Technical debt in the engineering of complex systems

IF 1.6 3区工程技术 Q4 ENGINEERING, INDUSTRIAL

Systems Engineering Pub Date : 2023-04-07 DOI:10.1002/sys.21677

Yeeun Yang, D. Verma, P. Antón

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引用次数: 1

Abstract

The metaphor of technical debt (TD) is widely adopted in the software engineering field, referring to short‐term compromises in software artifacts in exchange for speed or to meet release schedules or other constraints. The implication is that TDs accumulate over time, and may eventually make rework or maintenance very expensive or even impossible. The analogy is generally applicable in the systems engineering field, particularly concerning numerous program cancellation and obsolescence challenges due to premature decisions made in early acquisition phases. This paper adapts this metaphor of TD to the systems engineering field, and proposes a TD taxonomy to support the early identification and assessment of TD items in engineering complex systems, especially in the early life cycle phases of engineering complex, distributed systems. The taxonomy identifies seven TD types: functionality, performance, interoperability, version conflicts, documentation and support, system evolution, and organic, based on systematic indicators and signs discoverable during early acquisition activities. We expect that the notion and the taxonomy of TD will offer an additional perspective for design decisions that will help mitigate challenging integration and obsolescence issues in the engineering of complex systems.

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复杂系统工程中的技术债务

技术债务(TD)的比喻在软件工程领域被广泛采用，指的是软件工件中的短期妥协，以换取速度或满足发布时间表或其他约束。这意味着缺陷随着时间的推移而积累，最终可能使返工或维护变得非常昂贵，甚至不可能。这个类比通常适用于系统工程领域，特别是涉及到由于在早期采买阶段做出的不成熟决策而导致的大量项目取消和过时挑战。本文将这一概念应用于系统工程领域，并提出了一种TD分类法，以支持工程复杂系统中TD项目的早期识别和评估，特别是在工程复杂的分布式系统的早期生命周期阶段。分类法确定了7种TD类型:功能性、性能、互操作性、版本冲突、文档和支持、系统演变，以及有机的，基于早期获取活动中可发现的系统指示和标志。我们期望TD的概念和分类将为设计决策提供一个额外的视角，这将有助于减轻复杂系统工程中具有挑战性的集成和过时问题。

本文章由计算机程序翻译，如有差异，请以英文原文为准。

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来源期刊

Systems Engineering 工程技术-工程：工业

CiteScore

5.10

自引率

20.00%

发文量

审稿时长

6 months

期刊介绍： Systems Engineering is a discipline whose responsibility it is to create and operate technologically enabled systems that satisfy stakeholder needs throughout their life cycle. Systems engineers reduce ambiguity by clearly defining stakeholder needs and customer requirements, they focus creativity by developing a system’s architecture and design and they manage the system’s complexity over time. Considerations taken into account by systems engineers include, among others, quality, cost and schedule, risk and opportunity under uncertainty, manufacturing and realization, performance and safety during operations, training and support, as well as disposal and recycling at the end of life. The journal welcomes original submissions in the field of Systems Engineering as defined above, but also encourages contributions that take an even broader perspective including the design and operation of systems-of-systems, the application of Systems Engineering to enterprises and complex socio-technical systems, the identification, selection and development of systems engineers as well as the evolution of systems and systems-of-systems over their entire lifecycle. Systems Engineering integrates all the disciplines and specialty groups into a coordinated team effort forming a structured development process that proceeds from concept to realization to operation. Increasingly important topics in Systems Engineering include the role of executable languages and models of systems, the concurrent use of physical and virtual prototyping, as well as the deployment of agile processes. Systems Engineering considers both the business and the technical needs of all stakeholders with the goal of providing a quality product that meets the user needs. Systems Engineering may be applied not only to products and services in the private sector but also to public infrastructures and socio-technical systems whose precise boundaries are often challenging to define.