Developing a framework and an instrument for measuring system openness

Abstract

This paper describes the process of developing a framework and an instrument for measuring and ascertaining the openness of a system applicable to system architectures and their implementations.
An Open System is a system whose architecture uses standards for its key interfaces, where these standards are widely used, consensus based, published and maintained by recognised industry standards' organisations, and its systems design is modular, i.e. each module has minimal dependencies on other modules, and has been subjected to successful confirmation that ensure the openness of its key interfaces.
Our process included in-depth review of pertinent literature in the areas of Open Systems and Open Architecture, followed by a selection of the appropriate methodology to use. We chose the Goal-Question-Metric (GQM) methodology to allow us to select relevant goals, factors and metrics that can be used to measure a system's level of openness. The paper details these goals, factors and metrics. We carried out studies of these factors with fourteen experts in Open Systems Engineering: an initial study with seven of these experts to help us refine the selected goals, factors and metric, with a second confirmatory study performed in conjunction with the remaining seven experts.
The GQM methodology enabled us to select appropriate goals and factors that can affect system openness, especially in the Maritime industry. These factors are both technical and non-technical, and they are: (a) the prevailing culture of the organisation developing and/or hosting the system, (b) the prevailing culture of the employees of that organisation, (c) the system architecture produced as a result of the prevailing culture, (d) the system interfaces, (e) system design, (f) the degree of openness of the data used by the system, and (g) system implementation. The process provided a structure that we used to generate the relevant questions of these goals and the metrics that can be used to measure the degree of openness of the goals.
The goals, questions and metrics are detailed in the Appendices.

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ORCID for Gary Wills: orcid.org/0000-0001-5771-4088

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