Systems integration via software risk management

• Authors: C. G. Chittister;Y. Y. Haimes
• Venue: IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics, Part A: Systems and Humans
• Year: 1996

This paper addresses an evolutionary process currently taking place in software engineering: the shift from hardware to software, where the role of software engineering is increasing and is becoming more central in systems integration. This shift also markedly affects the sources of risk that are introduced throughout the life cycle of a system's development-its requirements, specifications, architecture, process, testing, and end product. Risk is commonly defined as a measure of the probability and severity of adverse effects. Software technical risk is defined as a measure of the probability and severity of adverse effects inherent in the development of software. Consequently, risk assessment and management, as a process, will more and more assume the role of an overall cross-functional system integration agent. Evaluating the changes that ought to take place in response to this shift in the overall pattern leads to two challenges. One is the need to reassess the role of a new breed of software systems engineers/systems integrators. The other is the need to develop new and appropriate metrics for measuring software technical risk. Effective systems integration necessitates that all functions, aspects, and components of the system must be accounted for along with an assessment of most risks associated with the system. Furthermore, for software-intensive systems, systems integration is not only the integration of components, but is also; an understanding of the functionality that emerges from the integration. Indeed, when two or more software components are integrated, they often deliver more than the sum of what each was intended to deliver; this integration adds synergy and enhances functionality. In particular, the thesis advanced in this paper is that the process of risk assessment and management is an imperative requirement for successful systems integration; this is especially true for software-intensive systems. In addition, this paper advances the premise that the process of risk assessment and management is also the sine qua non requirement for ensuring against unwarranted time delay in a project's completion schedule, cost overrun, and failure to meet performance criteria. To achieve the aspired goal of systems integration a hierarchical holographic modeling (HHM) framework, which builds on previous works of the authors, has been developed. This HHM framework constitutes seven major considerations, perspectives, venues, or decompositions, each of which identifies the sources of risk in systems integration from a different, albeit with some overlap, viewpoint: software development, temporal perspective, leadership, the environment, the acquisition process, quality, and technology