sigmod-workflow

SIGMOD Workflow

SIGMOD project management differs from single-deadline conferences in kind:

with four research rounds a year feeding PACMMOD issues, the strategic

variable is which round, and the punishment structure (a 12-month embargo

on rejection, one month to execute a revision) rewards teams that plan the

whole round, not just the deadline. Anchor every date below to the live

important-dates page before acting; the quarterly pattern is durable, the

dates are not.

The round as a five-act unit

Act 1  Abstract + COIs        (deadline minus ~1 week)
Act 2  Paper deadline         (the 17th of the round month, AoE, for 2027)
Act 3  Feedback phase         (~2 months in; one-week reply window)
Act 4  First verdict          (~3 months in: accept / reject / revision)
Act 5  Revision + final       (+1 month to resubmit, ~+3 weeks to decide)

Block engineer time for Acts 3 and 5 when you submit, not when they arrive:

the feedback week may need a fast counter-experiment, and the revision month

is a sprint that assumes the original evaluation was scripted end to end

(see sigmod-reproducibility).

Round selection under the embargo

| Situation | Recommended move |

|---|---|

| Evaluation complete, writing mature | Nearest round |

| Core result solid, one comparison missing | Next round; a missing baseline reads as reject, not revision |

| System working, evaluation thin | Skip two; thin evaluations burn the embargo |

| Racing a known competing group | Weigh nearest round against reject risk; PVLDB's monthly gate may beat waiting |

| Paper rejected last round | Different venue — the track is closed for ~3 rounds |

The asymmetry to internalize: submitting early costs a possible year;

waiting costs three months. Under uncertainty, waiting is usually the

cheaper mistake at this venue.

Backward plan from a paper cutoff

• T-16 weeks: freeze the system's architecture; feature work after this

point invalidates measurements.

• T-10: evaluation matrix locked (workloads × baselines × sweeps); harness

and seeds committed.

• T-6: full experiment pass complete once; draft carries real numbers, not

placeholders.

• T-4: internal adversarial read by a colleague who builds systems;

schedule their week now.

• T-2: rerun-from-scratch of every figure; repro ledger shows zero DEBT.
• T-1 week + a few days: abstract, authors, topics, COIs into CMT.
• T-0: PDF up; verify the uploaded file, not the local one.

Team coordination specifics

• Name one owner for the measurement harness and a different owner for the

anonymity sweep; both jobs fail under shared custody.

• Keep a submissions ledger across the group: PACMMOD's exclusivity rule

and the 10-papers-per-author annual cap are portfolio constraints, not

per-paper ones.

• Archive the exact submitted PDF, the CMT confirmation, and the frozen

artifact snapshot; the revision letter must quote and diff against them.

• Pre-agree the reject plan (PVLDB? ICDE? rework?) while everyone is calm;

deciding it the day the verdict lands produces venue-shopping errors.

Interleaving multiple projects

Quarterly rounds let a group pipeline: project A in Round 1, its revision

landing while project B targets Round 3. The trap is revision collision —

two revisions in the same month exceed most teams' experiment bandwidth.

When two papers are near-ready, split them across non-adjacent rounds

deliberately rather than shipping both into one.

Small-team and solo variants

The five-act structure assumes bench depth; without it, adjust:

• A solo author cannot staff a feedback week and a revision month on top

of other obligations — prefer the round after the one that looks

feasible, and treat the slack as the plan, not padding.

• Compress the evaluation matrix before compressing run hygiene; fewer

workloads with clean provenance beat a wide matrix that cannot be

regenerated during a revision.

• Recruit the adversarial reader early even when solo — the T-4 external

read is the step small teams skip and most regret at verdict time.

• Consider whether PVLDB's monthly gate suits a solo pipeline better; a

missed monthly deadline costs weeks, a failed SIGMOD round costs a year.

Conference layer

Publication and presentation decouple: your issue ships on the round's

schedule, and the talk happens at the next conference edition (SIGMOD 2027:

June 13–19, 2027, Huntington Beach; SIGMOD 2026 was May 31–June 5,

Bengaluru). Budget registration and travel when the acceptance lands, and

schedule the ARI artifact push (sigmod-artifact-evaluation) into the gap

between issue and conference.

Calendar-keeping discipline

Because every date in this skill perishes, institutionalize the refresh:

at the start of each quarter, one team member re-opens the current

important-dates page, diffs it against the team's planning calendar, and

posts the delta. Rounds have shifted between cycles before; a plan anchored

to a stale calendar fails silently until the abstract deadline passes. The

same quarterly sweep should touch the ARI edition page and, for groups with

industrial collaborations, the industrial-track CFP status.

Output format

[Target round] round + year, with selection rationale
[Stage now] pre-abstract / submitted / feedback / verdict / revision
[Backward plan] next three milestones with owners
[Bandwidth check] feedback + revision windows staffed yes/no
[Portfolio constraints] cap headroom, exclusivity conflicts, collisions
[Reject plan] pre-agreed next venue