A Survey on the Interplay between Software Engineering and Systems Engineering during SoS Architecting
...
Cadavid, Héctor | 2020
Background: The Systems Engineering and Software Engineering disciplines are highly intertwined in most modern Systems of
Systems (SoS), and particularly so in industries such as defense,
transportation, energy and health care. However, the combination
of these disciplines during the architecting of SoS seems to be especially challenging; the literature suggests that major integration
and operational issues are often linked to ambiguities and gaps
between system-level and software-level architectures.
Aims: The objective of this paper is to empirically investigate: 1)
the state of practice on the interplay between these two disciplines
in the architecting process of systems with SoS characteristics;
2) the problems perceived due to this interplay during said architecting process; and 3) the problems arising due to the particular
characteristics of SoS systems.
Method: We conducted a questionnaire-based online survey among
practitioners from industries in the aforementioned domains, having a background on Systems Engineering, Software Engineering
or both, and experience in the architecting of systems with SoS
characteristics. The survey combined multiple-choice and openended questions, and the data collected from the 60 respondents
were analyzed using quantitative and qualitative methods.
Results: We found that although in most cases the software architecting process is governed by system-level requirements, the way
requirements were specified by systems engineers, and the lack of
domain-knowledge of software engineers, often lead to misinterpretations at software level. Furthermore, we found that unclear
and/or incomplete specifications could be a common cause of technical debt in SoS projects, which is caused, in part, by insufficient
interface definitions. It also appears that while the SoS concept has
been adopted by some practitioners in the field, the same is not true about the existing and growing body of knowledge on the subject in
Software Engineering resulting in recurring problems with system
integration. Finally, while not directly related to the interplay of the
two disciplines, the survey also indicates that low-level hardware
components, despite being identified as the root cause of undesired
emergent behavior, are often not considered when modeling or
simulating the system.
Conclusions: The survey indicates the need for tighter collaboration between the two disciplines, structured around concrete
guidelines and practices for reconciling their differences. A number
of open issues identified by this study require further investigation.
LEER
