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MaguireLMD_ISE20_Controlling CoC.pdf (2.47 MB)

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Controlling the Costs of Coordination in Large-scale Distributed Software Systems

Maguire, Laura Marie Dose
http://orcid.org/0000-0002-2675-0622
http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1593661547087969

Abstract Details

2020, Doctor of Philosophy, Ohio State University, Industrial and Systems Engineering.
Responding to anomalies in the critical digital services domain involves coordination across a distributed system of automated subsystems and multiple human roles (Allspaw, 2015; Grayson, 2019). Exploring the costs of this joint activity is an underexamined area of study (Woods, 2017) but has important implications for managing complex systems across distributed teams and for tool design and use. It is understood that anomaly recognition is a shared activity between the users of the service, the automated monitoring systems, and the practitioners responsible for developing and operating the service (Allspaw, 2015). In addition, multiple, diverse perspectives are needed for their different views of the system and its behavior and their ability to recognize unexpected and abnormal conditions. While the collaborative interplay and synchronization of roles is critical in anomaly response (Patterson et al, 1999; Patterson & Woods, 2001), the cognitive costs for practitioners (Klein et al, 2005; Klinger & Klein, 1999; Klein, 2006) can be substantial. The choreography of this joint activity is shown to be a subtle and highly integrated into the technical efforts of dynamic fault management. This work uses process tracing to take a detailed look at a corpus of five cases involving software engineers coping with unexpected service outages of varying difficulty. In doing so, it is noted that the practices of incident management work very differently than domain models suggest and the tooling designed to aid coordination incurs a cognitive cost for practitioners. Adding to the literature on coordination in ambiguous, time pressured and non co-located groups, this study shows that adaptive choreography enables practitioners to cope with dynamic events – and dynamic coordination demands. These demands can also be a function of the coordination strategies of others – in particular when they shift costs of coordination across time and organizational boundaries.
David Woods (Advisor)
Michael Rayo (Committee Member)
Philip Smith (Committee Member)
190 p.
Computer Science; Engineering
coordination; critical digital infrastructure; cognitive systems engineering; adaptive choreography; human factors; software engineering; complex adaptive systems; costs of coordination; anomaly response;

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • Maguire, L. M. D. (2020). Controlling the Costs of Coordination in Large-scale Distributed Software Systems [Doctoral dissertation, Ohio State University]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1593661547087969

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • Maguire, Laura. Controlling the Costs of Coordination in Large-scale Distributed Software Systems. 2020. Ohio State University, Doctoral dissertation. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1593661547087969.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • Maguire, Laura. "Controlling the Costs of Coordination in Large-scale Distributed Software Systems." Doctoral dissertation, Ohio State University, 2020. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1593661547087969

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)

osu1593661547087969
1,447
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This open access ETD is published by The Ohio State University and OhioLINK.