(Siena, Italy November 4-6, 2003)

Scope: Many companies are looking for ways to minimize both the costs of developing and the time to market of new members of a software rich product family (or product line). Sharing maximization and reuse of software structure and components within the product family appear to be the path to follow. The primary focus of this workshop will be on methods, techniques and tools to manage the diversity of products in a family.

The aim of the workshop is to bring together professionals from academia and industry to exchange ideas, experiences and identify obstacles and propose solutions in the domain of software family architectures. Topics of interest include, but are not restricted to Experience, business, organizational, product, tools, techniques and process aspects for product families. Contributions on the following topics are especially welcome:

Submissions: We encourage submissions that describe complete work, research in progress, problem analysis, position statements, and experience reports from all the scopes of the workshop. Submissions may be abstracts but in any case should be no longer than 6 pages. A description of the contribution towards the scope of the workshop should be clear from the submission.

Attendees: Submissions will be reviewed by the program committee. The authors of the selected papers will be requested to submit a final paper and give a presentation at the workshop. The authors of selected abstracts will requested to give a presentation at the workshop. The authors will be invited to attend the workshop in Siena, Italy, November 2003. Proceedings will be published by Springer Verlag. The organizers would like to limit the number of attendees to 100 people.

The workshop is the fifth in a series. The fist two were organized by the European project ARES. These two workshops were called "Design and Evolution of Software Architectures for Product Families".

The third one (IWSAPF-3) was organised by the Eureka S! 2023 Programme, ITEA project ESAPS ( www.esi.es/esaps/ ).

The fourth workshop (PFE-4) was organised by the follow-up of ESAPS: CAFÉ (www.extra.research.philips.com/euprojects/cafe/ ).

This workshop (PFE-5) will be organised within CAFÉ and its proposed successor, FAMILIES.
The proceedings of the second to fourth workshops have been published as Springer LNCS 1429, 1951 and 2290.

Venue information: Siena is one of the world's best preserved medieval cities, its historical centre almost untouched in the last five centuries. Strategically situated in the heart of Tuscany, it has long been an independent city-state, rivalling Florence for the dominion of the region for over 300 years, until 1555.

Today, it is home to outstanding gothic architecture, the Cathedral and City Hall being among the finest such buildings in the world. It boasts work of several gothic and renaissance artists in its fine museums. Above all, Siena retains an old-town atmosphere, and wandering around its steep, winding alleys constitutes one of the most charming experiences of any Italian trip. Other attractions include its surroundings, including San Gimignano, Montalcino and the Chianti area. The province makes a fertile land for world-class wines (Chianti Classico, Brunello, Nobile, Vernaccia), all of which can be tasted in the unique Italian State Enoteca (winery).

In November, Siena enjoys a mild climate (the average daytime temperature is around +14 C or +57 F, with peaks around +20 C or +68 F), displays superb autumn colours and is mostly tourist-free. It also hosts the New Wine Festival, celebrating the opening of the yearly product on November 6. This is also the last of the yearly street parties, where wine is accompanied with the inevitable mushrooms, game and other local culinary specialties.
More information on Siena from http://www.siena.turismo.toscana.it/ or from http://www.turismoverde.com/ .