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International Conference on Conceptual Modeling

ER 2020: Conceptual Modeling pp 575–589Cite as

Modeling and Analysis of Boundary Objects and Methodological Islands in Large-Scale Systems Development

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Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNISA,volume 12400))

Abstract

Large-scale systems development commonly faces the challenge of managing relevant knowledge between different organizational groups, particularly in increasingly agile contexts. In previous studies, we found the importance of analyzing methodological islands (i.e., groups using different development methods than the surrounding organization) and boundary objects between them. In this paper, we propose a metamodel to better capture and analyze coordination and knowledge management in practice. Such a metamodel can allow practitioners to describe current practices, analyze issues, and design better-suited coordination mechanisms. We evaluated the conceptual model together with four large-scale companies developing complex systems. In particular, we derived an initial list of bad smells that can be leveraged to detect issues and devise suitable improvement strategies for inter-team coordination in large-scale development. We present the model, smells, and our evaluation results.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.12363764.v1.

  2. 2.

    https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.12363764.v1.

  3. 3.

    https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.12363764.v1.

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Acknowledgments

This work was partially supported by the Software Center Project 27 on Requirements Engineering for Large-Scale Agile System Development and the Wallenberg AI, Autonomous Systems and Software Program (WASP) funded by the Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Chalmers|University of Gothenburg, Gothenburg, Sweden

    Rebekka Wohlrab, Jennifer Horkoff, Rashidah Kasauli, Salome Maro, Jan-Philipp Steghöfer & Eric Knauss

  2. Systemite AB, Gothenburg, Sweden

    Rebekka Wohlrab

Authors
  1. Rebekka Wohlrab
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  2. Jennifer Horkoff
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  3. Rashidah Kasauli
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  4. Salome Maro
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  5. Jan-Philipp Steghöfer
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  6. Eric Knauss
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Rebekka Wohlrab .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand

    Gillian Dobbie

  2. University of Duisburg-Essen, Essen, Germany

    Ulrich Frank

  3. TU Wien, Vienna, Austria

    Gerti Kappel

  4. Brigham Young University, Provo, UT, USA

    Stephen W. Liddle

  5. University of Klagenfurt, Klagenfurt am Wörthersee, Austria

    Heinrich C. Mayr

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Wohlrab, R., Horkoff, J., Kasauli, R., Maro, S., Steghöfer, JP., Knauss, E. (2020). Modeling and Analysis of Boundary Objects and Methodological Islands in Large-Scale Systems Development. In: Dobbie, G., Frank, U., Kappel, G., Liddle, S.W., Mayr, H.C. (eds) Conceptual Modeling. ER 2020. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 12400. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-62522-1_42

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-62522-1_42

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  • Print ISBN: 978-3-030-62521-4

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-62522-1

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