s-cube lp: service adaptation: a maintenance process ?

www.s-cube-network.eu

Service Adaptation: A Maintenance Process ?

Ita Richardson, Stephen Lane

(research partners – VUA, FBK)


2

Where

are

services

used?

Do we care

how they are

developed &

implemented

Should we

be

concerned

about

building

in quality?


Motivation

• Adaptation is a very large part of the Service Based

Application (SBA) Life-Cycle

• Services may need to adapt when composed into more

complex compositions.

• When services adapt in safety critical applications it is vital

that quality is maintained during adaptation.

• Certain sectors have regulatory requirements which

require software development to follow a particular

software process.

• e.g. Medical Device, Automotive, Financial ……


Context

• This work focuses on creating an optimised process for

developing adaptable SBAs.

• The work builds on the reference life-cycle developed bu

S-Cube in JRA-1.1.2

• This process should be used when implementing

monitoring and adapting mechanisms of adaptable SBAs.

• Following this process allows an SBA to react to Quality of

Service issues.


Identified adaptation activities from the

literature.

Objectives:

1.Identify adaptation related activities from software and

service engineering literature.

2.Map them to the S-Cube life-cycle, creating an adaptation

process model.

Results:

18 Adaptation activities from service engineering literature

13 Adaptation support activities from maintenance standards

Lane and Richardson, 2011


Methodology

• Identify high-level adaptation activities from previous S-Cube deliverables and map them to the S-Cube life-cycle.

• Identify adaptation practices from existing service literature and map them to the S-Cube life-cycle.

• Identify adaptation practices from maintenance process literature and map them to the S-Cube life-cycle.

Lane et al. (under review)


Phase I

• Evaluated 16 existing approaches for developing SBAs.

• Created a list of adaptation activities from the approaches

that make reference to adaptation related activities.

• Mapped adaptation activities into the appropriate phases

of the S-Cube reference life-cycle.

• Identified gap in existing approaches.


Phase II

• Review software maintenance literature for suitable

adaptation related activities.

• ISO/IEC 14764 used as the dedicated maintenance

process.

• Categorised practices from ISO/IEC 14764 as either

suitable or not suitable for service adaptation.

• Mapped suitable maintenance practices to appropriate

phases of S-Cube reference life-cycle.


Conducted Systematic Literature Review of

process models for developing and adapting

SBAs.

Objectives:

1.Identify SBA development approaches and create SBA

development process meta-model.

2.Identify development approaches that support adaptation.

Results:

57 Studies with SBA development process models

9 Studies facilitate SBA adaptation

Lane and Richardson, 2011


13


SLR Results

Based on the results of the SLR there were seven

publications which explicitly support adaptation, while the

others contained some processes and activities that would

be useful for the adaptation of SBAs.

Existing SBA processes focus on Service Implementation -

often technological or implementation aspects of a task

We are interested in the process-focus

How can we assure the quality of the process during

development?...... Repeatable process


Process Reference Model for Adapting

Service-Based Applications

•Expert Opinion Survey

•10 interviews

•Case Study

•Chief Technology Officer, Business analyst, Developer

•Data Analysis

•Content analysis – coding and clustering

•Evaluation

•SBA development life-cycle

•Component- based process model

Lane et al (under review)


Conclusion

• Defined low level practices that should be considered

when carrying out service adaptation.

• Many existing service development approaches do not

make reference to adaptation.

• Traditional maintenance theory contains many practices

that can be exploited for service development.

• Developed adaptation process model based on

adaptation data from the literature and the field.

• Initial validation of model complete

• Subsequent validations need to be completed


References

Stephen Lane, Antonio Bucchiarone and Ita Richardson, A

Process Reference Model for Developing Adaptable

Service-Based Applications (under review)

Stephen Lane, Qing Gu, Patricia Lago and Ita Richardson,

Adaptation of Service-Based Applications: A Maintenance

Process? (under review)

Stephen Lane and Ita Richardson, 2011, Process Models for

Service-Based Applications: A Systematic Literature

Review, Information and Software Technology

(forthcoming)