Responsibility Modeling for the Sociotechnical Risk Analysis of Coalitions of Systems

Society is challenging systems engineers by demanding ever more complex and integrated systems. With the rise of cloud computing and systems-of-systems (including cyber-physical systems) we are entering an era where mission critical services and applications will be dependent upon 'coalitions-of-systems'. Coalitions-of-systems (CoS) are a class of system similar to systems-of-systems but they differ in that they interact to further overlapping self-interests rather than an overarching mission. Assessing the sociotechnical risks associated with CoS is an open research question of societal importance as existing risk analysis techniques typically focus on the technical aspects of systems and ignore risks associated with coalition partners reneging on responsibilities or leaving the coalition. We demonstrate that a responsibility modeling based risk analysis approach enables the identification of sociotechnical risks associated with CoS. The approach identifies hazards and associated risks that may arise when relying upon a coalition of human/organizational/technical agents to provision a service or application. Through a case study of a proposed cloud IT infrastructure migration we show how the technique identifies vulnerabilities that may arise because of human, organizational or technical agents failing to discharge responsibilities.Comment: Submitted for consideration for the IEEE SMC2011 conferenc

Charateristics and Impact of Interpersonal Conflicts on Requirements Risks

Interpersonal conflicts in software projects have an impact on project’s success, product’s quality, team’s performance, etc. However, in Requirements Engineering (RE), there is dearth of research on this topic; previous research has focused largely on conflicts among requirements. We conducted a case study of an industrial project to determine the characteristics (e.g., type, severity, conflict management styles, etc.) and impact of interpersonal conflicts rooted in RE (RE-Conflicts), on project risks associated with requirements (e..g., inadequately identified requirements, incorrect requirements, etc). The findings show that the conflicts over administrative procedures (47%) had the highest frequency count. The highest number of RE-Conflict incidences took place in the elicitation activity (46%). A significant impact of RE-Conflicts on requirements risks was also observed (e.g., ‘continually changing requirements’ was affected by 80% RE-Conflicts). This knowledge can aid in initiating risk management in RE and in developing tools, mitigation strategies and mid-range theories on RE-Conflicts