Foreword: Quality in ICT Evolution

Summary form only given. It is well established that ICT systems play a core role in our society, supporting our business and daily life activities. As systems evolve to cope with the increasing demands from the society they support, more and more important it becomes having effective methodologies to evaluate and control their quality. One of the approaches proposed to track quality evolution is the use of software product metrics. These metrics enable a direct quantification of characteristics of the software artifacts such as source code, test code or schema definitions. In particular statically derived metrics (e.g. size, complexity metrics) can be used as early as the first artifacts are created or modified hence allowing faster response in case of potential problems are identified. There are still many research challenges to address in metrics research for ICT systems with respect to both metrics definition and usage addressed in this Thematic Track.