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Concern coverage in base station development: an empirical investigation

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Abstract

Contemporary model driven development tools only partially support the abstractions occurring in complex embedded systems development. This article presents an interpretive case study in which architectural concerns important to seven engineers in a large product developing organization were compared to the views actually provided by the organization’s models. The paper’s main finding is an empirically grounded catalogue of architectural concerns for a large, complex embedded systems project, and an assessment of the degree to which the studied organization has managed to realize support for these concerns within economical and organizational constraints. In the studied case, 114 different architectural concerns were found to be important to the interviewed engineers. Of this sample, 75% were documented in models, structured text, or informal documentation, whereas 47% of all documented concerns were modeled. The paper’s conclusion is that current modeling languages and methods inadequately address the full set of concerns that are important to engineers in base station development.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Applied Information Technology, Chalmers and University of Gothenburg, 412 96, Göteborg, Sweden

    Lars Pareto

  2. Ericsson AB, Göteborg, Sweden

    Peter Eriksson & Staffan Ehnebom

Authors
  1. Lars Pareto
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  2. Peter Eriksson
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  3. Staffan Ehnebom
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Correspondence to Lars Pareto.

Additional information

Communicated by Andy Schürr and Bran Selic.

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Pareto, L., Eriksson, P. & Ehnebom, S. Concern coverage in base station development: an empirical investigation. Softw Syst Model 11, 409–429 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10270-010-0188-2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10270-010-0188-2

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