rather than teams or individuals)
learn about, test, and institutionalize effective practices? Topics of interest might include software engineering education and professional
training, approaches for building
the workforce, strategies for improving organizational software capabilities, learning organizations,
communication within and across
teams (especially when dealing with
distributed or global development),
and recruiting.
The Role of the Software Architect
We’ve had no shortage of content on
technical issues related to software architecture. This issue would take a different tack and focus on team organization and the architect’s role vis-à-vis the
larger organization. Topics of interest
might include how the architect interacts
with requirements and DevOps (development operations), the role of architects
in an agile context (is there a perceived
conflict?), the impact of leadership or facilitation skills, scaling the role of architect, and architecting the “-ilities.”
DevOps
Although DevOps is certainly a
buzzword, the underlying idea has
performed a real service by emphasizing the tight interconnections between software development and IT
operations. An exploration of DevOps would include continuous development and deployment, monitoring and observability, DevOps tools,
software evolution with a perspective on operations, and open stack.
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10/9/14 12:51 PM
FROM THE EDITOR
IEEE SOFTWARE CALL FOR PAPERS
Security and Privacy on the Web
Submission deadline: 1 December 2014 • Publication: July/August 2015
Over time, software developed for the Web has become more intricate and
requires knowledge of and the use of multiple moving parts — for example, a
dynamic software stack. As Web software becomes even more integral to the
human experience, the importance of the privacy and security controls for
Web software and Web software development has heightened.
Mission-critical assets of corporations, infrastructure providers, governments
and average citizens more reliant than ever on Web software and therefore
more exposed to attack through software vulnerabilities and flaws in the software engineering process. This makes the creation of privacy-preserving and
secure Web software essential to our future. To ensure privacy and security,
there is a need to analyze existing Web software, its supporting stack, and the
Web software engineering process
This special issue seeks to facilitate discussion of ideas around (but not limited
to) the following topics:
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
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analysis of vulnerabilities in Web and cloud software;
forensic analysis of Web and cloud software;
privacy and or security analysis of Web and cloud software;
privacy and reputation in Web (for example, social networks), cloud
software and systems;
software for enabling security and privacy as a service;
software for enabling usable security and privacy;
security and privacy software solutions, including identity management,
pseudonymity and anonymity, for the Web and cloud systems;
security and or privacy Web services, feeds, or mashups;
software solutions for provenance and governance;
security and privacy policy management for the Web and cloud software;
next-generation Web or mobile browser technology;
security and privacy extensions and plug-ins;
online privacy and security frameworks;
studies on understanding the security and privacy of Web and cloud
software and systems;
security and privacy software tools for the Web development process; and
analysis of secure and or privacy-preserving Web development process
and or software
Questions?
For more information about the focus, contact the guest editors:
• Tyrone Grandison, [email protected]
• Raquel Hill, [email protected]
• Larry Koved, [email protected]
The Science of Measurement
Software measurement has been
with us for a long time, but recent
advances in unobtrusive data collection, software analytics, and other
related technologies have led to a renaissance of sorts. Topics of interest
might include data-driven decision
making, automated data collection
and instrumentation, software versus
system metrics, the role of analytics
in effective management, and understanding business value. Also, experience reports on what happens when
metrics “lie” would fit this topic.
Participate!
If you fi nd these special-issue suggestions interesting, be on the lookout
for some of these issues sometime in
2016. Better yet, think of articles to
submit in these areas—or propose
special issues you would fi nd more
relevant. After all, more than just
board management is necessary for
a successful magazine. The software
engineering community as a whole
has a stake in what we publish, and
I hope that the boards continue to
hear your voice.
I
FORREST SHULL is assistant director for
empirical research in the Software Solutions
Division of the Software Engineering Institute,
a federally funded research and development
center at Carnegie Mellon University. Contact him
at [email protected].
Full author guidelines: www.computer.org/software/author.htm
Submission details: [email protected]
Submit an article: https://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/sw-cs
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t has been an honor and a pleasure to serve the community in
this role for the past four years.
See www.computer.org/
software-multimedia
for multimedia content
related to this article.
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