on the social dimensions of architectural decisions

Università degli Studi dell’Aquila

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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

henry.muccini@univaq.it, @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

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[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

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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?