Formalising responsibility modelling for automatic analysis

Modelling the structure of social-technical systems as a basis for informing software system design is a difficult compromise. Formal methods struggle to capture the scale and complexity of the heterogeneous organisations that use technical systems. Conversely, informal approaches lack the rigour needed to inform the software design and construction process or enable automated analysis. We revisit the concept of responsibility modelling, which models social technical systems as a collection of actors who discharge their responsibilities, whilst using and producing resources in the process. Responsibility modelling is formalised as a structured approach for socio-technical system requirements specification and modelling, with well-defined semantics and support for automated structure and validity analysis. The effectiveness of the approach is demonstrated by two case studies of software engineering methodologies

Using grounded theory as a method for system requirements analysis

Requirements analysis (RA) is a key phase in information systems (IS) development. During this phase, system analysts use different techniques and methods to elicit and structure the system's requirements. The current paper rationalises the use of grounded theory (GT) as an alternative socio-technical approach to requirement analysis. It will establish theoretically that applying grounded theory procedures and techniques will support and add value to the analysis phase as it solves some problems of the existing traditional and socio-technical system design methods. Furthermore, to validate this proposal, a case study applying GT on a real project will demonstrate its applicability and success for requirement analysis. Implications of its application are also discussed

SA++ : how to bring organizational aspects into teaching analysis and design

Because of the close connection between computer systems and organizations, organizational aspects should be taught in system development courses. Dataflow diagramming is a frequently taught technique that can model formal aspects of information processing. Socio-technical methods are intended to cover relations between people and technology in an organization. To avoid learning two techniques, the dataflow technique has been extended with two organizational aspects from socio-technical methods: goals and exceptions. Two versions of the extended technique have been used in a university course for systems analysis and design. Organizational issues were taught together with the technique. The students’ work has been evaluated. The technique is sufficiently easy to learn for students. The students also learnt to involve users in analysing their tasks through a wall graph session. However, many students did not learn sufficiently well to consider organizational impacts of computer systems or to design systems to fit organizational requirements. A possible way to cope is to give the students better background in knowledge of organizations

The development of secure and usable systems.

"People are the weakest link in the security chain"---Bruce Schneier. The aim of the thesis is to investigate the process of designing secure systems, and how designers can ensure that security mechanisms are usable and effective in practice. The research perspective is one of security as a socio-technical system. A review of the literature of security design and Human Computer Interactions in Security (HCISec) reveals that most security design methods adopt either an organisational approach, or a technical focus. And whilst HCISec has identified the need to improve usability in computer security, most of the current research in this area is addressing the issue by improving user interfaces to security tools. Whilst this should help to reduce users' errors and workload, this approach does not address problems which arise from the difficulty of reconciling technical requirements and human factors. To date, little research has been applied to socio-technical approaches to secure system design methods. Both identifying successful socio-technical design approaches and gaining a better understanding of the issues surrounding their application is required to address this gap. Appropriate and Effective Guidance for Information Security (AEGIS) is a socio-technical secure system development methodology developed for this purpose. It takes a risk-based approach to security design and focuses on recreating the contextual information surrounding the system in order to better inform security decisions, with the aim of making these decisions better suited to users' needs. AEGIS uses a graphical notation defined in the UML Meta-Object Facility to provide designers with a familiar and well- supported means of building models. Grid applications were selected as the area in which to apply and validate AEGIS. Using the research methodology Action Research, AEGIS was applied to a total of four Grid case studies. This allowed in the first instance the evaluation and refinement of AEGIS on real- world systems. Through the use of the qualitative data analysis methodology Grounded Theory, the design session transcripts gathered from the Action Research application of AEGIS were then further analysed. The resulting analysis identified important factors affecting the design process - separated into categories of responsibility, motivation, stakeholders and communication. These categories were then assembled into a model informing the factors and issues that affect socio-technical secure system design. This model therefore provides a key theoretical insight into real-world issues and is a useful foundation for improving current practice and future socio-technical secure system design methodologies

iPhone in NASA Ground Operations

A comprehensive review of the literature and historical background of NASA established a need for an easy-to-implement technological improvement to displaying procedures which is cost effective and risk reducing. Previous unsuccessful attempts have led this team to explore the practicality of using a mobile handheld device. The major products, inputs, resources, constraints, planning and effort required for consideration of this type of solution were outlined. After analyzing the physical, environmental, life-cycle, functional, and socio-technical requirements, a Functional Analysis was performed to describe the top-level, second-level, and third-level functions of the system requirements. In addition, the risk/value proposition of conversion to a new technology was considered and gave a blueprint for transitioning along with the tasks necessary to implement the device into the Vehicle Assembly Building's (VAB) current infrastructure. A Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) described the elemental work items of the implementation. Once the viability of this system was confirmed, a device was selected through use of technical design comparison methods including the Pugh Matrix and House of Quality. Comparison and evaluation of the Apple iPhone, Motorola Q, Blackberry, PC Notebook, and PDA revealed that the iPhone is the most suitable device for this task. This paper outlines the device design/ architecture, as well as some of the required infrastructure

Reefer logistics and cool chain transport

Reefer logistics is an important part of the cool chain in which reefer containers are involved as the packaging for transporting perishable goods. Reefer logistics is challenging, as it deals with cost and time constraints as well as the product quality and sustainability requirements. In many situations, there is a trade-off between these factors (e.g., between transportation time and the quality of fresh products). Furthermore, considering the high value of reefers, the efficient logistics of is as important as the efficient cargo flows. This causes technical complications and the conflict of interests between actors, especially, between cargo owners (or shippers) and the asset owners (or transport/terminal operators). Improving the efficiency of reefer logistics calls for a thorough understanding of the trade-offs and complexities. This paper aims to help develop such an understanding using a systematic literature review and a socio-technical system analysis. The results can be used to provide managerial insights for actors involved in a cool chain to design tailored solutions for reefer

Applying tropos to socio-technical system design and runtime configuration

Recent trends in Software Engineering have introduced the importance of reconsidering the traditional idea of software design as a socio-tecnical problem, where human agents are integral part of the system along with hardware and software components. Design and runtime support for Socio-Technical Systems (STSs) requires appropriate modeling techniques and non-traditional infrastructures. Agent-oriented software methodologies are natural solutions to the development of STSs, both humans and technical components are conceptualized and analyzed as part of the same system. In this paper, we illustrate a number of Tropos features that we believe fundamental to support the development and runtime reconfiguration of STSs. Particularly, we focus on two critical design issues: risk analysis and location variability. We show how they are integrated and used into a planning-based approach to support the designer in evaluating and choosing the best design alternative. Finally, we present a generic framework to develop self-reconfigurable STSs

Patterns of information security postures for socio-technical systems and systems-of-systems

This paper describes a proposal to develop patterns of security postures for computer based socio-technical systems and systems-of-systems. Such systems typically span many organisational boundaries, integrating multiple computer systems, infrastructures and organisational processes. The paper describes the motivation for the proposed work, and our approach to the development, specification, integration and validation of security patterns for socio-technical and system-of-system scale systems