In below, I review the last year’s resolution. Moreover I describe New Year’s Resolution regarding Group Organization, Research Achievements, and Event and Community Contribution.

*Group Organization*
2015: We had several new international students from China, Indonesia and Afghanistan in 2015.

2016: Like last year, we expect some new students coming from several countries. Our group is growing and having more diversity in national origins, backgrounds and mindsets. Such diversity contributes to our group in various aspects such as creativity.

*Research Achievement*
2015: We published and presented 4 journal papers (1 international and 3 domestic), 22 international conference and workshop papers (3 at CORE Rank A conferences, 10 at Rank B, 2 at Rank C, and 7 at conferences without CORE Rank), 3 international conference posters, 1 book co-authored, 1 book chapter, 2 magazine articles and 1 book translation. In addition, 1 international journal paper and 2 international conference papers (1 at CORE Rank A, 1 at Rank B) have been already accepted to be published in 2016. These achievements are results of researches supported by the university’s grain-in-aids, 7+ companies and 3+ public grants including JSPS KAKENHI, IISF/SSR, and IPA RISE. Moreover, we got new international research connections with Fraunhofer IESE and École Polytechnique de Montréal through GQM+Strategies seminars and my sabbatical stay in Montreal.

On 1st Jan 2015, I stated that we hoped to publish 7 journal papers (incl. 3+ international) and 20 international conference and workshop papers (2+ at CORE Rank A and 10+ at Rank B). Although we got less paper acceptances at journals than expected, we successfully achieved the goal of number of international conference and workshop papers. Moreover, currently there are 4 journal submissions under review including 2 as minor revisions so that I say we did mostly well about research! Of course we believe we can do better and more.

2016: Having the same clear vision “establishing software development practices based on solid engineering theory”, we will push forward with research on novel and actionable software engineering methods and tools based on well-defined and validated theory to contribute to software engineering industry and academia in collaboration with 10+ local and global partners. We aim to publish impactful papers at better places: at least 7 journal papers (incl. 3+international) and 20 international conference papers (3+ at CORE Rank A/A* and 10+ at Rank B). Many of our research achievements in the form of methods, practices and tools shall be continuously used and produce actual values through our local and global partners.

*Community and Professional Contribution*
2015: Thanks to many collaborators and supporters, we contributed to several major programming and engineering contests: ET Robocon 2015 Tokyo Regional Contest, IPSJ SamurAI Coding 2014-15 and 2015-16. We organized and/or hosted various conferences and meetings including AsianPLoP 2015, XP-Matsuri 2015, Minecraft x Education 2015, Waseda Fraunhofer IESE Joint Seminars (on Feb and Sep), and JSSST National Convention 2015. Moreover, I was newly selected as ISO/IEC/JTC1/SC7/WG20 Convenor and IEEE Computer Society Japan Chapter Chair in 2015. Our activities on Minecraft x Education and IPA RISE Research on Software Quality Measurements have been widely reported in the media including TV programs and Web articles.

2016: We continue to contribute to IPSJ SamurAI Coding 2015-16. Moreover we will host and/or organize various conferences and meetings including AsianPLoP 2016 on Feb 24-26, Minecraft x Education 2016 on Aug and ET Robocon 2016 Tokyo Regional Contest on Aug-Oct. These event and community organizations give us good opportunities to publicize our research achievements and contribute to the outer world and expand our network. Moreover I continue to serve as ISO/IEC/JTC1/SC7/WG20 Convenor, IEEE Computer Society Japan Chapter Chair and SEMAT Japan Chapter Chair to lead the professional society and standardization in computer science and software engineering.

Hironori Washizaki
Head of Global Software Engineering Laboratory, Waseda University

Daisuke Saito, PCS-J 2nd Technical Meeting and General Assembly 2015, IEEE Professional Communication Society – Japan Chapter, December 19, 2015, Shinshu University

Kiyoshi Honda, Hironori Washizaki, Yoshiaki Fukazawa, “Software Reliability Growth Model Considering Uncertainty and Dynamics in Development,” 23rd IEEE International Conference on Software Analysis, Evolution, and Reengineering (SANER 2016), Doctoral Symposium, Osaka, Japan, March 14-18, 2016. (to appear)

Alumuni Felix presented his paper titled A third-party extension support framework using patterns at APSEC 2015.

Yiyang Hao, Hironori Washizaki, Yoshiaki Fukazawa, “A third-party extension support framework using patterns,” Proceedings of the 22nd Asia Pacific Software Engineering Conference (APSEC 2015), New Delhi, India, Dec 1-4, 2015. (CORE Rank B, acceptance rate 42/144=29%) 

Prof. Washizaki gave his talks on software maintenance specially focusing on reverse engineering models and recovering traceability links at Ecole Polytechnique de Monteal, UQAM and ETS.

Hironori Washizaki, “Software Maintenance Support by Extracting Links and Models”, UQAM Latece seminar, Nov 11, 2015.

Hironori Washizaki, “Software Maintenance Support by Extracting Links and Models” (revised), UQAM Latece seminar, Nov 13, 2015.

Hironori Washizaki, ”Recovery of Traceability Links and Behavior Models for Software Maintenance”, ETS seminar, Nov 26, 2015.

Daisuke Saito, Hironori Washizaki, Yoshiaki Fukazawa, “A Comparison of Programming Way: Illustration-based Programming and Text-based Programming,” IEEE International Conference on Teaching, Assessment, and Learning for Engineering (TALE 2015), Work-in-Progress paper, 10-12 December 2015, United International College, Zhuhai, China (to appear)

Learning to programming language is difficult. One solution is to use a digital game, which increases motivation of first-time learners. In this paper, we were executing programming learning with MincraftEdu of sandbox game and ConputercraftEdu of expansion function. In addition, learning method to programming has illustration-based programming and text-based programming in ComputerCraftEdu. We compare the programming way of illustration programming and text programming. In this result, there was a significant difference towards the illustration-based programming throughout the comparison. In this paper, we present the results.

Prof. Washizaki started sabbatical stay (till middle of Dec 2015) at Ecole Polytechnique de Montreal.

M1 Nishikawa-kun gave a talk on transitive traceability recovery at ICSME ERA Track. Moreover he did a poster presentation at the conference.

Kazuki Nishikawa, Hironori Washizaki, Yoshiaki Fukazawa, Keishi Ohshima, Ryota Mibe, “Recovering Transitive Traceability Links among Software Artifacts,” Proceedings of the 31st IEEE International Conference on Software Maintenance and Evolution (ICSME 2015), ERA Track, Sep 29 – Oct 1, 2015, Bremen, Germany. (to appear) (CORE Rank A, ERA Track: 17/48=35%)
http://www.washi.cs.waseda.ac.jp/?p=2047

New non-degree student Ali Sajjad Haris from Afghanistan joined our lab to do research in engineering and university assessment. Ali, welcome!

On Sep 22-23, JASA together with Waseda University Global Software Engineering Laboratory (Head: Assoc. Prof. Washizaki) held Tokyo Preliminary Round, ET Software Design Robot Contest 2015 (shortly ET Robocon 2015) at 2F Building 63, Waseda University.

On the first day, a team from our group competed in the Primary Category. Team members were M1 Kikuka, M1 Kei, M1 Harlin, M1 Chi and B4 Taketo. Although they could not move into the Championship Round, they did well planning, design, and construction of embedded systems and software. Especially, their second run (out of two) was beautiful and perfect! See the following videos on YouTube. Good Job! It is expected that they will make use of the experience to their future learning, research, career, and next challenge at ET Robocon 2016!