The flow-service-quality framework: unified engineering for large-scale, adaptive systems
Alan R. Hevner, R.C. Linger, Ann E. Kelley Sobel, Gwendolyn H. Walton · 2003
Modern enterprises are irreversibly dependent on large-scale, adaptive, component-based information systems whose complexity frequently exceeds current engineering capabilities for intellectual control, resulting in persistent difficulties in system development, management, and evolution. We propose an innovative framework of engineering representation and reasoning methods for developing these complex systems: the flow-service-quality (FSQ) framework. In dynamic network information systems with constantly varying function and usage, workflows and their corresponding traces of system services act as stable foundations for functional and non functional (quality attribute) specification, design, and operational control. Our objective is to provide theoretical foundations, language representations, and rigorous yet practical unified engineering methods to represent and reason about system flows as essential artifacts of system specification, design, and operation.