Reference architecture, metamodel, and modeling principles for architectural knowledge management in information technology services

TLDR: Previous work to overcome challenges of an additional user group, presales architects that are responsible for IT service solution proposals is extended and twelve decision modeling principles and practices are established to capture the practical experience gained and lessons learned during the application of decision modeling concepts to both proposal development and architecture design work on projects.

About: This article is published in Journal of Systems and Software.The article was published on 2012-09-01 and is currently open access. It has received 36 citations till now. The article focuses on the topics: Presales & Model-driven architecture.

Figures

Fig. 1. Example SO/SOA scenario with connected Decision Points (DPs)

Fig. 5. Classes of the common metamodel

Fig. 7. User interface of the decision making client in Solution Decision Advisor (SDA)

Fig. 2. Overview of decision knowledge processing solution (for proposal and project work)

Fig. 6. Exemplary DP graph and metamodel instantiation

Fig. 8. Sequence diagram for decision making use case scenario in SDA

Frequently asked questions

Q1. What have the authors contributed in "Reference architecture, metamodel, and modeling principles for architectural knowledge management in information technology services" ?

In this paper, the authors extend their previous work to overcome these challenges and to satisfy the requirements of an additional user group, presales architects that are responsible for IT service solution proposals. The authors also present a tool implementation of these concepts and discuss their application to outsourcing proposals and application development projects. Finally, the authors establish twelve decision modeling principles and practices that capture the practical experience gained and lessons learned during the application of their decision modeling concepts to both proposal development and architecture design work on projects. 

Q2. What have the authors stated for future works in "Reference architecture, metamodel, and modeling principles for architectural knowledge management in information technology services" ?

For the future, the authors consider applying their approach to business domains outside IT services. 

Q3. Why does an outsourcing solution design have to be detailed before contracts are signed?

Due to the need to estimate costs accurately, an outsourcing solution design has to be detailed before contracts are signed and billable projects are initiated. 

Q4. What are the key factors to make any AKM approach sustainable in practice?

Clear ownership and agreed upon funding models for maintenance and support remain to be critical success factors to make any explicit (or hybrid) AKM approach sustainable in practice. 

Q5. What are the other areas that require additional investigations and research?

Other areas that require additional investigations and research are collaboration and tool integration; both presales and project architects interface with many other practitioner roles, e.g., project managers, developers, and enterprise architects. 

Q6. How long did it take to investigate, make and capture all 109 decisions?

Novice users (i.e., users that had not been exposed to the knowledge in the DP model previously) reported that it takes them between two to three hours to investigate, make and capture all 109 decisions. 

Q7. How can a DP graph be removed when a custom service management tool is chosen?

DP-04 can be removed from a DP graph when DP-03 decides for a custom service management tool for which no shared solution exists. 

Q8. How many user feedback sessions did you conduct?

The authors conducted more than 20 of these agile/instant user feedback sessions after having released Version 1.0 of SDA [24] and, later on, throughout 2011. 

Q9. What are the logical rules for a DP without predecessors?

DPs without predecessors (in the control and data flow) are active by default (i.e., eligible for decision making/ready to be made); a DP with one or more inbound dependencies from any active predecessor DP is inactive (i.e., pending/not ready to be made yet). 

Q10. Why do SO architects have to make decisions before any contract is signed?

Due to market dynamics and the buying power of clients, many of these decisions have to be made before any contract is signed and any payment is made. 

Q11. What are the rules for assigning meaningful, expressive, and standardized values to metamodel?

2. Meaningful, expressive, and standardized values should be assigned to/for metamodel attributes such as scope, phase, and role in SOAD. 

Q12. What are the novel components in the reference architecture?

In the reference architecture that the authors introduced in Section 3, the novel components are the decision making client, the DP services, the DKP engine, and the decision knowledge base (persisting DP description texts and DP graphs). 

Q13. What is the advantage of implementing the SDA frontend with Eclipse perspectives?

An additional advantage of implementing the SDA frontend with Eclipse perspectives is that SDA can easily be integrated with other Eclipse tools this way, e.g., many Unified Modeling Language (UML) tools.