Software and systems traceability for safety-critical projects: report from Dagstuhl Seminar 15162

This report documents the program and the outcomes of Dagstuhl Seminar 15162 on “Software and Systems Traceability for Safety-Critical Projects”. The event brought together researchers and industrial practitioners working in the field of safety critical software to explore the needs, challenges, and solutions for Software and Systems Traceability in this domain. The goal was to explore the gap between the traceability prescribed by guidelines and that delivered by manufacturers, and starting from a clean slate, to clearly articulate traceability needs for safety-critical software systems, to identify challenges, explore solutions, and to propose a set of principles and domain-specific exemplars for achieving traceability in safety critical systems

Factors driving enterprise adoption of blockchain technology

Amidst the rapidly evolving advancement of blockchain technology (BT), enterprises face notable challenges in leveraging its transformative potential, starting with a need to understand the technology and how it can be used for particular applications. Two challenges are that many BT trials have not been successful and large-scale implementations that have led to continued use are scarce. This research provides a comprehensive examination of factors that drive the successful adoption of BT for enterprise use cases. A dual-phased approach was employed. First, I introduce a taxonomy matrix correlating BT design characteristics with use case characteristics, offering a framework for BT design and benefits across different enterprise contexts. Second, I conducted case studies of five successful BT cases in large enterprises that led to the adoption in terms of continued use and contrasted them with one failure case. The data collection and analysis of the case studies encompassed technological, organizational, environmental, and inter-organizational variables that led to BT\u27s continued use. The cross-case analysis revealed that compatibility, relative advantage, and observability are primary technological factors contributing to continued use. Within the organizational dimension, organizational knowledge and internal characteristics emerged as crucial elements, while regulatory compliance came out to be a significant factor. Based on the cross-case analysis, I develop theoretical propositions about the factors that lead to the continued use of BT, which can be further validated and tested in future research

Is Your Organization Ready to Share? A Framework of Beneficial Conditions for Data Sharing

In a constantly evolving digital sphere, surmounting organizational boundaries and sharing data offers the opportunity to realize a multitude of mutual benefits, such as advanced analytics and innovative services. Organizations aspire to share data. However, they struggle to identify and establish beneficial conditions for data sharing, and research still offers little support to exploit the potential of data sharing. We apply an exploratory research approach to develop a framework of beneficial conditions for data sharing. By combining ten expert interviews and a systematic literature review, we aggregate 23 characteristics that constitute beneficial conditions into eight categories and apply and validate the framework in a real-world case. Thus, we contribute to research by providing a fundamental understanding of beneficial conditions for data sharing and a compact target picture. Additionally, we enable practitioners to systematically assess an organization’s current condition to set the course toward exploiting the full potential of data sharing

Model driven validation approach for enterprise architecture and motivation extensions

As the endorsement of Enterprise Architecture (EA) modelling continues to grow in diversity and complexity, management of its schema, artefacts, semantics and relationships has become an important business concern. To maintain agility and flexibility within competitive markets, organizations have also been compelled to explore ways of adjusting proactively to innovations, changes and complex events also by use of EA concepts to model business processes and strategies. Thus the need to ensure appropriate validation of EA taxonomies has been considered severally as an essential requirement for these processes in order to exert business motivation; relate information systems to technological infrastructure. However, since many taxonomies deployed today use widespread and disparate modelling methodologies, the possibility to adopt a generic validation approach remains a challenge. The proliferation of EA methodologies and perspectives has also led to intricacies in the formalization and validation of EA constructs as models often times have variant schematic interpretations. Thus, disparate implementations and inconsistent simulation of alignment between business architectures and heterogeneous application systems is common within the EA domain (Jonkers et al., 2003). In this research, the Model Driven Validation Approach (MDVA) is introduced. MDVA allows modelling of EA with validation attributes, formalization of the validation concepts and transformation of model artefacts to ontologies. The transformation simplifies querying based on motivation and constraints. As the extended methodology is grounded on the semiotics of existing tools, validation is executed using ubiquitous query language. The major contributions of this work are the extension of a metamodel of Business Layer of an EAF with Validation Element and the development of EAF model to ontology transformation Approach. With this innovation, domain-driven design and object-oriented analysis concepts are applied to achieve EAF model’s validation using ontology querying methodology. Additionally, the MDVA facilitates the traceability of EA artefacts using ontology graph patterns

Ecologies of e-Infrastructures

We present and discuss a historical reconstruction of the development of a Microsoft SharePoint eInfrastructure in NorthOil (2003 – 2008). The eInfrastructure was to support strategically emphasized work processes and open up a richer context of decision-making around production optimization. Specifically, the new eInfrastructure was to make it more convenient to trace decisions historically and across disciplinary and geographical boundaries – a need driven in part by post-Enron requirements for more elaborate and systematic reporting to the stock exchange. The Microsoft-based SharePoint eInfrastructure was intended to “seamlessly” integrate the many different and distinct information systems holding relevant information on production optimization. A principal aim of our study is to analyze how, why, and who resisted this largely top-down eInfrastructure initiative. We analyze how local practices rely heavily on specialized, niche information systems that are patched together as an ongoing performance to achieve commensurability. These local practices, however, are not immune to change. We discuss the indications of a transformative amalgam of (elements of) the new eInfrastructure and (elements of) the existing, local practices