Metrics for Application Landscapes

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Metrics for Application Landscapes Institut für Informatik der Technischen Universität München Metrics for Application Landscapes Status Quo, Development, and a Case Study Josef K. Lankes Vollständiger Abdruck der von der Fakultät für Informatik der Technischen Universität München zur Erlangung des akademischen Grades eines Doktors der Naturwissenschaften (Dr. rer. nat.) genehmigten Dissertation. Vorsitzender: Univ.-Prof. Alfons Kemper, Ph.D. Prüfer der Dissertation: 1. Univ.-Prof. Dr. Florian Matthes 2. Univ.-Prof. Dr. Martin Bichler Die Dissertation wurde am 24.06.2008 bei der Technischen Universität München eingereicht und durch die Fakultät für Informatik am 18.10.2008 angenommen. II Zusammenfassung Die Bedeutung und Komplexität der IT in Unternehmen sind in der Vergangenheit gestiegen und nehmen weiter zu. Daher stellt das Management der Anwendungs- landschaft aktuell eine wichtige Herausforderung dar. Die vorliegende Arbeit untersucht die Anwendbarkeit von Metriken im Management von Anwendungs- landschaften. Durch die Metriken sollen Ziele und deren Erreichung auch für die Fachseite transparenter werden. Die Arbeit liefert zunächst eine Umfeldanalyse im Bereich Anwendungsland- schaftsmetriken, und konzentriert sich dann auf Metriken zur Analyse von Fehler- fortpflanzung, deren Anwendbarkeit in einer Fallstudie nachgewiesen wird. Der erste Teil der Arbeit untersucht in einer empirischen Analyse, wie und in welchem Umfeld im Management von Anwendungslandschaften Metriken zum Einsatz kommen. Die Analyse basiert auf Experteninterviews und einer On- lineumfrage. Sie identifiziert Metriken für Anwendungslandschaften als ein rel- ativ junges Gebiet, dem Praktiker allerdings ein deutliches Potential zuschreiben. Dabei richtet sich das Interesse der Praktiker verstärkt auf Anwendungsfälle, die sich mit den Qualitätsmerkmalen Funktionalität, Flexibilität und Risiken im Be- trieb befassen. Aus Sicht der Praktiker erlauben Metriken vor allem, Ziele zu definieren, den Status Quo und Verbesserungspotential aufzuzeigen, und Kom- munikation über die Anwendungslandschaft zu unterstützen. In diesem Zusam- menhang helfen Metriken vor allem Beteiligten der Fachseite, über bestimmte Strukturen oder Änderungen der Anwendungslandschaft zu kommunizieren, ohne sich dabei zu intensiv mit technischen Details zu befassen. Die Umfeldanal- yse liefert die Grundlage für Leitlinien zur Entwicklung von Anwendungsland- schaftsmetriken. Der zweite Teil der Arbeit entwickelt Metriken und metrikbasierte Methoden, die sich mit Betriebsrisiken befassen. Die erste Methode unterstützt die Analyse von Fehlerfortpflanzung in einer Anwendungslandschaft, die zweite hilft bei der Bewertung von Projektvorschlägen, die Fehlerfortpflanzung eindämmen sollen. Beide Methoden visualisieren Metriken auf Softwarekarten. Der dritte Teil der Arbeit beschreibt den Einsatz der Metriken in einer großen Bank. Diese Fallstudie zeigt die Anwendbarkeit der metrikbasierten Methoden in der Praxis. Dabei wurden zwei Vorschläge verglichen, die das Ziel hatten, in der Anwendungslandschaft stärker entkoppelte Substrukturen einzuführen. Die Fallstudie stellt dar, wie Metriken, Methoden und Darstellungen an eine bes- timmte Einsatzsituation angepasst werden müssen. Darüber hinaus beschreibt sie den Aufbau von prototypischen Werkzeugen zur Berechnung und Darstellung der Metriken und liefert damit Erfahrungen zur Werkzeugunterstützung für An- wendungslandschaftsmetriken. Insgesamt führte der Einsatz der metrikbasierten Methoden zu einem verbesserten Verständnis der Projektvorschläge, womit die Fallstudie den Nutzen von Anwendungslandschaftsmetriken zeigen konnte. III IV Abstract Managing an application landscape has emerged as a new challenge, since the importance, size and complexity of the landscapes is constantly growing in a major share of organizations. This work proposes metrics for application landscapes as a quantitative technique to address the challenge. Its aim is to make application landscape management more systematic and transparent, and render goals and their achievement more accessible to business. This work starts with a broad, general outlook on the subject, followed by a focused treatment of metrics analyzing failure propagation, and concludes with their application in a case study. The first part presents an empirical analysis of the environment, in which met- rics for application landscapes are used. In this analysis, expert interviews and an online questionnaire identified application landscape metrics as a relatively young field, however perceived by practitioners as showing considerable potential. Use cases practitioners are especially interested in, include the quality attributes functionality, flexibility, and operational risk. Practitioners intend to use metrics in particular for setting goals, showing the status quo and potential for improve- ment, as well as communicating facts about an application landscape. In this context, business stakeholders value the ability to communicate the implications of specific structures or changes in an application landscape without delving too deeply into technical details. The analysis results form the basis of guidelines for application landscape metrics. To give an example for application landscape metrics, the second part of the work introduces two methodologies concerned with operational risk: The first one supports analyses of failure propagation in an application landscape, while the second one addresses comparing proposals for limiting failure propagation. Both especially focus on visualizing the metrics they use. In the third part, a case study applies the metrics based methodologies at a large bank, demonstrating their applicability to real world concerns. The case study compares two proposals created by stakeholders for limiting failure propa- gation. It demonstrates the adaptations necessary to employ the metrics based methodologies in a specific use case. As the case study discusses the prototypical software supporting the necessary calculations, it also contributes to the future development of EA management tools. Altogether, applying the metrics based methodologies provided the stakeholders with an improved insight into the ef- fects connected to their proposals, thus demonstrating the benefit of application landscape metrics. V VI Acknowledgments This work emerged from my activities as a research assistant at the Chair for Informat- ics 19 (sebis) at the Department of Informatics of the Technische Universität München. Here, I would like to thank all those who supported me in my research. First of all, I would like to thank my doctoral advisor, Prof. Dr. Florian Matthes, for providing the opportunity to work on an interesting research topic, and for his suggestions and advice that greatly contributed to the success of this work. I would also like to thank Prof. Dr. Martin Bichler, for our conversations about the subject and for being the second referee of my thesis. This work is part of and based on sebis’ research into application landscapes and software cartography. Thus, I would like to thank my colleagues in the software cartography team for their patience in discussing ideas, developing approaches, writing publications, and reviewing texts. This cooperation greatly influenced my research on metrics for application landscapes. My thanks go to Sabine Buckl, Alexander M. Ernst, Christian M. Schweda, and Dr. André Wittenburg. I would also like to thank the students which contributed to my research on application landscape metrics. Claudius Hauptmann provided me with insights into IT balanced scorecard topics in his project work. Stephen Lauschke’s Master’s thesis on layouting software maps enabled me to create the software maps used in the case study on appli- cation landscape metrics. Discussing my research with practitioners and applying the metrics in a real world case study greatly contributed to my research, allowing me to keep my work focused, and evaluate its results. Thus, my thanks also go to the practitioners who gave me the opportunity to discuss my work with them, and apply it in practice. Last but not least, I am most grateful to my family, especially to my parents, for their support and constant encouragement during my doctoral work, and to my wife, for her patience and understanding. Garching b. München, June 2008 Josef K. Lankes VII All trademarks or registered trademarks are the property of their respective owners. The information contained herein has been obtained from sources believed to be reliable at the time of publication but cannot be guaranteed. The author disclaims all warranties as to the accuracy, completeness, or adequacy of such information. The author shall have no liability for errors, omissions, or inadequacies in the information contained herein or for interpretations thereof. In no event shall the author be liable for any damage of any kind (e.g. direct, indirect, special, incidental, consequential, or punitive damages) whatsoever, including without limitation lost revenues, or lost profits, which may result from the use of these materials. VIII Contents 1. Motivation and Outline 1 1.1. Managing Application Landscapes as a Recent Challenge .......... 2 1.2. Enabling Management with Metrics ...................... 3 1.3. Research Questions ............................... 4 1.4. Methodological Issues ............................. 6 1.5. Document Structure .............................. 9 2. Application Landscape Management and Metrics Usage 11 2.1. EA Management and Management of Application Landscapes ....... 11 2.2. Measurement
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