Architectural reasoning in the conceptual phase - a case study in the oil and gas industry

Abstract

This paper evaluates the use of architectural reasoning to explore the problem space in a system development project in the oil and gas industry. The suppliers in this industry have traditionally been tailor-making their systems for each delivery project. To improve the systems offering across the client and project portfolio, the suppliers must put more effort in the conceptual phase to explore the design space. Architectural reasoning is the process of transferring problem and solution know-how into a new systems architecture. In this paper we review literature on architectural reasoning in the conceptual phase, and on application in the oil and gas industry. To evaluate the use of architectural reasoning in the industry, we perform a case study in a subsea supplier company. From the case study, we are identifying a work-flow for architectural reasoning, utilizing the market needs, design, and domain knowledge to evolve the system. Evaluating the tools and working methods, we find that working in a multi-disciplinary team is key to support the reasoning process. We find that the team is utilizing the design and domain knowledge to improve the system architecture. However, the team lacks methods to make this knowledge explicit and to quantify the issues they are identifying.

Transferring Needs and Operational Experience from Life‐of‐Field to Engineering functions ‐ a case study from the Subsea Industry

“…Other industries have im-plemented Integrated Product and Process teams to ensure involvement from all stakeholders. The company is currently testing out such operational model in one of their development projects and have seen clear benefits from having multidisciplinary teams, (Engen, Falk, and Muller 2019). We also recommend allocating a resource from Life-of-Field to every Quality Notification report, to give Life-of-Field the responsibility and mandate to follow up on product improvement.…”

“…Understanding the needs is vital for overall project success (Callister & Andersson 2016). However, the oil and gas industry are immature in implementation of system engineering and design knowledge is not properly documented (Falk, Ulsvik, Engen & Syverud, 2019), increasing the risk of poor design choices and subsequent cost overruns and schedule delays.…”

“…The knowledge value stream serves as the configuration repository which contains the technical design data as well as the lessons learned during project execution and operation. (Falk, Ulsvik, Engen & Syverud, 2019).…”

Application of A3 Architecture Overviews in Subsea Front‐End Engineering Studies: A Case Study

“…A case study recently conducted in the subsea domain, (Engen, et al, 2019), evaluates architectural reasoning when applied in the conceptual phase of a development project. The authors identified sharing architectural knowledge as a main challenge in the early phase of a subsea project and propose A3AO, in combination with conceptual modeling, as a topic for further investigation (Engen, et al, 2019). This proposal is supported by other case studies in the subsea domain (Muller, et al, 2015) (Boge & Falk, 2019).…”

Towards Systemic Handling of Requirements in the Oil and Gas Industry – a Case Study

“…The requirement engineering in the oil and gas industry has historically been text based and managed in several word documents and Excel sheets. The requirement specifications provided by the client oil company are typically extensive and detailed, giving a mix of requirements and detailed requirements (Damien Wee & Muller, 2016;Engen, Falk, & Muller, 2019). The use of text-based prose in the industry and company standards makes it difficult for end users to fully understand and verify the requirements (Zager, McKinney, Reed, 2019).…”