The quality management of projects, in general, and IT projects, in particular, have been a topic of research for several decades. However, quality management is usually considered as a subset of project management per se, which includes such aspects as project initiation, team formation, responsibilities allocation and others. In this position paper we abstract from abovementioned aspects and focus on only one perspective in project management, which to the best of our knowledge has not been intensively studied. We propose to focus on the perspective of Systems of Systems in project quality management paying more attention on the systems that are related to and inside a particular IT project. For this purpose, the questions for further research are defined regarding three aspects of IT project quality management: product, process, and inputs of an IT project.
Project quality management is part of project management in IT project development. Quality
management as such has its application domain independent as well as specific features. For instance,
Low and Ong [
While project management (including IT projects) and quality management, as the disciplines, and
their intersection “project quality management”, are under the research for several decades [
The goal of this paper is to explore the scope of questions concerning the SoS perspective on IT project quality management. These questions might be helpful in defining the potential research tasks in developing methods and tools for supporting IT project quality with respect to this perspective.
The paper is structured as follows. In Section 2, we discuss current trends in IT project management and the quality challenges of IT projects. In section 3, we consider SoS aspects related to IT project management and propose research topics (questions) that can lead to IT project quality improvement. We conclude the paper in Section 4.
In the IT area, usually, the IT project quality management is considered as a subset of overall quality
management and project management: “IT quality management” ⸦ “IT project management” ⸦ “IT
project quality management” [
The systemic approach to IT project management is proposed in [
IT project quality in the context of quality standards is discussed in [
Indirectly, IT project quality management is discussed in recent works on problems regarding agile IT projects. The most comprehensive report on these problems and possible treatments is given in [7]. Analysis of these issues can lead to the conclusion that knowledge management has to be addressed with new tools and processes in IT projects [8]. Research on agile projects emphasizes the essential role of requirements in achieving high quality results in software systems development. Not surprisingly, the requirements engineering is an area comparatively intensively addressed from the SoS perspective [9]-[11]. However, the available research results rather concern suggestions for the research agenda than report on proposed and validated methods. In this paper, we will further discuss the areas where the research is needed to address the IT project quality management from the SoS perspective.
When discussing the SoS related aspects of IT project quality management we will distinguish between three essential quality aspects: the quality of the product, the quality of the process, and the quality of the materials (inputs to the process) while leaving the quality of performers of the process out of the scope of the discussion. We assume here that any IT project takes place in an enterprise or in an enterprise ecosystem (or digital business ecosystem [12]). One of the well-founded ways of considering an enterprise as a system is using enterprise architectures [13]-[17]. Therefore, we will use ArchiMate [18] enterprise architecture representation language framework for illustrating the SoS related aspects of IT project quality management. Research on these aspects may lead to new solutions that may help to deal with such challenging aspects of SoSs as independence, distribution, emergence, and evolution [9] in the quality management of IT projects. We will use the full ArchiMate meta-model with simplified relationships2, extended with the physical layer, to illustrate the system aspects inside the enterprise (Fig.1). It must be respected that we shall not neglect that the SoS goes beyond of one enterprise and may concern similar enterprise architecture elements in other enterprises.
The enterprise architecture representation used further in this section reflects several constituent systems of the enterprise. The technology layer (C) illustrates computing infrastructure that includes hardware and operating systems; the application layer (B) illustrates software systems from the enterprise-user perspective; the business layer (A) stands for business execution system, the strategy view (E) and motivation view (D) stand for decision making system, physical layer (F) stands for physical environment system, while implementation view (G) stands for project management and execution system. IT project quality management aspects address the elements of these systems, and we can see that, in general, every element in one system is related to elements in other systems. Thus, it is essential to see when, how, and which relationships are to be considered when addressing, the product of an IT project, the process of the project, and inputs of the project.
Depending on the project, an IT artifact can be regarded as just software or also as software and
hardware [
IT project as a process can be situated in system G of Fig. 1. Knowledge-wise it is related with all other systems. In the case of in-house development, on the one hand, this process is a constituent system of processes of an enterprise which will use the product, but, on the other hand, it can also be a constituent system of processes of a developer enterprise. As a process, it might be a subject of the same quality characteristics as the enterprise business processes [19], including the quality of business process models [20]. Similar to the product aspect, the project process itself can be viewed as a SoS. Therefore, the following questions regarding it are relevant from the SoS perspective: What tools and methods should be used to identify the project process and dependencies among its constituents in System G? What tools and methods should be used to identify relationships between the constituents of the IT process and the rest of the systems (A-E and F, if applicable) in enterprise architecture? How to ensure continuous estimation of an expected process quality respecting changes in the related elements in all related systems? Looking at the process as a SoS, how can its independence, distribution, emergence, and evolution be modeled and analyzed? Looking at the process as a constituent system of other enterprise processes, how does its independence, distribution, emergence, and evolution may impact other constituent systems and a parent SoS? While process quality is a very well researched topic [19], the traditional methods do not directly address the above-stated questions. Therefore, additional research is needed to see how existing approaches could be used and/or extended to be applied in the SoS context. 3.3.
The main IT project “materials” or inputs are requirements. In Fig.1, requirements are situated in System E and are related to all other systems (A-D, F (if applicable), and G). Requirements can themselves form a SoS. Problems, challenges, and some of the possible solutions regarding requirements in SoS are discussed in [8]. Respecting the related work in [7] and [8], the following questions can be considered as relevant concerning requirements quality from the SoS perspective: What tools and methods should be used to identify and maintain the dependencies between the requirements so that they might be considered as a system? What tools and methods should be used to identify relationships between the requirements and the rest of the enterprise architecture elements? How to ensure continuous estimation of the expected requirements quality respecting changes in the related elements in all related systems? Looking at the requirements as the SoS, how can requirements independence, distribution, emergence, and evolution be modeled and analyzed? Looking at the requirements as a constituent system of other enterprise systems, how may requirement system’s independence, distribution, emergence, and evolution impact other constituent systems and a parent SoS?
The related work [7], [8] shows that requirements quality may depend on project knowledge management quality. However, knowledge management in SoS is itself a scarcely researched topic.
This paper amalgamated open questions when considering IT project quality management from the SoS perspective. We looked at three main aspects of IT project quality management, namely, the quality of the product (software and/or hardware), the quality of the project process, and the quality of requirements (input of the process). Looking at the questions stated for each quality management aspect, we can see that the scope of questions is similar. For each aspect the methods and tools are needed which support considering the aspect as a SoS and discovering the relationship between this SoS and other SoSs, which might be at the same or at different levels of the systems’ conceptual hierarchy. Additionally, for all aspects, the methods for identifying and handling of SoS related properties, such as independence, distribution, emergence, and evolution, are needed. It is also essential to be able to see the relationships between all identified SoS at the level of their constituents.
This work is limited only to the questions that arise when looking at IT project quality management from the perspective of SoS. Further research is needed to get satisfactory answers to these questions, which have become more and more important in different digital transformation projects in enterprises’ digital ecosystems. The future research to model project management using the SoS approach will be directed towards the investigation of morphological and functional structures for SoSs with and without central management entity. The systems which compile SoS for several case studies will be identified, the corresponding structural models will be constructed, analyzed as well as decomposed, and the result of decomposition, namely, constituent elements will be described from the static and the dynamic point of view based on systems thinking considerations. The next step will be the cause-consequence analysis of relationships between components with purpose to understand the antecedents of project quality and the various criteria for its assessment. The overall research strategy will be focused mainly on collaborative and virtual SoSs where the use of multiagent systems paradigm seems to be perspective issue regarding the practical implementation of the proposed approach. At the same time the directed and the acknowledged SoSs also may be studied from the same perspective using the basic ideas of the hierarchical systems theory. 5. References [7] R. Kasauli, E. Knauss, J. Horkoff, G. Liebel, F. Gomes de Oliveira Neto. Requirements engineering challenges and practices in large-scale agile system development. The Journal of Systems & Software, vol. 172, article 110851, 2021. [8] M. Kirikova, Continuous Requirements Engineering in Sociotechnical Systems: Challenges and
Solutions. http://ceur-ws.org/Vol-3107/paper0.pdf [9] C. Ncube and S. L. Lim. On systems of systems engineering: a requirements engineering perspective and research agenda. 2018 IEEE 26th International Requirements Engineering Conference (RE), pp. 112–123, 2018. [10] S. Hallerstede, F. O. Hansen, J. Holt, R. Lauritsen, L. Lorenzen, J. Peleska. Technical challenges of SoS requirements engineering. 2012 7th International Conference on System of Systems Engineering (SoSE), pp. 573–578, 2012. [11] F. L. Duarte, A. Félix de Castro, P. G. G. Queiroz. Reap-SoS: a requirement engineering approach for system of systems. Computer Science and Information Technology, April 2018. [12] C. H. Tsai, J. Zdravkovic, J. Stirna. Modeling Digital Business Ecosystems: A Systematic Literature Review. Complex Systems Informatics and Modeling Quarterly, CSIMQ, no. 30, pp. 1– 30, 2022. https://doi.org/10.7250/csimq.2022-30.01 [13] S. Henningsson, G. N. Toppenberg. Architecting Growth in the Digital Era. In Architecting
Growth in the Digital Era. (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-39482-0 [14] T. Kamogawa, H. Okada. A framework for enterprise architecture effectiveness. 2005 International Conference on Services Systems and Services Management, Proceedings of ICSSSM’05, 1, pp. 740–745, 2005. https://doi.org/10.1109/ICSSSM.2005.1499575 [15] M. Van den Berg, R. Slot, M. van Steenbergen, P. Faasse, H. van Vliet. How enterprise architecture improves the quality of IT investment decisions. Journal of Systems and Software, 152, pp. 134– 150, 2019. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jss.2019.02.053 [16] D. Dumitriu, M. A. M. Popescu. Enterprise architecture framework design in IT management.
Procedia Manufacturing, 46, pp. 932–940, 2020. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.promfg.2020.05.011 [17] F. Gampfer, A. Jürgens, M. Müller, R. Buchkremer. Past, current and future trends in enterprise architecture—A view beyond the horizon. Computers in Industry, 100, 70–84, 2018. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compind.2018.03.006 [18] The ArchiMate® Enterprise Architecture Modeling Language.
https://www.opengroup.org/archimate-forum/archimate-overview [19] R. Heinrich. Aligning Business Processes and Information Systems: New Approaches to
Continuous Quality Engineering. Springer, 2014. [20] J. Krogstie. Quality in Business Process Modeling. Springer, 2016.