System- and Software-level Architecting Harmonization Practices for Systems-of-Systems : An exploratory case study on a long-running large-scale scientific instrument

Cadavid, Héctor; Andrikopoulos, Vasilios; Avgeriou, Paris; Broekema, P. Chris

doi:10.1109/icsa51549.2021.00010

Cited by 7 publications

(17 citation statements)

References 40 publications

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“…This approach, despite the growing popularity of model-based ones as a response to its limitations, is still widely used in industry [3]. This is evidenced not only by examples in the literature in the aeronautics industry [11] and radio-astronomy (the LOFAR case) [12], but in the many ICDs publicly available online for other domains 6 . Between these two extremes, there are approaches that neither follow an MBSE process nor use text-based documents for the ICDs.…”

Section: Icd Management Approachesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…More recently, a particular aspect of the architecting process of this kind of systems has also been highlighted as posing additional challenges: the interplay between the different engineering disciplines involved in its development, such as systems engineering, software engineering, and electrical engineering, among others [26]. Studying this aspect is particularly important as recent empirical studies suggest that the interaction between those disciplines often leads to major integration and operational issues in SoS when their architecting practices are not harmonized [5,6]. A specific pain point identified by these studies is that of interface management.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…These documentation artifacts ensure compatibility between the said constituents, prevent integration errors, and improve the quality of the whole system [24]. However, empirical studies in the field [5,6] suggest that the details on these ICDs, defined by one of the involved parties, are incomplete or not sufficiently clear for the other parties to work with. This, in addition to the domain knowledge gap between these disciplines, seems to be a common cause of misunderstandings and wrong assumptions in the process [26,5].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The study is conducted with a group of engineers from ASTRON 1 , the Netherlands Institute for Radio Astronomy. This cooperative work between researchers and practitioners was motivated by the result of a previous exploratory case study on the LOFAR and LOFAR2.0, a long-running large-scale radio-telescope SoS [6], where the aforementioned ICD-management issues emerged. The documentation-as-code or docs-as-code (DaC) philosophy [10], which encourages the creation and maintenance of technical documentation as rigorously as software, emerged as a common ground idea (between researchers and practitioners) to be explored as an improvement to the existing document-centered ICD management approach.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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

Cadavid¹,

Andrikopoulos²,

Avgeriou³

2022

Preprint

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The architecting of Systems of Systems (SoS), that is, of systems that emerge from the cooperation of multiple independent constituent systems, is a topic of increasing interest in both industry and academia. However, recent empirical studies revealed what seems to be an overlooked aspect of the architecting of SoS that is linked to major integration and operational issues: the interplay between the various disciplines involved in such an architecting process. This aspect becomes particularly relevant for the management of the interfaces between the SoS constituents, where such disciplines inevitably meet. In this paper, we present the results of the first cycle of a Technical Action Research (TAR) study conducted in cooperation between the authors and a group of practitioners involved in the long-running architecting process of a largescale radio astronomy SoS project. This TAR is aimed at exploring potential improvements of the document-centered interface management approach currently followed in this project by adopting elements of the documentation-as-code philosophy, which is widely adopted in the domain of software systems. As a result, a working proof-of-concept of an ICD (Interface Control Document) management approach was developed by the researchers and evaluated by the practitioners. The results of the study and the corresponding lessons learned are reported in this work.

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Section: Icd Management Approachesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

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

Cadavid¹,

Andrikopoulos²,

Avgeriou³

2022

Preprint

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

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“…Designing a dashboard is far from being straightforward (23), and meeting end-users' requirements has been shown to be a key factor for achieving users' expectations, preferences and needs, as well as to build sustainable tools (24,25). Shah and Robinson (26) stated that understanding users' requirements during design determines the success or failure of a tool.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Setting Requirements for a Dashboard to Inform Portuguese Decision-Makers About Environment Health in an Urban Setting

Salgado

Nogueira

Torres³

et al. 2022

Front. Public Health

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Dashboards are being increasingly used in the health field, and literature points out that accurate and efficient dashboards require not only dealing with data issues, but also ensuring that dashboards are user-friendly and that incorporate users' views and needs. The integration of evidence and data into decision aiding tools, such as dashboards, to assess and monitor environmental health (EH) in urban settings requires careful design. Departing from EH evidence and making use of the views of EH stakeholders and experts, this study aimed at defining requirements for a dashboard to help decision-makers analyzing and visualizing EH information in the Lisbon urban context. In order to set those requirements, it was combined a user-centered with a design card approach to engage EH potential end-users so as to collect their visualization preferences and gather information related to dashboard requirements. Specifically, three online group semi-structured interviews, involving 11 potential end-users from different organizations, were conducted; design cards with a set of visualization options regarding 17 indicators of built and natural environment determinants were used in the interviews to capture participants' preferences and their rationale; questions about other dashboard features were also asked; and the results from the interviews were synthesized into four separate, but interrelated features, and operationalized into 11 requirements for a dashboard to monitor EH in Lisbon. This study contributes to EH literature by producing knowledge to inform dashboard construction, by highlighting issues related with the usability, analysis, and visualization of data to inform EH decision-making in urban contexts, and by designing an approach that can be replicated to other EH dashboard contexts.

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

Cadavid

Andrikopoulos

Avgeriou

2022

Software Architecture

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

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System- and Software-level Architecting Harmonization Practices for Systems-of-Systems : An exploratory case study on a long-running large-scale scientific instrument

Cited by 7 publications

References 40 publications

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

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

Setting Requirements for a Dashboard to Inform Portuguese Decision-Makers About Environment Health in an Urban Setting

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

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