Key Process Areas in Systems Integration

N ETWORKS A survey of systems integrations experts in industry and academia highlights the key process areas of systems integration as well as their importance ratings. G. Reza Djavanshir and Reza Khorramshahgol Key Process Areas in Systems Integration I n today’s competitive environment, corporate mergers and partnerships are common and inevitably require the resulting organization to integrate information and telecommunication systems. To survive, a firm must also redesign and automate value chain activities and business processes involving the integration of various information and telecommunication systems. However, organizations develop most of these systems in isolation, using no standard processes in the integration. Despite the significance of systems integration, the term is ill defined and greatly misunderstood within both academia and industry.According to Jeffrey O. Grady (Grady, System Integration, CRC Press, 1994), integration is one of the most used words, yet most misunderstood concepts, in the application of systems engineering in the industry, with many different meanings to many different people. Some standards-making organizations, as well as researchers and vendors have attempted to address the elements of system integration and minimize related problems (H. Eisner, Essentials of Project and Systems Eng. Management, 2nd ed., John Wiley & Sons, 2002). Additional Reading Surprisingly, the key process Resources areas remain problematic. Key Process Areas of Many organizations’ efforts Systems Integration in this area have failed because of incomplete and ill-defined processes. Inside 24 IT Pro July ❘ August 2007 If the key process areas were well defined and standardized within the industry, organizations could perform systems integration without major issues.Although many vendors claim that their products offer a platform that can seamlessly integrate different pieces of an application, no single-vendor solution exists (Eisner, 2002). However, few researchers have attempted to define the key process areas of systems integration.We therefore seek to provide a standard definition of the key process activities defining systems integration processes. By identifying these key process areas and also rating their importance, we hope to assist managers in prioritizing and allocating resources to systems integration projects more effectively and efficiently. Having a standard set of key process areas can also contribute to effective management and successful implementation of systems integration projects. They can also provide a common understanding of all tasks and activities to be undertaken in a systems integration project as well as a sound framework for capturing customer requirements and thus improving customer satisfaction. (The “Additional Reading” sidebar lists some general publications in areas related to systems integration, information systems design, and systems engineering.) DATA COLLECTION We initially conducted a comprehensive literature search to determine the key process areas that define systems integration processes—that is, the Published by the IEEE Computer Society 1520-9202/07/$25.00 © 2007 IEEE Additional Reading ➤ N. Bajgoric, “Organizational Systems Integration: A Management Information Systems Perspective,” Concurrent Eng.: Research and Applications, vol. 5, no. 2, 1997, pp. 113-121. ➤ B.W. Boehm, “A Spiral Model of Software Development and Enhancement,” Computer, vol. 21, no. 5, 1988, pp. 61-72. ➤ G. Reza Djavanshir, “The Elements of Systems Engineering and their Relationship with the Elements of Systems Engineering,” DSc dissertation, George Washington Univ., 2001. ➤ G. Gannod, S. Mudiam, and T. Lindquist, “Automated Support for Service-Based Software Development and Integration,” J. Systems and Software, vol. 74, no. 1, 2004, pp. 65-72. typical activities developers perform when integrating systems. Using various sources in the systems integration literature (see the “Resources” sidebar) as well as product reviews from large systems integrators (such as Lockheed Martin, Science Application International Corporation, and Electronic Data Systems), we identified 30 such areas. Before submitting the list of key process areas to study participants, we checked it for validation and completeness. We then presented the list to experts in industry and academia during personal interviews.As a result of these preliminary interviews, we added 20 more key process areas to the initial list, giving us a total of 50 (see the “Key Process Areas of Systems Integration” sidebar). Next, we sent this list along with a questionnaire to a large number of experts (people with at least three years of experience conducting systems integration within the industry). This research’s variables are the importance ratings of the 50 key process areas and their estimated mean scores. The set of questions is the research tool. The questions relate to the importance ratings as well as to respondents’ educational level, years of systems engineering or systems integration experience, position within their organization, organization size, and Capability Maturity Model level— the Software Engineering Institute (SEI) defines five CMM levels for assessing process standardization within an organization. The questionnaire asked respondents to rate the 50 key process areas on a common scale, where • • • • • 1 = not important at all, 2 = not very important, 3 = somewhat important, 4 = very important, and 5 = extremely important. ➤ ISO 7498, Interface Processing, Open System Interconnection, Basic Reference Model, 1988. ➤ K. Maloney and P. Bracke, “Beyond Information Architecture: A Systems Integration Approach to Website Design,” Information Technology and Libraries, vol. 23, no. 4, 2004, pp. 145-151. ➤ E. Rechtin and M.W. Maier, The Art of Systems Architecting, CRC Press, 1997. ➤ Y. Yusuf, et al., “Agile Supply Chain Capabilities: Determinants of Competitive Objectives,” European J. Operational Research, vol. 159, no. 2, 2004, pp. 379-388. Resources ➤ J. O. Grady, System Integration, CRC Press, 1994. ➤ A. Kossiakoff and W. Sweet, Systems Engineering, Principals and Practices, John Wiley & Sons, 2003. ➤ D.R. Kuhn and S. Garcia, “Developing a Capability and Maturity Model for Systems Engineering,” Proc. Int’l Council on Software Eng. 4th Ann. Int’l Symp., INCOSE, 1990, pp. 223-230. ➤ K. Siau, “Supply Chains Integration: Architecture and Enabling Technologies,” J. Computer Information Systems, vol. 44, no. 3, 2004, pp. 67-71. ➤ A. Sage, Systems Management for Information Technology and Software Eng., John Wiley & Sons, 1995. Our initial mailing went to 1,453 experts in systems integration and engineering organizations in the US, UK, Japan, and South Korea. Of those, the post office returned 178 (12 percent). The most common reasons for return were incorrect address or that the company was no longer in business. The total net number of surveys was 1,332. We received a total of 52 responses, for a 4-percent response rate. Because the number of responses wasn’t sufficient to conduct the required statistical analysis, we sent another set of 331 questionnaires to experts selected from professional contact lists.This time, we received 96 responses, or July ❘ August 2007 IT Pro 25 NETWORKS Key Process Areas of Systems Integration Through research, personal interviews, and a mailed questionnaire, we determined 50 key process areas of systems integrations: ➤ ➤ ➤ ➤ ➤ ➤ ➤ ➤ ➤ ➤ ➤ ➤ ➤ ➤ ➤ ➤ ➤ ➤ ➤ ➤ ➤ ➤ ➤ ➤ Alternatives analysis/evaluation Architecture design/synthesis Concurrent engineering Configuration and customization of components Configuration management Customers’ acceptance testing Customers’ needs and objectives Documentation Establishing evaluation criteria Functional analysis Hardware integration and test Human factors engineering Impact analysis Infrastructure and facility preparation Installation Integrated logistics support Integration of interdisciplinary skills and knowledge bases Integration process design, control, and improvement Interface control Interoperability Lifecycle cost analysis Lifecycle cost and schedule control Managing systems’ performance improvements New technology insertion 22 percent. Of those, 26 were unusable (they contained no valuable information regarding systems integration’s key process areas). As a result, the total net number of usable responses was 122. We initially categorized the 122 usable responses based on the respondents’ demographics.We then developed frequency tables and histograms to describe the data and research results. RESULTS Our survey showed that professionals in the field consider all 50 of the key process areas we identified (with varying degrees of importance) to be elements of systems integration. Each key process area has an average importance rating of at least 2.75, so all are at least important tasks in systems integration processes. Table 1 presents the average importance ratings and rank orders for the top 15 key process areas of systems integration. Note that some important key process areas 26 IT Pro July ❘ August 2007 ➤ ➤ ➤ ➤ ➤ ➤ ➤ ➤ ➤ ➤ ➤ ➤ ➤ ➤ ➤ ➤ ➤ ➤ ➤ ➤ ➤ ➤ ➤ ➤ ➤ ➤ Operation and maintenance Operational procedure development Operational readiness and assurance Operations evaluation/reengineering Preplanned product improvement Processes, procedures, and semantics standardization Project planning and scheduling Prototyping Quality assurance and management Reliability, availability, maintainability analysis Requirements definition and analysis Reusability verification and evaluation of existing components Risk analysis Selection of candidate commercial off-the-shelf products Software and hardware verification and validation Software integration and test Specifications development Systems test and evaluation Technical performance measurement Technical resources planning and allocation Test plans and procedures Tool evaluation and use Training Transition planning and control Vendors analysis and evaluation Vendors and subcontractors coordination (such as lifecycle cost, risk analysis, and configuration management) aren’t among the top 15 elements of systems integration. Risk analysis (RA) received an overall ranking of 32. Although 53 respondents (42 percent of the total) with managerial positions ranked RA higher than 36th, 37 of the respondents who work for companies with SEI-SE CMM levels of two and below ranked it 18th. This means that companies with CMM levels of three and above are more aware of the importance of RA. Reliability, availability, and maintainability is also not ranked as one of the top 15 key process areas of systems integration or systems engineering.Thirty-six respondents (28 percent) with only bachelor degrees ranked reliability, availability, and maintainability as the 20th in importance. In addition, 33 respondents who are currently systems integrators (25 percent of the total) ranked reliability, availability, and maintainability as 16th in importance, and 37 respondents (29 percent) working for organizations with no specific SEI-SE CMM level ranked it as 27th. Reliability, availability, and maintainability’s overall rank is therefore 29. These rankings are unrelated to companies’ CMM levels. Table 1. The top 15 key process areas of systems integration. Average importance rating OBSERVATIONS Based on our results, we can make several observations about the importance rankings of these key process areas and what they might imply. • Systems integration looks a lot like systems engineering, as defined in various sources (see the “Resources” sidebar). • Systems integration emphasizes the importance of the architecture design/synthesis test, and evaluation of systems along with interface control, interoperability, and impact analysis. • Transition planning, preplanned products improvement, and installation (ranked 16th, 17th, and 18th, respectively) are also critical elements of systems integration. In addition, key process areas related to project management and integration process control should be considered important elements of systems integration. Future research should focus on the relationships between these key process areas with key process areas in systems design and architecture. ■ G. Reza Djavanshir is an associate professor of information technology at the Johns Hopkins University. Contact him at rj@jhu.edu. Reza Khorramshahgol is an associate professor of information technology at Kuwait University. Contact him at reza@cba.edu.kw. Rank Key process area 1 Customers’ needs and objectives 4.68 2 Requirements definition and analysis 4.60 3 Functional analysis 4.59 4 Specifications developing 4.52 5 Architecture design/synthesis 4.48 6 Integration process design, control, and improvement 4.40 7 Test and evaluation 4.36 8 Customers’ acceptance testing 4.35 9 Software integration and test 4.34 10 Hardware integration and test 4.33 11 Interface control 4.32 12 Interoperability 4.31 13 Impact analysis 4.27 14 Test plans and procedures 4.26 15 Operation and maintenance 4.22 For further information on this or any other computing topic, please visit our Digital Library at http://www.computer.org/ publications/dlib. Get access to individual IEEE Computer Society documents online. More than 100,000 articles and conference papers available! $9US per article for members $19US for nonmembers www.computer.org/publications/dlib July ❘ August 2007 IT Pro 27