on the social dimensions of architectural decisions
TRANSCRIPT
Università degli Studi dell’Aquila
1
On the Social Dimensions of Architectural Decisions
http://www.slideshare.net/henry.muccini/
Henry Muccini, Damian A. Tamburri, Smrithi Rekha V. University of L’Aquila & Politecnico di Milano & Amrita University
[email protected], @muccinihenry, www.henrymuccini.com
@ECSA2015, Cavtat, Croatia – Sept 2015
The Context: Social Aspects“The way people work together, the information they exchange, the number of people interacting and the specific rules they employ has a direct impact on group productivity and outcome” [Saaty&Vargas].
In this context, we have been studying the influence of Group Decision Making (GDM) principles on the Software Architecture (SA) decision making process.
In parallel, other researchers have been studying another dimension of social aspects: Organisational Social Structure
[Saaty&Vargas] Saaty, T.L., Vargas, L.G.: Decision making with the analytic
network process. Springer, 2006
Objective of this Research line
Architecture Design Decisions
Group Decision Making Organizational Social
Structure
Architecture as a set of design decisions
Architecture Design Decisions
Architectural Knowledge
Design Rationale
Alternative Decisions
Criteria
Problem Solving
Design Issues
ADD
There is more than ADD – GDM!> 85% of the decisions made by software architects are made by groups
5-10 people involved in decision making21 different roles represented
5
[Smrithi&Muccini,WICSA2014] [Smrithi&Muccini,ECSA2014]
Lack of support in current architecture
design decisions methods of GDM
Three decades of research on group decision making in the business domain
Group Decision Making
GDM has been studied from multiple perspectives that includes Psychology, Organizational Behavior, Operations Research and Economics
Processes and
MethodsGroup
Characteristics: size, diversity,
roles, cohesion
Information Exchange
Issues: Groupthink, Group Shift
Process Enhancement
Conflict Resolution
GDM
Peculiarities of GMD for
Software
Model for collaborative MDE for
SATool for
collaborative MDE for
SA
Architecture Design Decisions
Group Decision Making
“the graph of interactions, patterned relations and arrangements emerging
between individuals in the same endeavor”...
Organizational Social Structure
Dev. 1
Dev. 4
Dev. 2
Dev. 3Dev. N-1
Dev. N
…
Art. 2 Art. 3Art. 1
Art. 4
Art. NTask Allocations
The 13+ Organisational Types
[TLVV2012] Damian A. Tamburri, Patricia Lago, Hans Van Vliet. Organizational social structures for software engineering - ACM Computing
Surveys (2012) 1–35
(at least) 81 properties observed so far that define types
Objective of this work
Architecture Design Decisions
Group Decision Making Organizational Social
Structure
A first attempt at an overlap
Overlaps
Exploring the use of social network analysis in achieving group fitness
Explore the impact of complex organizational structures onto cognitive processes (bias, distance, etc)
Decision ownership and accountability: GDM dynamics should be studied in combination with OSSs
13
We found four essential overlaps revolving around the concept of “Groups”, “Decisions”,
“Stakeholder” and “Membership”.new dimensions orthogonal to
GDM
A first attempt at an overlap
Group
There are several group layouts:• “Professional Development Group”, “WorkGroup” and
“InterestGroup” [TLVV2012].
Colocation: Yes/No
There might be group-structures that are best-fit to solving architecting problems
what kind of group are we talking about?
Group Decision (Session)
knowledgeSharingMode: knowledge sharing will also be impacted by the GDM method and tools used
Varies with OSS type Classified in various categories [TLVV2012]
size (of groups): varies with OSS typeleadershipStyle: Varies with OSS typeIssue Factors: Issues that arise in a specific sessionHomogeneity: homogeneous or heterogeneous groups
Knowledge sharing
GroupMembership
lifetime: short time collaboration on specific task/long time and generic tasks varies with OSS type
role: designationranking: hierarchy (varies with OSS type)
GDMMethod
different OSS -> different procedures to reach consensusgdmRule: rules to make the final decision
This field needs to reveal the experience and expertise of members
This field focusses on the GDM method in use
Conclusions & FW
Goal: understanding which group structure may be more successful in GDM which group structure is more widely adopted in (self-) organised groups for decision-making
Empirical Research
RQ1: What is the best-fit OSS combination for effective GDM?
RQ2: How can we quantify the efficiency of GDM in certain OSS?