The relationships between information systems and software engineering are, implicitly or explicitly, well known. The better differentiated are these two fields, the more explicit are the relationships between them and the more probable are the synergies that might be generated in the theoretical, conceptual, methodological, managerial, and technological dimensions.

Software Engineering designs, implements, and deploys software for 1) information systems and 2) for data processing in hard technologies (physical control processes, electronic data processing, etc). On the other hand, Information systems (which could be purely human or hybrid) or informing processes are used 1) in Software Engineering (requirements engineering, project management, Joint Application Development, etc., and 2) for supporting human thinking, decision, and action. Software Engineering requires always (implicitly or explicitly) the support of information systems or informing processes to provide requirements, mini-specifications, available data, business procedures, rules, and objectives, etc.

When software is used in the context of, or developed for, information systems then feedback loops and synergies generation between these two kinds of activities and methodologies are potentiated. Feedback loops might be negative and co-regulative and/or positive and co-amplifying. A similar reasoning could be done with regards to the maintenance of information and software systems. Consequently, cybernetic loops (negative and positive feedback) could support co-evolutionary processes between both kinds of systems and activities along the entire lifecycles of both of them. The respective theoretical, conceptual, and methodological perspectives of both fields could also co-evolve synergistically if adequate feedback loops relate both kind of thinking and acting.

Accordingly, the purpose of ISSE 2024 Organizing Committee is to bring together both kinds of researchers, academics and professionals 1) to share their knowledge and experience in their respective fields and 2) to have the opportunity of interacting with colleagues for the interdisciplinary communication required for the generation of cybernetic loops that could support and/or accelerate co-evolutionary processes in theoretical, conceptual, and/or methodological thinking and acting in both fields.

ISSE 2024 Organizing Committee members think that the fields of Software Engineering and Information Systems provide as fertile grounds for inter-disciplinary communication among academics and professional in the domains Computing Engineering, Informing Science/Engineering, and Soft Systems Engineering; which is “based on symbiotic coexistence of human, machines and environment.” (Joongsun Yoon, 2004, “Robotics projects based on soft engineering,”, IECON 2004. 30th Annual Conference of IEEE Industrial Electronics Society, 2-6 Nov. 2004, pp. 3160 – 3165, Vol. 3).

Murray Gell-Mann, who received the Nobel Prize in physics in 1969, affirms that:

“Unfortunately, in a great many places in our society, including academia and most bureaucracies, prestige accrues principally to those who study carefully some aspect of a problem, while discussion of the big picture is relegated to cocktail parties. It is of crucial importance that we learn to supplement those specialized studies with what I call a crude look at the whole…it is vitally important that we supplement our specialized studies with serious attempts to take a crude look at the whole. (“The Simple and The complex” in David S. Alberts and Thomas J. Czerwinski (Eds.): Complexity, Global Politics, and National Security, National Defense University, Washington, D.C., 1997, pp. 2-12. Accessed on December 13^th, 2010 at www.dodccrp.org/files/Alberts_Complexity_Global.pdf)

ISSE 2024 Organizing Committee is hoping to provide a forum in which a step can be made in supplementing specialized studies (in software engineering and in specific  areas of Information Systems) “with serious attempts to take a crude look at the whole” by means of potential interdisciplinary communication in a multi-disciplinary forum.

Consequently, submissions and contributions to ISSE 2024 can be made in the context of 1) specific specialized disciplinary areas, 2) multi-disciplinary projects and methodologies, 3) inter-disciplinary thinking and acting, and 4) crude looks at the whole that includes Software Engineering, Information Systems, Soft-Systems Engineering, and Informing Science/Engineering.

Software for Information Systems

• Software Development and Maintenance in the context of Information Systems
• Software for Management Information Systems
• Software for Decision Support Systems
• Software for Executive Support Systems
• E-learning Software
• Software for Web Information Systems
• Software for Organizational Re-Engineering