Information Technologies in Complex Socio-Technical Systems Based on Functional Variability: A Case Study on HVAC Maintenance Work Orders

Abstract

Information technology (IT) systems are known to promote improvements in quality and productivity of the work environments of complex and adaptive socio-technical systems that span hardware, community and software aspects. Systems development lies in eliciting and specifying requirements. However, current requirements of elicitation techniques are limited to correctly understanding the complexity involved in socio-technical systems. Therefore, approaches based on Resilience Engineering can provide concepts and methods for a better understanding of socio-technical systems’ functioning. This study aims to increase the application of the Functional Resonance Analysis Method (FRAM) in the requirements elicitation process. Specifically, understanding variability and its role in enhancing the requirements elicitation and specification process for the design/redesign of IT systems in complex socio-technical systems deployed in building maintenance is the main goal. This study proposes the merging of human factors and ergonomics (HFE) and Resilience Engineering concepts with Software Engineering. A case study was performed with workers to produce requirements specifications for work order issuing activity. This case study indicates the usefulness of the proposed approach for the specification of functional requirements to redesign the IT system examined. FRAM enables inferences to be made from hidden or fuzzy situations that are often not expressed by system users or are not detected by the system designer.

A Resilience Engineering Approach for the Risk Assessment of IT Services

“…Moreover, the FRAM application in the cloud migration process represents a novelty in this specific sector and responds to the need to use an in-depth description tool when analyzing contextual and requirement information, as underlined by Holgado [63]. The method allowed us to analyze the relevance and criticality of the relationships among the different activities of the migration process, bringing to light new insights for IT practitioners such as the importance of controls, preconditions, and temporal constraints, which can hardly ever be taken into account by conventional tools for IT systems analysis, in line with the findings by de Souza et al [64]. Therefore, FRAM incorporation in a structured application framework reduces its criticalities, as pointed out by De Leo et al [13].…”