Risks and assets: A qualitative study of a software ecosystem in the mining industry
2019 (English)In: ESEC/FSE 2019 - Proceedings of the 2019 27th ACM Joint Meeting European Software Engineering Conference and Symposium on the Foundations of Software Engineering, Association for Computing Machinery, Inc , 2019, p. 895-904Conference paper, Published paper (Refereed)
Abstract [en]
Digitalization and servitization are impacting many domains, including the mining industry. As the equipment becomes connected and technical infrastructure evolves, business models and risk management need to adapt. In this paper, we present a study on how changes in asset and risk distribution are evolving for the actors in a software ecosystem (SECO) and system-of-systems (SoS) around a mining operation. We have performed a survey to understand how Service Level Agreements (SLAs) - a common mechanism for managing risk - are used in other domains. Furthermore, we have performed a focus group study with companies. There is an overall trend in the mining industry to move the investment cost (CAPEX) from the mining operator to the vendors. Hence, the mining operator instead leases the equipment (as operational expense, OPEX) or even acquires a service. This change in business model impacts operation, as knowledge is moved from the mining operator to the suppliers. Furthermore, as the infrastructure becomes more complex, this implies that the mining operator is more and more reliant on the suppliers for the operation and maintenance. As this change is still in an early stage, there is no formalized risk management, e.g. through SLAs, in place. Rather, at present, the companies in the ecosystem rely more on trust and the incentives created by the promise of mutual future benefits of innovation activities. We believe there is a need to better understand how to manage risk in SECO as it is established and evolves. At the same time, in a SECO, the focus is on cooperation and innovation, the companies do not have incentives to address this unless there is an incident. Therefore, industry need, we believe, help in systematically understanding risk and defining quality aspects such as reliability and performance in the new business environment.
Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
Association for Computing Machinery, Inc , 2019. p. 895-904
Keywords [en]
Case study, Risk Management, Service Level Agreement, Software ecosystem, Survey, Ecosystems, Investments, Quality of service, Risks, Software engineering, Surveying, Surveys, Systems engineering, Business environments, Formalized risk management, Operation and maintenance, Operational expense, Service level agreement (SLAs), Service Level Agreements, Software ecosystems, Technical infrastructure
National Category
Natural Sciences
Identifiers
URN: urn:nbn:se:ri:diva-39923DOI: 10.1145/3338906.3340443Scopus ID: 2-s2.0-85071940101ISBN: 9781450355728 (print)OAI: oai:DiVA.org:ri-39923DiVA, id: diva2:1361876
Conference
27th ACM Joint European Software Engineering Conference and Symposium on the Foundations of Software Engineering, ESEC/FSE 2019, 26 August 2019 through 30 August 2019
2019-10-172019-10-172023-06-08Bibliographically approved