M. Wimmer: Managing Quality in Software and Systems Engineering: A Modeling Perspective, 14th International Conference on the Quality of Information and Communications Technology - QUATIC 2021 Keynote Speaker, September 8-10, 2021, online. keynote
We are currently facing a dramatically increasing complexity in engineering, operation, and management of systems with the emergence of Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS) and the Internet-of-Things (IoT). This demands for comprehensive and systematic views on all system aspects (e.g., mechanical engineering, electrical engineering, and software engineering) throughout the whole system life-cycle, moving Software Engineering closer to Systems Engineering.
To engineer such interdisciplinary systems, modeling is traditionally considered as the technique to understand and simplify reality through abstraction. In addition, models are nowadays used beyond the engineering phases by connecting them to the observed runtime data of the operating systems in so-called digital twins. However, in order to use models and their digital twin extensions in an effective and efficient way, the quality of models must be ensured throughout the complete system life-cycle.
In my talk, I will outline several concepts and techniques to assess, and if required, to improve the quality of models and associated artefacts, e.g., model transformations, language definitions, and digital twins. In particular, I will talk about AI-based techniques, which can be applied directly on models to improve their quality, e.g., by finding refactoring sequences. Finally, I will conclude with some lessons learned from several projects and outline future challenges for managing the quality of models in software and systems engineering.