Project Risk Management

Managing Software Development Risk

Kurt J. Engemann, Rory V. O'Connor, Kurt J. Engemann, Rory V. O'Connor, Rory V. O'Connor

• Publisher: De Gruyter Oldenbourg
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN: 9783110648232
• eBook ISBN: 9783110648294
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: IT Industry
• Index: Business

The objective of the multi-volume book Developments in Managing and Exploiting

Risk is to offer a balanced view to enable the reader to better appreciate risk as a

counterpart to reward, and to understand how to holistically manage both elements of this

duality. Crises can challenge any organization, and with a seemingly endless stream of

disruptive and even catastrophic events taking place, there is an increasing emphasis on

preparing for the worst. However, being focused on the negative aspects of risk, without

giving consideration to the positive attributes, may be shortsighted. Playing it safe may not

always be the best policy, because great benefits may be missed.

Analyzing risk is difficult, in part because it often entails events that have never

occurred. Organizations, being mindful of undesirable potential events, are often keenly

averse to risk to the detriment of capitalizing on its potential opportunities. Risk is usually

perceived as a negative or downside but a commensurate weight should also be given to

the potential rewards or upside, when evaluating new ventures. Even so, too much of a

good thing may create unintended consequences of positive risk, which is also an

undesirable situation. Developments in Managing and Exploiting Risk provides a

professional and scholarly venue in the critical field of risk in business with particular

emphasis on decision-making using a comprehensive and inclusive approach.

Part I: Fundamentals

1 Managing risks and opportunities in cyber-physical systems with software architecture assessments

Antti-Pekka Tuovinen

François Christophe

Petri Kettunen

Tommi Mikkonen

Tomi Männistö

1.1 Introduction

When a new generation of cyber-physical system (CPS) emerges, it is often unclear which are risks and which are opportunities within the scope of the new generation. With the advances in digitalization, the balance between software risks and opportunities is becoming a key decision, but without a thorough insight into the possibilities and liabilities of software in the system, this is a difficult step to take. Hence, companies more commonly follow an approach where they have a linear model for product evolution, and try to avoid large-scale changes in the system as a whole. Such issues have been encountered in various contexts, including in particular mobile devices, but few practical approaches have been proposed. One of those that has been used in industry is planned staged investments (Savolainen et al., 2013), which divides the life cycle of the product into steps of investment and harvesting. During the former, an investment is made in the system under development by introducing new features and capabilities, and by improving quality. During harvesting, software is maintained at minimum cost, and no large investments in new features or improved quality are made.

The systems architecture of a CPS sets a framework for its key qualities and structures. The software architecture is one of the main factors that determine the sustainability of the system from the point of view of development, maintenance, and evolution. However, a software architecture is not inherently good or bad; it is just more or less fit for purpose. In order to assess the fitness of a software architecture for its particular context and requirements, the architecture can be assessed using established, mature methods. A software architecture assessment (a.k.a. software architecture evaluation) can also have specific goals – identifying risks when planning changes, or, considering the feasibility of further investment in a system vs. its replacement are common reasons for conducting a software architecture assessment, for example.

In this chapter, we share our experiences on using a series of software architecture assessment workshops as a mechanism to identify risks and opportunities of an existing CPS software product line and to help in planning the renewal of the software system accordingly, taking into account the evolutionary line of new features as well as potential future disruptive technologies. In terms of planned staged investments, the goal is to identify opportunities to be gained during the next planned investment period, as well as to manage risks during the ongoing maintenance period.

The rest of the chapter is structured as follows. In Section 1.2, we introduce the case company’s CPS domain, software product lines, and software architecture assessments. In Section 1.3, we discuss the role of architecture assessments as a risk management tool in the context of software product lines. In Section 1.4, we present our case study, executed together with a company operating in the domain of cyber-physical systems in industrial automation. In Section 1.5, we provide an extended discussion on our findings. Finally, in Section 1.6, we draw our conclusions.

1.2 Background

The background of this work consists of three different dimensions, Cyber-Physical Systems, Software Product Lines, and architecture assessments. In the following, we introduce briefly each of them in separate subsections.

1.2.1 Cyber-physical systems

Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS) are systems that simultaneously act in the physical and digital space, comprising both physical and computational processes and involving people (Lee, 2008). Typical examples of CPSs include drones, various robots, and autonomous vehicles and larger, complex systems such as Smart Grids. Since a major part in their development includes the design of physical, mechanical and electrical elements, the development has been executed under their terms and engineering disciplines and software has traditionally played only a minor role inside each device and system component independently. The situation is now changing rapidly, and software is becoming a major factor in innovation in CPSs (Lee et al., 2014) (Mikusz, 2014). Modern CPSs are increasingly interconnected and utilize multiple sources of data (Müller, 2017). Such capabilities are inherently software-based.

In the advent of the fourth industrial revolution, the Industrial Internet, software is becoming more and more entangled in physical machines, each of them playing a role in achieving a system level goal (Gilchrist, 2016). Such a goal is accomplished by machines forming a cyber-physical system (Jeschke et al., 2016): a network of machines executing software in a distributed and asynchronous way (Monostori et al., 2016). The impact of cyber-physical systems on industrial services in manufacturing is considerable (Herterich et al., 2015), turning companies that have been designing machinery to software companies.

Proficient design of modern, complex CPSs requires advanced competencies due to their heterogeneous nature, physical world concurrent processes, and timeliness requirements (Khaitan & McCalley, 2015) (Müller, 2017). Notably, there are considerable research problems concerning for example multidisciplinary integrated system architecture modeling. With the increasingly central role of software in most CPSs, developing such new system architecture designs requires extensive software architecture competencies.

As with any software, the architecture plays a key role in ensuring the continuous operation of any CPS. In particular, industrial systems need to be operated continuously regardless of out-of-order issues of components of this system. Due to high reliability requirements, software architecture plays a decisive role in all phases of the life cycle of a CPS with the software development phase having the most impact on the entire CPS sustainability (Törngren & Sellgren, 2018). To meet these goals at system level, software architecture of industrial CPSs needs to answer requirements of system orchestration, machine availability, predictive maintenance, and failure assessment. As for practical guidelines for meeting quality, interoperability and compatibility needs, the Industrial Internet Consortium has developed a reference architecture for designing software components for CPSs (Industrial Internet Consortium, 2015), highlighting the growing importance of software and software architecture in the CPS domain.

New CPS technologies offer significant opportunities, but they also pose considerable risks. The key s...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Advances in project risk management
• Part I: Fundamentals
• Part II: Applications
• Index
• Developments in Managing and Exploiting Risk