SOFTWARE ENGINEERING SYSTEMS AS SERVICES USING
A BUSINESS-FOCUSED SERVICE FRAMEWORK
David Miller and Mark Woodman
School of Engineering and Information Sciences, Middlesex University, Hendon, London, U.K.
Keywords: Business-focused IT, Gap Analysis, IT Alignment, IT Governance, IT Service Management, IT Maturity,
Service Lifecycle, Service Oriented Architecture, Software Engineering, Service Excellence Model.
Abstract: Investment in IT and software systems frequently fails to meet the expectations of the business
customer.This has a consequentially negative impact on business performance and reduces the perception
within the business of the value provided by systems suppliers.This has been a persistently stubborn
problem for more than forty years even after decades of ‘product’development. This position paper argues
that for the likelihood of a successful business outcome to be increasedwe must first redefine our
understanding of the ‘service’ concept and then apply it more widely, including and embracing the software
engineering aspects. This will improve concepts such as software systems engineering, IT service
management, service performance, change management, alignment, governance and maturity.
1 THE PROBLEM
Over a forty-year period there have been many
surveys at frequent intervals by different
organisations designed to understand the success
rates of projects that deliver software or, more
generally, ITsystems.The most recent of these was
the Standish 2009 Chaos Report(Standish, 2009).
The consistency of their outputs make it clear that
there has been little improvement in the likelihood
of a successfulbusiness outcome from an investment
in IT and software systems from the time such
surveys were firstconducted, i.e. from about1970 –
when “software engineering” was in its infancy.
The many survey results show that success rates
have remained stubbornly low at around 30–35%
throughout theperiod. This is despitethe fact that
during thistime there has been a massive investment
in frameworks, standards,methodologies, techniques,
development tools, QA tools, etc.aimed at helping
with requirements gathering, specification, design,
programming, integration, programme and project
management, operational IT management, security,
regulation (legal compliance), and so on. Clearly, as
Boehm (2003) has observed, software
engineeringhas been “value-neutral”, which is not
appropriate outside the research laboratory.
According to Boehm, “Major studies such as the
Standish Group’s CHAOS report ... find that most
software project failures are caused by value-
oriented shortfalls”(Boehm, 2003). So, if the
practice of software engineeringis far from reliably
providing value to theclientsit aims to serve, is there
something in theunderlying paradigmthat is not
right? We take the position that software
engineering, which is often defined in terms of the
development of software products,is too product-
oriented. By this we mean that the result of systems
development in processes accepted to be part of
software engineering is usually seen as a (complex)
artefact whose fitness for purpose can be assessed
against stated requirements. We propose that an
alternative, but not mutually exclusive,
conceptualisation of the executable outputs of
software engineering be that ofservices – with the
many and various connotations that the term implies.
For brevity, to argue our position, this paper
concentrates on how service-based software
engineering might more directly provide value to the
businesscommunity. We focus on what, in a service-
oriented view of software engineering, is likely to
makeoutcomes of systems development projects
more likely to succeed in bringing business value.
The notion of ‘service’ is often seen in terms of the
co-creation of value – so exposing the relationship
between supplier and client more than in a product-
orientated worldview. Thus, this paper looks at the
relationship between what we will term the IT
service provider and the business that is theIT
233
Miller D. and Woodman M. (2010).
SOFTWARE ENGINEERING SYSTEMS AS SERVICES USING A BUSINESS-FOCUSED SERVICE FRAMEWORK.
In Proceedings of the Fifth International Conference on Evaluation of Novel Approaches to Software Engineering, pages 233-238
DOI: 10.5220/0003038102330238
Copyright
c
 SciTePress

service provider’s customer and use the focus on
that relationship to consider how the success rate can
be improved.
2 BUSINESS NEED AND VALUE
The major advances in IT have been product-related,
i.e. the mainframe, the PC, database technologies,
the emergence of the enterprise resource
management systems, the internet/world wide web,
mobilecommunications, etc. We tend to focus on the
product element of a business solutionand have often
failed to develop the service element demanded of
these products.This is most noticeable with the
advent of the COTS solution where the software
engineering lies with the solution provider and
implementation becomes an issue of integration.
Our position that the service concept be more
prevalent in software engineering is primarily due to
the concerns highlighted by the aforementioned
reports regarding(i) the failure to reliably deliver
value to businesses which rely so much on IT and
(ii) the efficacy of software/systems engineering. In
this context the distinction between ‘product’ and
‘service’ we espouse is not merely one of academic
semantics. Nor is the distinction meant onlyto
usefully differentiatebetween a product being the
result of building to some kind of specification by
which the client determines a boundary to a system
and a service whose boundary (or boundaries) are
determined by a provider. The most important
reason for the distinction is that, arguably, most
business systems are not built from scratch but are
the result of extending, integrating and augmenting
existing elements.Typically we are creating added
complexity, sometimes in a non-linear manner. This
contrasts with the increasing urgency of business
need especially where competitive pressures are
severe.
The abovementionedsurveys show that reasons
for failure are usually expressed as (a) the inability
of the business to adequately define its requirements
and success criteria or (b) the failure of thesupplier
of systems to deliver (OGC, 2005).Where
eitherhappens there is usually poor IT management,
poor IT governance, and poor alignment of business
and IT.Current methods are just not good
enough.Add to this the urgency of the change and
the complications of legacy systems, databases, etc.,
the ability of software engineering to add business
value and deliver it quickly can be severely limited.
By suggesting new practices (below) that extend
the ideas of the service concept, we argue
thatimprovement comes from the introduction of a
service culture combined with a business focus.We
ask, if software engineering is to benefit from new
notions of service, whether a new IT service model
is required.
3 RELATED WORK
The followingreview of recent work highlights the
extent to which the problem we have posed is
acknowledged and demonstrates how it isof concern
to the industry.
The notion of ‘service’ is already in software
engineering, e.g. in SWEBOK (IEEE, 2004)
regarding requirements, testing, and operations.
And, of course it is present in notions of service-
orientation (McGovern et al., 2006)and software as a
service (Turner et al., 2003). However, is not fully at
the forefront of software engineering, as we believe
it needs to be.Rather than aiming for whole-business
alignment, by their focus software engineers are
seeking to align systems with business objects. For
example,the Zachmanframework for enterprise
architecture (Zachman, 1987) is described as an
architecture that represents the information systems’
artifacts providing a means of ensuring that
standards for creating the information environment
exist, and (TOGAF, 2010) is an architectural
approach to managing the complexities of the
artifacts of enterprise IT by The Open Group.
Some are finding that these concepts are
inadequate for new technologies e.g. during the
design of a value web (Zarvic et al., 2008), in a
business process management (BPM) context
(Karagiannis et al., 2007), for governance in a
service-oriented architecture (SOA) setting
(Schepers et al., 2008), and alignment in a mobile e-
service case (Pjipers et al., 2008).
Some suggest a closer alignment with business.
(Velitchkov, 2008) points to the vast array of
development/managementmethods and the generally
accepted view that IT, and hence software
engineering, is failing to meet business expectations.
He suggests that fault lies in the lack of business and
IT alignment, problems with IT strategy and
inadequate control mechanisms. As a solution he
advocates furtheringthe object modelling approach,
combining the domains of enterprise architecture
and IT strategy. Others also focus on enterprise
architecture and advocate its use as a corporate
planning tool by the inclusion of business model
components like goals, products, markets, or
competitors (Winter and Schelp, 2008).
There is a risk that approaches such as this
underestimate the dynamics that are at play and
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press ahead in the belief that all business
requirements can be coded product-styleignoring the
relationships that the IT service provider and the
business need to establish to co-create value.
The notion of services in the context of IT
operations is well developed and is commonly
referred to as ‘IT services management’. Whatcan
software engineering learn from this in terms of
delivery? Servicesaccount for 75% of the economy
of industrialised nations, and IT services have been
responsible for delivering change to every part of
organisations for decades and yet there has been
little attempt at internal standardisation or process
definition (Galup et al., 2007).They state: “there is a
need for research that investigates the wider
economic and social ramifications of IT service
management especially as it relates to globalisation
…”. Addressing specifically the lack of
standardisation among the IT service management
methods, some (Winniford et al., 2009)note
“confusion between IT service management (ITSM)
methods, business services management (BSM)
methods, CoBiT and IT governance and conflation
of terms and practices”. They further suggest that
identifying good and bad methods of handling the
cultural issues in IT organisations should yield a set
of best practices to benefit any company embarking
on a service management improvement project.
There is a growing recognition that one
solution/level of service does not fit all
organisational cultures(Leonard, 2005)(Ramakrishna
and Lin, 1999).Much is published illustrating the
inadequacy of today’s‘IT management tools’
advocating varying degrees of consolidation or
integration. (Ben-Menachem and Gelbard,
2002)acknowledge the importance of forms of
personal communications skills in the context of IT
service delivery though they fail to comment on the
impact that the rate of technological change would
have on the integrated toolset.Prompted by the
2008–10 economic crisis (Feltus et al., 2009)suggest
that IT governance and IT alignment can be
improved by defining a common responsibility
matrix that extends across all methodologies by
enhancing the COBIT RACI method but their focus
remains IT
Business models are changing as a result of
opportunities made possible through
technology.Organisational and cultural issues as
well as any problems with the relationship
betweenthe business and IT service/software
systems provider are most noticeable in these
situations.An analysis of IT failure in the public
sector (Cohen et al., 2007)serves to highlight these
difficulties.Arecent supply chain example is also
helpful (Holweg and Pil, 2008)in understanding the
emergence of complex adaptive systems and non-
linear dynamics.
IT and software systemsare now at the centre of
most businesses responding dynamically and
incrementally to change; yet we try to enforce a
customer–supplier relationship with a generally
inadequate service discipline using linear methods
(e.g. lifecycle models) more suited to ‘blank-sheet’
development.
4 EXTENDING THE IT SERVICE
MODEL
From the above we can conclude that in most cases
the business needsare not being meteven when using
modelsof IT service.The currently available IT
management tools and prescribed skills, such as in
the UK’s ‘Skills Framework for the Information
Age’(SFIA, 2003),even when fully deployed, are not
adequate.Nor are they adequate for identifying any
shortcomings and introducing improvement. What
then should be done?
Figure 1: Context for IT.
Firstly the scope of the problem must be broadened
to address business needs rather than just system
requirements.A context diagram is given
inFigure 1.Three of the dimensions (people, process
and technology) get mentioned quite frequently in
the more IT-focused constructs and the limitations in
terms of method and language that this has imposed
on board level discussions about business
opportunity is problematic. Businesses today are
typically whole ecosystems where product is
sourced, process is outsourced, and where there are
different channel partners. Defining the stakeholder
groups for process and systems design can be
complex and technology, with software engineering,
sits at the centre.
By changing the context for systems
development so that it is positioned at the centre of a
SOFTWARE ENGINEERING SYSTEMS AS SERVICES USING A BUSINESS-FOCUSED SERVICE FRAMEWORK
235

business ecosystem we can improve the range and
focus of IT services such that a successful business
outcome is more likely.New services will be added
to the conventional IT service model so that it is able
to meet more of these needs.This can be achieved
without losing the benefits of any existing
investment in the IT management toolset.The
definitions of IT service differ widely.We can
assume that a business will need to develop (or
change) its business model by exploiting IT
(business engineering), define and design the
processes that will be needed to undertake its
business according to the new business model
(process engineering), execute those processes
(process execution), and receive IT services and
Figure 2: The Service Stack.
resources to facilitate its information flows (IT
service management (ITSM), core IT services and
the IT infrastructure).The input to this lowest level
has been the IT requirements specification and
hitherto this has been the IT focus as can be seen by
the term ‘IT service management’.We refer to the
wholeas the Service Stack.Service management
must encapsulate the management of all of the
services in the service stack and be business-
focused. This is illustrated in Figure 2.
At each level there will conceivably be an
opportunity for a degree of software
engineering.From this diagram of the service stack
we can see that the service specification will need to
define the nature of all of the services to be
delivered.By expanding the scope of what we have
come to call service management we avoid the
pitfalls that many organisations have fallen into
when outsourcing their IT and failing to recognise
their continuing need to innovate. The output may
contain a number of architectural artefacts but it will
also consist of business outcomes and perceptions,
which is depicted in Figure 2 as
TOTAL BUSINESS
EXPERIENCE
.It consists of a complex mix of
quantitative as well as qualitative measures that
together provide a more realistic indicatorof service
quality. We can consider how close the experience is
to what was specified, or how close the experience is
(and so the actual skills and processes are) within the
service delivery organisation to what would be
considered to be ideal for a given business.These
skills and processes havebeen identified and
classified and not surprisingly they are much broader
than those we see in, for example(SFIA,
2003),which are focused at the lowestlevel.
As well as profiling the skills and processes and
assessing the business experience in the way
described it is necessary to look at the effect this has
on the business.The identification of gaps in service
will be assessed on the basis of the service stack and
by looking at any service gaps as described by a
service excellence model (Miller, 2008), an abstract
version of which is shown in Figure 3.ThisSEM
provides the planning and delivery context for the IT
services.Weare able to assess what is delivered not
just against the
SERVICESPECIFICATION and the
BUSINESSNEEDS and EXPECTATIONS, but also
against the
BUSINESS PLANNING requirements.
Whilst aSEM can be applied to any business-to-
business relationship it was derived specifically for
IT services providers and systems developers to help
them to understand the nature of the relationship
with their business.It is an aid in helping to identify
where in either the service planning or service
delivery a lack of process or skills is having a
negative impact on the business. It is a development
of an earlier business-to-consumer service quality
model (Parasuraman et al., 1985). We know that a
stronger focus on the business need, the appropriate
range of services, attention to skills profiling, and
closer alignment with the business is likely to yield
more successful business outcomes. The total
business experience as a concept is a measure of
excellence.Both gap analysis and the total-business-
experience measure are specific to a business rather
than being absolute.In this way the service to various
business groups can be compared according to their
needs and services can be more effectively tailored
to meet the needs of each business.
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236

Figure 3: The Service Excellence Model.
Profiling the service provision using this approach is
so far proving to be a sound basis for service
improvement programmes and a more realistic form
of assessment from both the business and the service
provider perspectives especially where change is
taking place. This realistic measure of performance
also allows us to improve other IT concepts such as
change management, alignment and governance.
Much is written about the alignment of IT and
business but as we have seen this now presents huge
difficulties and efforts have not led to improved
business outcomes.An alternative approach is to
identify and eliminate gaps between the business
need and the services provided. A lack of any gaps
in a service excellence model would indicate a close
alignment.Change management and governance are
concerned with assigning responsibilities.The
detailed classification associated with profiling the
skills and assessing services enables us to more
comprehensively understand the obligations and
responsibilities required to plan and initiate change,
manageitsprocess and manage the end state.It goes
beyond the corporate governancecurrentlyimplicit in
software engineeringand facilitates transformational
business change.
As installed solutions and services become more
complex, rather than relying on a requirements
specification as the start point, there is likely to be
an increased dependence on SEM gap
analysis.Whilst few business people could develop a
detailed specification of their requirement, most are
able to articulate what business needs are not being
addressed.
Gap analysis is being used to determine the
choice of technical solution (Papazoglou and
Heuvel, 2007) and at the design level, the
characteristics of services (Sampson and Froehle,
2006) have been applied to the design of the human
computer interface for on-line systems. The service
science movement has recognised how measuring
service quality asthe gap from expectations and
perceptions are not onlyoften more realistic but also
more informative than simplymeasuring
satisfaction(Pinhanez, 2008). These characteristics
are based on early work on customer contact theory
but the way in which these are being adapted for on-
line systems have something in common with the
‘closeness’ concept and theskills classification
developed for profiling and improving IT services
(Miller, 2008), drawing both from software
engineeringandalso fromsocial science disciplines.
5 CONCLUSION AND FURTHER
WORK
Despite the usefulness of thesoftware engineering
body of knowledge, the evidence of many surveys is
that there is little correlation between the use of
current tools and a successful business outcome.
In order to more successfully meet the needs and
expectations of the business customer, software
engineering must de-emphasise products and
recognise the business need for services and adopt a
more service-oriented approach to meeting these
needs. We must revise our understanding of the
established concepts of IT service management,
service performance, change management,
alignment, and governance. By doing so we
recognise the need to dramatically improve the
likelihood of a successful business outcomeyet we
SOFTWARE ENGINEERING SYSTEMS AS SERVICES USING A BUSINESS-FOCUSED SERVICE FRAMEWORK
237

are able to retain any investment in IT management
tools.The service stack concept for IT services and
the service excellence model also enable us to
consider how the business and IT relationship is
changing over time and so we are able to revise our
concept of maturity to enable us to provide better
ways of managing emerging technologies and new
IT industry structure models.
If organisations can improve their success rates
by 10% then based on Gartner estimates of
worldwide IT spend in 2010 this could be worth
$320B globally(Gartner, 2010).
The business-focused IT service
conceptsoutlined this position paperhave been used
successfully as a framework to both assess service
and identify additional needs.Work is underway to
investigate further how software engineering can
exploit theseconcepts to achieve improved business
outcomes.
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