The RE’21 welcomes original papers focusing on the traditional RE topics, but this year’s edition is particularly thrilled with the idea of receiving submissions addressing the following five research themes:  

 1 - Discover stakeholders’ needs: As software systems get more complex and intertwined with society, discovering the needs of various stakeholders remains one of the fundamental missions of requirements engineering. Techniques, tools, and insights are a contribution that cuts across all applications and domains.

 2 - Societal Challenges: Software is no longer a purely technical device or product. Its enormous power and potential continue to shape society, affecting human values and our ways to live our lives. Working from home and online teaching was imposed on us by the COVID-19 crises. How are requirements related to this and to ethical issues, such as sustainability and gender? Where are we going?

 3 - Smart and connected: Our world has developed into a huge socio-technical system of systems. Software with intelligent capabilities is linked to human activities and organizational systems. In smart cities, a smooth collaboration between human goals and technical sophistication is on the horizon.

 4 - Agile, DevOps, and Hybrid: Requirements engineering activities and customer satisfaction are at the core of agile development. However, the interplay between RE and development has shifted. Requirements are not as explicit and as visible in iterative approaches driven by direct communication. Most companies mix and match agile and DevOps with proven techniques. Where is the sweet spot?

 5 - AI + RE: AI seems to be everywhere and ready to solve problems even humans could not solve before. However, what are the problems to be solved? Who decides, controls, and explains whether requirements set by stakeholders are effectively transformed into AI solutions? Can AI itself help to do that?