We invite both practitioners and researchers with significant industry experience to submit original contributions reporting on requirements engineering challenges, innovations, and experience within industrial, government, and open-source settings.

Full industry papers may be up to 10 pages long, plus 1 additional page for references, and will be peer-reviewed. The accepted papers will be included in the IEEE proceedings for the conference and presented at RE’24.

Presentation-only submissions recognize that practitioners often perform innovative work that would be valuable to share but do not publish it in paper form. We, therefore, accept presentations of strong work performed in the industry at RE’24 based on the submission of a set of annotated draft slides (full paper not necessary). These presentations will be peer-reviewed and will not be eligible for publication in the conference proceedings. Annotations are not required for submission but should be included to describe portions of the presentation that are still incomplete or that you expect to substantially modify for the final presentation. Annotations can either be added in-line using presentation notes or as a separate document.

RE’24 will provide you with an opportunity to share interests and discuss ideas with fellow practitioners and researchers. You will join the global network of requirements engineering experts across industry and academia and have a chance to influence the development of the field. For further information and Word/Latex templates please check here (the same formatting instructions apply as for the Research Track). All submissions should be in PDF format. For PowerPoint presentations, if you use PowerPoint notes for annotations, please print to PDF with the “Notes” layout to generate both the slides and annotations.

Submission Instructions in a Nutshell

● Submit your full industry paper with a maximum of 10 pages (main body) + 1 page (references) - Will be reviewed and published (if accepted)

● Submit your presentation-only submission annotated draft slides - No paper necessary, will not be published

● Submissions are SINGLE-blind (that is, authors are not required to make their submissions anonymous)

● Submissions must be English, in IEEE format (for full papers)

● Submit via EasyChair ( “RE’24 Industrial Innovation" option)

Guidelines for Full Industry Papers

Industry papers must be based on a strong connection to the industrial context. They should adhere to the following guidelines.

Clearly describe the context of the problem and why a practical solution is important to the industry. Indicate who has been impacted, for how long time, how new the problem is, and what the trigger of the problem is.

Identify prior work. You are not expected to have performed a systematic literature review as you would for the research track. However, identify if you are applying your own or someone else’s previously published ideas. Cite this related work.

Explain what you did and the results you have obtained. What were the environment and the problem that you have investigated? How did you develop and apply any solutions? What were the results, impact, and lessons learned? Provide concise descriptions and rationales for your choices.

Describe your findings with supporting data, and do not base your arguments on just your personal opinion or conjecture. Industry track papers may be based on topics for which there was originally no expectation of writing a paper and, consequently, no controlled data gathering. Use the data you have and collect inputs and opinions from those who were involved.

Discuss what makes your contribution innovative, significant, and useful for the industry. To explain what is new, compare your results with relevant alternatives. If the findings were negative, provide a thorough discussion of the potential causes of failure and, ideally, a perspective on how to solve them.

Guidelines for Presentation-only Submissions

While “presentation-only” authors will not be required to submit full papers, they will still need to work with the industry track program committee to demonstrate that their presentation will meet the criteria of full papers. For example, authors must be able to substantiate any claims made in their presentation. They will be required to submit draft slides with annotations in the notes section of the slides. Especially for slides that use graphics or photos, the authors should elaborate on the key messages they will provide in the notes section of this slide. Further, the

authors shall provide a brief biography, their company information, and the category of the presentation (problem statement, experience report, innovative method, or vision) in the notes section of the first slide or in the attached slides at the end of the presentation. The slideset should correspond to a presentation slot of approximately 20 minutes. Similar to full papers, at least one author will be required to register for and participate in the conference. Presentations must describe original work that has not been previously published or submitted elsewhere. Submissions must be written in English. You may reference additional content (i.e., data repositories, source code for open source tools, etc.) by providing a corresponding URL hosted on an institutional, archive-grade site in the notes section.

What is the Difference between Research and Industry Track Papers?

Authors sometimes ask for guidance as to the track to which they should submit their paper.

Both Research and Industry Track papers are expected to meet the same high standards required by IEEE for published papers, but they are evaluated using different criteria. To ensure its best chance for acceptance, a paper must be submitted to the appropriate track. The following examples are by no means exhaustive, but shall provide

Example papers that should be submitted to the Research Track

● A review of previous research or literature on a given topic

● A proposed new technique that industry could employ in the future, based on interviews with a company’s employees and analysis of data

● A proposed new technique that industry could employ in the future, based on a trial in an industrial setting with simulated data

● An exploration of the history, successes, and challenges of requirements-related practices and/or vision of future directions based on the author’s work with practitioners

Example papers that could be submitted to the Research or Industry Track

● An analysis of the state of the art across multiple companies

● A description of the practices of a particular company by an employee or non-employee (e.g. a consultant or independent researcher)

Example papers that should be submitted to the Industry Track

● A proposed new technique that industry could employ in the future, based on a practitioner’s work experience

● A proposed new technique that industry could employ in the future, based on a trial in an industrial setting performed by practitioners doing their daily work

● The deployment of an existing or new technique to practitioners doing their daily work, regardless of failure or success

● An exploration of the history, successes, and challenges of requirements related practices and/or vision of future directions based on the author’s work as a practitioner

Call for Contributions

The industry track accepts the following types of industrial contributions:

● Problem statements describe a significant challenge that has been encountered in industry and has not been satisfactorily solved.

● Visions propose a solution and a research or innovation roadmap for addressing a significant challenge experienced in the industry.

● Experiences report on the innovative application of a concept, method, or framework in one or several interesting industrial contexts, including the lessons learned.

Contributors have a choice on how to contribute:

● Submit a full paper that conforms to the submission guidelines. Accepted papers will be included in the conference proceedings.

● Submit a presentation proposal based on draft slides that outline the topics and structure of the presentation. Accepted proposals will not be included in the conference proceedings.

Both kinds of contributions will be reviewed by the Industrial Innovation Track Program Committee. If the contribution is accepted, we expect one of the authors of the contribution to present the work at RE’24.

We especially look for contributions with at least one author with an industrial affiliation. Some of the tutorials will be open for presenters with an industrial affiliation who are registered at the main conference.

Topics of Interest

Topics may include, but are not limited to, the following:

Innovation with Requirements Engineering

● Use of requirements engineering to address societal, economic, or corporate challenges

● Use of requirements engineering to leverage emerging technologies such as Digital Twins, Big Data, Artificial Intelligence, IoT, 5G, or Blockchain

● Requirements engineering for ensuring the trustworthiness and fairness of AI-enabled systems

● Innovation through networking, community-building, and creativity

● Enablement of value chains or software ecosystems

● Business analysis and data-driven requirements engineering

Requirements Engineering for Systems

● Requirements Engineering for Digital Twins

● Requirements Engineering for cyber-physical systems

● Mutual influences between systems architecture and requirements

Stakeholder Management

● Requirements elicitation and negotiation

● Work in multi-party consortia or geographically dispersed teams

● Involvement of the crowd for requirements elicitation, analysis, and validation

Pragmatic Requirements Engineering

● Good-enough requirements engineering

● Agile and lean approaches

● Domain-specifics and special contexts for requirements engineering such as Open-source or API development

● Usage of large language models in requirements engineering

Requirements Specification

● Natural language

● Formal and model-driven approaches

● Work on complex systems or product lines

● Traceability

Addressing Quality with Requirements Engineering

● Ethics, compliance, and risk management

● User experience, privacy, safety, and security

● Sustainability

● Approaches for requirements testing, validation, and impact management

Product Lifecycle Management

● Value creation techniques

● Product planning and evolution

● Dissemination and cooperation with media, marketing, sales, and support

Industry Experiences of Requirements Engineering

● Deploying new or improved processes

● Transferring technology from academia to industry or within industry

● Tooling for requirements engineering or management

● Training and certification for practitioners

● Learning from practice and improving productivity

● Identifying industry best practices and benchmarks