Treating interactions systematically: a theme to cope with an aspect of the complexity of managing life-cycle software production

Abstract

The paper presents a method for simplifying the complex managerial phenomena in the life-cycle software production by means of systems analysis. The reason for this is that software products are becoming increasingly complex and that project teams are, and will continue to be, the dominant way of organising software development. There is a fundamental principle; the complexity of the field in question is an interpretation of 'reality' according to a coarse systematisation. The interpretation is about how we think, what we do and how we cope. Based on this philosophical framework, the method consists of the following: describing the complex phenomena in terms of interactions; the interactions between a team and the tasks (e.g. modelling), the interactions between the teams (e.g. co-operating) and the interactions between tasks (e.g. configuring); defining a pattern to categorise the events of the interactions and interpreting the pattern to rationalise the concepts; system context and model contexts, communication and information context. The benefits of the practical use of the method are to provide unified objectives for supplying management with technical measures, and thus to enhance the efficiency and quality of the operational processes.