Call for Papers

Supported by its strong community, the 13 previous editions of the VaMoS workshop successfully bootstrapped research on modelling and managing the variability of software systems, as witnessed by the many related breakthroughs published in top-tier conferences and journals. Embracing his new status of a working conference, VaMoS more than ever aims to bring together researchers and practitioners to share ideas, results and experience about their quest for mastering variability. As such, in addition to its usual call for technical research papers, VaMoS strongly supports the participation of industrials and starting researchers via the organisation of dedicated tracks.

The motto of this 14th edition is openness and diversity. Most of today’s software is made variable to allow for more adaptability and economies of scale, while many development practices (DevOps, A/B testing, parameter tuning, continuous integration...) support this goal of engineering software variants. VaMoS is the ideal venue to explore the underlying problems (automation, traceability, combinatorial explosion...) and their solutions. Moreover, variability is prominent in many systems — not only in software. For those reasons, we welcome contributions from related areas (configuration, configurable systems, product lines, adaptive systems, generators...) as well as from new and emerging domains where techniques to manage the complexity induced by variability are applied (IoT systems, 3D printing, autonomous and deep learning systems, software-defined networks, security, generative art, games...). Topics of interest include but are not limited to:

Variability modelling and realisation		Variability in emerging domains/technologies
Automated reasoning on variability		Variability in AI methods
Variability across the software lifecycle		Variability in adaptive systems
Test and verification of variable systems		Configuration management
Evolution of variability-intensive systems		Runtime variability
Variability mining		Visualisation techniques for variability
Reverse-engineering of variability		Economic aspects of variability
Variability and quality requirements		Industrial development of variable systems

As a working conference, VaMoS opens different calls for contributions with the aim of expanding the community and further stimulating discussions.

Technical track. We welcome original and unpublished research ideas, methods, techniques, tools, empirical studies and surveys related to the management of variability. We encourage particularly the submission of research-in-progress and vision papers describing preliminary results, problem statement and open issues, especially in emerging domains where variability poses new challenges. Submissions should consist of 4 to 8 pages (+ 2 additional pages for references only) and will be evaluated based on VaMoS’ typical scientific standards.

Variability in Practice track. We welcome contributions from practitioners, industrials and researchers describing real-world, variability-related problems or solutions, including methodologies, tool demonstration and experience reports. Submissions should consist of 2 to 4 pages (+ 1 additional page for references only) and will be evaluated based on their relevance and originality.

Project Dissemination track. Principal investigators and co-investigators of research projects related to variability are welcome to submit an extended abstract (up to 2 pages references included) describing their project and their contributions to it. The evaluation will be based on relevance. Authors of accepted abstracts will be invited to present their work during a dedicated session.

Student track. We encourage PhD candidates to submit an extended abstract (up to 2 pages references included) describing their ongoing work and thesis roadmap. The submissions will be evaluated based on relevance. Authors of accepted abstracts will be invited to participate to activities allowing them to receive feedback from the community in a relaxed atmosphere.

All submissions must be written in English and follow the double-column ACM template. They will be single-blind reviewed. Accepted contributions from the Technical and the Variability in Practice tracks will be published by ACM in the conference proceedings.

Additionally, this edition will proudly celebrate VaMoS’ own history and outstanding past publications. As such, it initiates the 10-year most influential paper award tradition and will reward papers from the first four VaMoS editions that had the highest impact on the community and beyond.