Quantum Computing (QC) aims to solve many complex problems efficiently once sufficiently powerful quantum computers have been built. QC is getting increasingly popular, and many companies (e.g., IQM, IBM, Microsoft) have started building their quantum computers with different hardware technologies. These companies are continuously making progress in increasing computational power while reducing noise, which is severely hindering the practical applications of QC. Such noise is inherent in today's quantum computers due to immature technology, which reduces the reliability of the computations performed by quantum computers.

Like classical computing, quantum software programs quantum computers. There have been efforts to make quantum programming languages such as Qiskit, Q#, and Quipper so that quantum computers can be programmed for specific tasks. However, the current practice of programming remains at the quantum circuit level, which is too low level and closer to hardware, and only people with specialized backgrounds can program quantum computers [1]. More and more efforts are now being made to bring novel abstractions to quantum circuits, supporting modularity, etc [2].

In the realm of quantum computing, Quantum software engineering (QSE) is an emerging area of research that focuses on developing scalable and cost-effective solutions to build quantum computing software that can be executed on real quantum computers. Given that it is a new area of research, there is still no agreed software development life cycle or development processes. However, researchers have initially started looking into various possible phases of QSE by taking inspiration from classical computing [1-3].

Within the QSE, some areas have got more attention than others. For instance, quantum software testing has gained more attention than, for example, quantum software requirements engineering. However, as pointed out in [2], most existing works within QSE are preliminary, requiring more novel research.

The goal of this meeting is to bring relevant researchers and practitioners interested in QSE to identify various challenges in the context of QSE and develop a credible research QSE roadmap that can be used by researchers to conduct future QSE research.

Currently, most quantum software is developed in a hybrid, classical-quantum fashion, i.e., both classical and quantum code is used. This means that certain parts of the code are executed on classical computers, whereas the others are delegated to quantum computers for execution. This adds an additional view to consider while developing QSE solutions.

This Shonan meeting is focused on discussing various aspects (challenges, ideas, research roadmaps) of quantum software engineering, including, but not limited to:

• What are the possible phases of QSE (e.g., requirements engineering, modeling, testing, debugging, and repairing)? How do those phases differ from the classical phases?
• Is there any need for quantum software requirements engineering, or are classical methods and approaches sufficient?
• How can the classical-quantum split be handled across various phases of QSE?
• Given the inherent noise in the near-term quantum computers, shall QSE focus on specific solutions to deal with noise or focus exclusively on noise-free solutions?
• How can we develop best practices and solutions for developing quantum software? Are classical solutions such as agile methods still applicable, or are they valuable for quantum software?
• What are the strengths and weaknesses of benchmarks in the context of QSE? How can the community provide a systematic way of developing such benchmarks for QSE?

We aim to write a book on Quantum Software Engineering as one of the primary outcomes of this meeting. The book will collect various ideas, challenges, and experiences, survey existing methods, tools, and data, and identify research directions in the form of research roadmaps from the participants of the meeting.

We aim to invite researchers from academia and practitioners working in various aspects of QSE, such as quantum software testing and debugging, quantum software modeling, quantum software execution and optimization, and the application of classical AI algorithms for developing QSE solutions.

The meeting will be conducted in various formats. First, there will be an introductory meeting, where participants will present themselves together with their research interests in QSE. Second, the participants will be divided into different groups based on their interests. Each group will conduct a discussion followed by presenting the results of the discussion to the entire group. Third, based on the discussion, we will develop an outline of the book during the meeting. To this end, we will plan dedicated sessions. In addition to the book, we believe that this meeting will provide a forum for researchers to establish new research collaborations in QSE, joint publications, and new international
projects.

[1] Shaukat Ali, Tao Yue, and Rui Abreu. 2022. When software engineering meets quantum computing. Commun. ACM 65, 4 (April 2022), 84–88.
https://doi.org/10.1145/3512340

[2] Jianjun Zhao. "Quantum software engineering: Landscapes and horizons." arXiv preprint arXiv:2007.07047 (2020).

[3] Murillo, Juan M., et al. "Challenges of quantum software engineering for the next decade: The road ahead." arXiv preprint arXiv:2404.06825 (2024).