Experiences With New SW Paradigms for Systems Software and Service Process Improvement and Innovation

This special issue comprises a selected set of high-quality and extended articles of the 31st Systems, Software and Services Process Improvement (EuroSPI) Conference, held in 2024 in Munich, Germany. Conferences were held in Dublin (Ireland) in 1994, in Vienna (Austria) in 1995, in Brighton (UK) in 1996, in Budapest (Hungary) in 1997, in Gothenburg (Sweden) in 1998, in Pori (Finland) in 1999, in Copenhagen (Denmark) in 2000, in Limerick (Ireland) in 2001, in Nuremberg (Germany) in 2002, in Graz (Austria) in 2003, in Trondheim (Norway) in 2004, in Budapest (Hungary) in 2005, in Joensuu (Finland) in 2006, in Potsdam (Germany) in 2007, in Dublin (Ireland) in 2008, in Alcala (Spain) in 2009, in Grenoble (France) in 2010, in Roskilde (Denmark) in 2011, in Vienna (Austria) in 2012, in Dundalk (Ireland) in 2013, in Luxembourg in 2014, in Ankara (Turkey) in 2015, in Graz (Austria) in 2016, in Ostrava (Czech Republic) in 2017, in Bilbao (Spain) in 2018, in Edinburgh (UK) in 2019, in Düsseldorf (Germany) in 2020, in Krems (Austria) in 2021, in Salzburg (Austria) in 2022, in Grenoble (France) in 2023, and in Munich (Germany) in 2024. EuroSPI had a cooperation with the EU Blueprint for Batteries project ALBATTS (2020–2023) where leading European industry discussed and established a skills agenda to build a European battery production capability for the electrification of European e-mobility. EuroSPI had a cooperation with the EU project FLAMENCO (2023–2024) where EuroSPI founded the innovation agent task force (later promoted to a persistent working group) to develop an ISO 560xx compliant innovation capability assessment and to experiment with AI and GenAI in innovation projects. EuroSPI has a cooperation with the EU Blueprint project TRIREME (2024–2028, Digital however, the use of Data Augmentation in Requirements Engineering is not that common. In spite of these scarce efforts, there are several works reported in the literature on the topic (e.g., 9). In the case of the paper by Korfmann et al., the goal is to evaluate data augmentation techniques to synthetically increase the amount of a given set of training data to overcome the shortage of domain-specific training data. Poth and Rrjolli address one of the most important topics in literature in recent times: Computational sustainability. In “Eco-Friendly Micro-Services: Resource Footprint of Cloud-Native MicroServices Written in Java—A Balance Between Build-Time and Run-Time Effects of Releases,” authors evaluate the potential of Java frameworks that facilitate cloud-native microservices in reducing the energy footprint throughout the release life cycle. Given that compute servers cause the majority of a general-purpose cloud's emissions 10 to make cloud computing more environmentally sustainable 11 and reduce the negative impact on the environment that computing has 12. In the work presented in this special issue, authors suggest that for noncompute intensive workloads, which are limited by the CPU-RAM-ratio of the cloud service provider, JVM-less microservice is a significant lever to deploy more microservices per VM. Cybersecurity is the topic of the paper “A Multi-Level Approach to TARA: Proposals for Attack Feasibility in Interference-Free Scenarios” by Liedtke, Messnarz, Ekert, and Much. Automotive can be seen as a complex software-intensive system 13 commonly affected by cybersecurity attacks 14, 15. In this work, the authors explore the concept of freedom from interference and its implications to determine attack feasibility in automotive scenarios. The last paper of the collection is written by Aschbacher, Zelmenis, Messnarz, and Ekert and entitled “Strategic Intelligence Management (ISO 56006)—Using AI by the innovation agent task force in the Automotive Skills Alliance (ASA).” The TRIREME project builds on the FLAMENCO initiative by enhancing the automotive sector's innovation capabilities through AI-driven implementation of ISO 56006 Strategic Intelligence Management. In the context of this project, participants develop MOOCs for the ISO 5600x series, integrated into the Automotive Skills Alliance's European Skills Hub, fostering advanced green and digital skills for mobility ecosystems. In particular, this paper shows the results of the work on the ISO 56006 Strategic Intelligence Management implementation using AI in the TRIREME project. EuroSPI has a long-lasting relationship with Wiley publishing selected papers with high industrial experience value extended in special issues of the journal “Software Process: Improvement and Practice” starting in 2004, continuing the earlier tradition with the “Journal of Software Maintenance and Evolution: Research and Practice” and the “Journal of Software: Evolution and Process.” Data sharing not applicable to this article as no datasets were generated or analysed during the current study.