An Empirical Investigation of System Changes to Frame Links between Design Decisions and Ilities

Maintaining system performance in the presence of uncertainties in design and operating environments is both challenging and increasingly essential as system lifetimes grow longer. In response to perturbations brought on by these uncertainties, such as disturbances, context shifts, and shifting stakeholder needs, systems can continue to deliver value by being either robust or changeable. These lifecycle properties, sometimes called “ilities”, have been proposed as means to achieve system value sustainment in spite of changes in contexts or needs. Intentionally designing for these lifecycle properties is an active area of research, and no consensus has formed regarding how these and other “ilities” might trade off. This paper describes ongoing research that investigates empirical examples of system changes in order to characterize these changes and to develop a categorization scheme for framing and clarifying design approaches for proactively creating ilities in a system. Example categories from the data for system changes include: the perturbation trigger for the change, the type of agent executing the system change, and the valid lifecycle phase for execution. In providing a structured means to identify system change characteristics, this paper informs future research by framing possible relationships between ilities and design choices that enable them.

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