Product/ion-Aware Analysis of Collaborative Systems Engineering Processes

Kathrein, Lukas; Lüder, Arndt; Meixner, Kristof; Winkler, Dietmar; Biffl, Stefan

doi:10.1007/978-3-030-25312-7_7

Cited by 4 publications

(6 citation statements)

References 26 publications

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“…This challenge encompasses all the factors related to the human nature and behavior. For example, the tendency of the domain experts of systems engineering organizations to focus more on the technical aspects of a system and to often neglect process aspects can be one of the complexity drivers from which this challenge originates (Kathrein et al 2019). Tangible consequences of this challenge are often perceived as human errors (Garro and Tundis 2015).…”

Section: Generalized Complexity Challengesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Secondly, the alignment of the process and the social viewpoint, and the alignment of the tools with the other viewpoints are often not treated outside their respective solution directions. Possible explanations for isolated attention for the process might be its lack of tangibility, openness to perception, and its frequent association to more management-related topics, all of which make its discussion often not accessible for more technicallyoriented people (Kathrein et al 2019;Vogelsang et al 2017). Concerning the alignment of the tools, the isolation may partly be explained by the fact that this topic often connects to its IT origins, with a different perspective than that of the designers (Wang et al 2016).…”

Section: Implications Of the Findings From The Mapping Of Complexity ...mentioning

confidence: 99%

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Engineering complexity beyond the surface: discerning the viewpoints, the drivers, and the challenges

2023

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Complexity is often regarded as a “problem” to solve. Instead of attempting to solve complexity, we follow systems engineering practices and switch back to the problem domain, where a major obstacle is the impossibility to universally define complexity. As a workaround, we explored complexity characterization and its existing shortcomings, including: lack of standardization, inconsistent semantics, system-centricity, insufficiently transparent reasoning, and lack of validation. To address these shortcomings, we proposed a compilatory framework to characterize complexity using the Five Ws information-gathering method. The answer to the WHO question proposed four complexity viewpoints; the answer to the WHY question proposed a two-dimensional structure for complexity drivers; and the answer to the WHAT question derived generalized complexity challenges. As a preliminary step to show the potential of the framework to characterize complexity, we used and validated it as a tool to structure general literature related to complexity. In general, our findings suggest that papers with complexity solutions do not frame their research within the complexity problem domain, hindering the contribution evaluation. Through the viewpoints, we identified general research gaps of six solution directions. From the drivers, we noted three observations in the discourse of complexity origins: (1) a system-driven tendency, (2) a preference for concreteness vs. abstraction, and (3) an unclear distinction between origins and effects. Through the challenges’ findings we explored two hypotheses: (1) a system-centric preference; and (2) a solution-oriented vision, both of which were supported by the results (most challenges relate to the system viewpoint and challenges are defined based on solution directions).

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Section: Generalized Complexity Challengesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Implications Of the Findings From The Mapping Of Complexity ...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Engineering complexity beyond the surface: discerning the viewpoints, the drivers, and the challenges

2023

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“…Some authors, such as 2019), note the importance of this alignment, as the process directs the team's interactions and if those are not aligned with the system-related interdependencies it can have a negative impact of the system performance. Additionally, when we do not understand how the existing knowledge of the system is represented, conveyed, and transformed through the engineering process, it also di cult to track or improve engineering artifacts or identify possible reuse scenarios (Kathrein, Lüder, Meixner, Winkler, & Bi , 2019). Instances of complexity drivers that originate this challenge relate to the columns 3,4, 5, 6, and 7 from the two-dimensional mapping structure.…”

Section: Generalized Complexity Challengesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Secondly, the alignment of the process and the social viewpoint, and the alignment of the tools with the other viewpoints are often not treated outside their respective solution directions. Possible explanations for isolated attention for the process might be its lack of tangibility, openness to perception, and its frequent association to more management-related topics, all of which make its discussion often not accessible for more technically-oriented people (Kathrein et al, 2019;Vogelsang et al, 2017). Concerning the alignment of the tools, the isolation may partly be explained by the fact that this topic often connects to its IT origins, with a different perspective than that of the designers (Wang et al, 2016).…”

Section: )mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…d. Alignment of the social viewpoint (human factors): This challenge encompasses all the factors related to the human nature and behavior. For example, the tendency of the domain experts of systems engineering organizations to focus more on the technical aspects of a system and to often neglect process aspects can be one of the complexity drivers from which this challenge originates (Kathrein et al, 2019). Tangible consequences of this challenge are often perceived as human errors (Garro & Tundis, 2015).…”

Section: Generalized Complexity Challengesmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Engineering Complexity beyond the surface: Discerning the viewpoints, the drivers, and the challenges

Morales

Nizamis

Bonnema

2022

Preprint

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Complexity is often regarded as a “problem” to solve. Instead of yet again attempting to solve complexity, we follow systems engineering practices and switch back to the problem domain. A major obstacle in the problem domain is the impossibility to universally define complexity. As a workaround, we explored complexity characterization and identified shortcomings of the existing characterizations. The shortcomings include lack of standardization, inconsistent semantics, system-centricity, insufficiently transparent reasoning, and lack of validation. To address these shortcomings, we proposed a framework to characterize complexity by adapting three questions (who, why, what) from the Five Ws information-gathering method. The answer to the WHO-question proposed four complexity viewpoints; the answer to the WHY-question proposed a two-dimensional structure to identify complexity drivers; and the answer to the WHAT-question derived generalized complexity challenges. We used a systematic mapping study (SMS) to validate the framework. In general, our findings suggest that papers with complexity solutions do not frame their research within the complexity problem domain, hindering the contribution evaluation. Through the viewpoints, we identified general research gaps of six solution directions. From the drivers, we noted three observations in the discourse of complexity origins: 1) a system-driven tendency, 2) a preference for concreteness vs. abstraction, and 3) an unclear distinction between origins and effects. Through the challenges’ findings we supported two hypotheses: 1) a system-centric preference; and 2) a solution-oriented vision. This application of our framework exemplifies its potential to facilitate and structure future research, both in the problem and solution domains.

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An Industry 4.0 Asset-Based Coordination Artifact for Production Systems Engineering

Biffl

Musil²,

Musil

et al. 2021

2021 IEEE 23rd Conference on Business Informatics (CBI)

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Product/ion-Aware Analysis of Collaborative Systems Engineering Processes

Cited by 4 publications

References 26 publications

Engineering complexity beyond the surface: discerning the viewpoints, the drivers, and the challenges

Engineering complexity beyond the surface: discerning the viewpoints, the drivers, and the challenges

Engineering Complexity beyond the surface: Discerning the viewpoints, the drivers, and the challenges

An Industry 4.0 Asset-Based Coordination Artifact for Production Systems Engineering

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