collaborative aspects of decision making and its impact on sustainability

Collaborative aspects of Decision Making and its impact on Sustainability@SAGRA 2017

Henry Muccini DISIM Department

University of L’ Aquila, L’Aquila, [email protected] - @muccinihenry

Slides available at: http://www.slideshare.net/henry.muccini/

Henry Muccini – SAGRA 2017

2Sustainability

• “capacity to endure” [1] and • “preserve the function of a system

over an extended period of time.” [2][1] Sustainability: Can our society endure?

http://www.sustainability.com/sustainability

[2] Hilty, L.M., Arnfalk, P., Erdmann, L., Goodman, J., Lehmann, M., and Wäger, P.A. The relevance of information and communication technologies for environmental sustainability: A prospective simulation study. Environmental Modelling & Software 21, 11 (Nov. 2006) 1618–1629.

Maintaining and preserving (certain properties/abilities) in the long-term…


3Sustainability – four dimensions

Patricia Lago, Sedef Akinli Koçak, Ivica Crnkovic, Birgit Penzenstadler: Framing sustainability as a property of software quality. Commun. ACM 58(10): 70-78 (2015)


4Focus of this talk

cost-effective longevity and endurance

maintained and evolved

collaborative and intercultural aspects

requirements traceability

economics


5

Architecture Design Decision


7Software Architecture perspectives

4 (main) perspectives: A set of components and connectorscommunicating through interfaces (since ‘90s) Written according to architectural styles(since mid ‘90s) Focus on set of views and viewpoints (since ‘00) A set of architecture design decisions (since ‘05)


8From C&C to TodayConstraints on

topology, behaviour,

communication


9Architecture Design Decisions

Architecting is the process of creating software architecture knowledge and artifacts for engineering software systems

A Software Architecture consists of–A blueprint for the chosen solution (product)–A set of design decisions (co-product)


10Taking decisionsDesignproblem Problem

spacesub-problem(or issue)

sub-problem (or issue)

Designoption

Designoption

Designoption

Designoption

Solution space

Alternativesolutions

Alternativesolutions

Decision =best option

Decision =best option

Best, with respect to

some criteria


11From ISO/IEC/IEEE 42010:2011


12ADD challenges

Dependencies among decisions

Granularity of design decisions

Collaborative ADD

Evolving ADD


13Note

A different set of ADD brings potentiallyvery different Architectures


14

Group Decision Making


16Architecting in a picture

ADD


17Collaborative Decision Making

ADD

ADD

ADD

ADD

GDM


18Three decades of research on group decision making in the business domain

Group DecisionMaking

GDM has been studied from multiple perspectives that includes Psychology, Organizational Behavior, Operations Research and Economics

Processes and Methods

Group Characteristics: size, diversity,

roles, cohesion

Information Exchange

Issues: Groupthink, Group Shift

Process Enhancement

ConflictResolution

GDM


19


20GDM methods• The participants freely propose a list of alternatives. Then,

brainstorm over them to arrive at a final decision. A leader moderates. (supports the generation of ideas)

Brainstorming

• Alternatives are provided by the participants, and thenvoted.Voting

• Experts answer questionnaires in a distributed and anonymous way. A facilitator provides an anonymous summary of the experts’ forecasts (after each round). (avoids influence between experts)

Delphi

Consensus: several alternatives are listed, an effort is made to achieve maximum level of consensus. Selection: once there is high level of agreement among participants selected and the decision is made the best alternative are selected.

Consensus-Selection

• The problem is modelled as goals, alternatives and criteria. Participants are normally experts who do a pairwise comparison of alternatives based on certain criteria. The results are then synthesized to make the final decision

AHP

GDM: example


22https://goo.gl/6CHi4e


24Example of a different GDM processList Alternatives: Given a list of design issues, each member writes down his or her choice of alternatives individually (without discussion)Once everyone has individually written down the choices, each one reads out his/her alternative solutions These alternative solutions are noted down in the shared excel QOC sheet and the names of person proposing the alternative is also written against each alternativeDiscuss and Evaluate: The group discussion on alternative starts. Each design issue is taken and each alternative for a specific design issue is evaluated against the criteria relevant to that issue. Make sure every member participates in this discussion regarding the alternatives. The evaluation details are noted in the QOC sheetConsensus: After discussing on the design issues, the group must now proceed closer to making final decisions. – During the discussion for each issue, there may one alternative solution that emerges as

winner. In that case, it is chosen– Else, top 2 alternatives are listed. One more round of discussion may happen on pros and

cons of each alternative and 1 may be chosen..If this too leads to tie, members may vote for one of these alternatives. The alternative with most votes is chosen


25Notes


27Architecture GDM in practice 5-10 people

involved in decisionmaking 21 different

macro-rolesrepresented

80%-20% distributed-colocated

V. Smrithi Rekha, Henry Muccini: A Study on Group Decision-Making in Software Architecture. WICSA 2014: 185-194

how practitioners arrive at a consensus

Drivers: time, cost and quality Decision pattern: group

discussion -> if no agreement, a leader/small group decides (35%)


28GDM Factors

Design Issue 1: how many

gateways shall be used to collect

sensored data in a building?

Single Gateway

1 gateway per floor

1 Gateway per

apartment

Cost

Reliability

Availability

Design alternatives

CriteriaDesign issue

Stakeholders’ concernsStakeholders’ reputation

Stakeholders’ rolesConsensus Mechanisms

Social linksDecision Patterns

GDM


29RecapA different set of ADD brings

potentially very different Architectures

Collaboration adds social and organizational aspects into the group decision making process

Impact (Considerations) on GDM and Sustainability


32Let us go back to the initial illustrations...

What do they have in

common?

Consideration 1: Decision making at the time of Sustainability

Provides methods to supportmulti-stakeholders, with different concerns and roles, to take design decisions collaboratively

Requires multi-stakeholders, with different sustainability-specific concerns, to take decisions


35

Techconcerns

Software Architecture Description

TechConcerns Economic

Concerns

Economic Concerns

Env concerns

Env concerns

Social concerns


36Consideration 1

Trade-offs between all the four dimensions of Sustainability

Competing forces E.g. Environmental vs Economics

Fundamental to capture direct vs indirect dependecies among solutions

Multi-objective function Different stakeholders and glossaries


37Examples

Env concerns

EconomicConcerns

EconomicConcerns

Social concerns

Consideration 2: Explicit handling of Sustainability-related properties


39Explicit handling of sustainability

1. Sustainability as a Quality Requirement

2. Sustainability as a tactic3. Sustainability as a new Architecture

Framework


40Sustainability as a new requirement category Efficiently incorporates environmentally friendly materials. Minimal consumption of water energy, resources in all stages of

production till end-of-life Causes minimal emissions in gas, liquid and solid form during

both manufacturing and it’s use Has a long life is repairable and is efficient in use for all energy,

consumables and emissions Unlike traditional products with minimal life, these products can

be upgraded to extend their life At the end of life these products can be reused and the

materials can be separated and recycled. These products are in harmony with people and nature, they

consider their well-being In the process of Design and manufacture both commercial and sustainability have to be considered.

https://www.slideshare.net/vasudhanair/sustainability-requirements-3


41Sustainability as a Quality Property

Patricia Lago, Sedef Akinli Koçak, Ivica Crnkovic, Birgit Penzenstadler: Framing sustainability as a property of software quality. Commun. ACM 58(10): 70-78 (2015)


42Sustainability as a new Architecture Framework

SoftwareVP

HardwareVP

Physical SpaceVP

HWML SPML

Software Architect

Developer System Integrators

System Engineer

Space coverage

Data exchangeNetworking and communication

Energy Consumption

Viewpoints System Concerns

Stakeholders

The Modeling Languages

DSLDSL DSLDSL

SAML

DSLDSL

Smart Building / Physical Space modelers

(Sensor network & IoT ) experts

MAPML DEPML

Consideration 3: Reqs traceability


44Challenge Building traceability links among possibly

very different artifacts

Henry Muccini @ ICSA2017

45Need of an approach that

1) supports the creation of traceability links to arbitrary artifacts.

2) supports the definition of custom traceabilitylink types for projects.

3) supports the visualization of artifacts connected by traceability links through matrix or graph view.


46

Consideration 4: Social aspect of Sustainablity and Organizational Social Structure


48Social Sustainability

“Social sustainability aims at preserving the societal communities in their solidarity and services.”[Manifesto]

[Manifesto] The Karlskrona Manifesto for Sustainability Design. http://sustainabilitydesign.org/karlskrona-manifesto/


49On the Social Dimensions of Architectural Decisions

Henry Muccini, Damian Andrew Tamburri, V. Smrithi Rekha:On the Social Dimensions of Architectural Decisions. ECSA 2015: 137-145

Architecture Design Decisions

Group DecisionMaking

Organizational Social

Structure

OSS= “the graph of interactions, patterned relations and arrangements emerging between individuals in the same endeavor”...

Collaborative aspects of Decision Making and its impact on Sustainability@SAGRA 2017

Henry Muccini DISIM Department

University of L’ Aquila, L’Aquila, [email protected] - @muccinihenry

Slides available at: http://www.slideshare.net/henry.muccini/

collaborative aspects of decision making and its impact on sustainability

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