Documentation-as-Code for Interface Control Document Management in Systems of Systems: A Technical Action Research Study

Abstract

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Cross-disciplinary Architecting of Systems of Systems - Bridging the Gap

“…Chapter 6 is based on a journal paper accepted for publication in the Empirical Software Engineering journal (H-Index 79, Impact factor of 3.762). This paper is an extension of a study published in the 16th European Conference on Software Architecture (ECSA 2022) [55] (ranked A). In this study, we conducted a Technical Action Research to design an artifact aimed at improving the interface-management related issues identified.…”

“…In addition to ensuring that panel members have ample experience with ICDs and are thus fit-for-purpose for this panel, multiple resources were provided to them as the means to allow them to develop a proper understanding of this functional description. More specifically, in addition to making available our previous work [55], a series of introductory videos for the proposed features were produced; these videos included a series of screencasts of the functional prototype, using the features defined in RQ3 for creating and manipulating a fictional ICD that included hardware/software interfaces. Furthermore, the experts were given access to the ICD management platform developed in the TAR study to further explore the source documents and ICDs generated in the fictional case 8 .…”

“…For instance, as pointed out by Peterson et al [168], action researchby being highly context dependent -is prone to generalizability issues. In particular, the results of the TAR conducted to address the first five research questions, as originally reported in [55], were specific to ASTRON and the radio-astronomy application domain. As a means of addressing this limitation of external validity, this extended version of the study includes a new research question to explore the transferability of the result to other application domains.…”

“…With this motivation, the authors, in cooperation with a group of engineers of the Netherlands Institute for Radio Astronomy (ASTRON) 1 , conducted a technical action research (TAR) study aimed at exploring alternatives to address these issues [55]. In particular, the treatment designed and evaluated through this TAR was tailored to the aforementioned issues in the context of ICD management of hardware/software interfaces in LOFAR, a large-scale, long-running, directed SoS designed and maintained by ASTRON.…”

“…Given these encouraging outcomes and considering that these are specific to a single domain, this chapter reports the results of an extended version of the aforementioned study [55], where external validity is further explored. In other words, we investigate to what extent the proposed treatment would address the ICD-management issues in application domains beyond radio-astronomy.…”