General talk about software patterns

[Paris Avgeriou <paris AT cs.rug.nl>]

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Call for papers: Special Issue of
Springer Transactions on Pattern Languages of Programming (TPLOP)
“Pragmatic and systematic approaches in applying patterns”
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Aim
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Even though patterns are a software engineering success story and have 
become mainstream in recent years, the application of the different 
types of patterns in practice has not yet fully met the expectations of 
the patterns community yet. Among other reasons, this is due to the 
inefficient advertisement of patterns to the community, as well as the 
lack of techniques for using patterns, and for introducing them into 
organizations. Many practitioners are aware of the GoF patterns and use 
them regularly in design and coding, but there is little evidence of 
systematic use of patterns in other areas of software, such as software 
architecture, analysis, or process. While there are many anecdotes of 
the benefits of using patterns, the impact of using patterns at any 
level is still not well understood. We note that there is some increase 
in teaching patterns in higher education and professional training 
programmes, but the results are not yet visible in the industry.
This special issue aims at studying the application of patterns in 
practice both from the practitioners and the researchers’ point of view. 
The former are pattern-based approaches that have been applied in 
industrial projects by experienced architects/designers and have shown 
promising results even if they lack scientific rigor. The latter are 
scientific approaches by researchers that aim at software engineering 
methods to support the systematic application of patterns but may still 
be at the research stage. Approaches that attempt to bridge the gap 
between these two extremes are particularly welcome.

Topics
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Topics of the special issue include but are not limited to:
- Methods and tools for the systematic application of patterns
- Industrial case studies of applying patterns
- Lessons learned from applying patterns in practice
- Bridging research and practice in applying patterns
- Notations and languages to describe and model patterns and pattern 
languages
- Applying pattern sequences and stories
- Applying patterns as design decisions
- Architecture design and evaluation using patterns
- Architecture reconstruction based on patterns
- Patterns as a means to facilitate stakeholder communication

Submissions
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The TPLOP journal 
(http://www.springer.com/computer/lncs?SGWID=0-164-2-470309-0) is part 
of the new LNCS transactions subline. Manuscripts should be submitted 
via the online submission system denoting “Applying Patterns” as type of 
contribution (http://senldogo0039.springer-sbm.com/plop/servlet/Conference).
All manuscripts should follow the LNCS formatting guidelines. We expect 
papers submitted for consideration to have already received feedback 
e.g. at a Hillside Group PLoP conference or another event. For any kind 
of inquiry, please contact one of the guest editors.

Important dates
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Full paper submission through Springer submission system: 1st January 2009
Notification to authors: 1st March 2009
Camera-ready submission: 15th April 2009
Tentative publication date: Second quarter of 2009

Special Issue Editors
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Paris Avgeriou, University of Groningen, 
paris AT cs.rug.nl
Neil B. Harrison, Utah Valley University, 
harrisne AT uvsc.edu
Uwe Zdun, Vienna University of Technology, 
zdun AT acm.org