Large-scale Complex IT Systems

The UK Large-Scale Complex IT Systems (LSCITS) Initiative[1] is a research and graduate education programme focusing
on the problems of developing large-scale, complex IT systems (also referred to as Ultra-large-scale systems or ULSS). The
initiative is funded by the EPSRC, with more than ten million pounds of funding awarded between 2006 and 2013.[

Background
The initial motivation for the establishment of a research programme in large-scale complex IT systems was the publication
of a 2004 report[4] by the Royal Academy of Engineering and the British Computer Society. This report examined the causes
of failure of a number of large software projects and made several recommendations for research to address some of these
problems.
A second report, authored by Seth Bullock & Dave Cliff and also published in 2004, was commissioned by the UK
Government's Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) Office of Science and Technology and carried the title Complexity
and Emergent Behaviour in ICT Systems[5] The main conclusions of this report were that the primary challenges needing to
be addressed in the UK are institutional and cultural obstacles to appropriate interdisciplinary research and that there was an
urgent need to address omissions in UK undergraduate computer science education.

In October 2005, Dave Cliff was appointed Director of the LSCITS initiative by the EPSRC[6] and was asked to consult
extensively with industry on their problems in this area and, on the basis of this consultation, to form a consortium to tackle
these problems. The results of the consultation were that the key concerns of industry were socio-technical issues arising
from the interactions between organisations, people and systems and in high-integrity systems engineering. On the basis of
this, a consortium was formed with two partners (York, Oxford) focusing on formal methods and high-integrity systems and
two partners (Leeds, St Andrews) focusing on socio-technical systems. Subsequently, a further project focusing on cloud
computing was approved with Bristol, St Andrews and Aston Universities as partners.
The five-year research project started in October 2007 with the associated EngD program starting in October 2009.

Partners
University of Bristol. Department of Computer Science (Prof Dave Cliff)
University of Leeds. Institute of Health Sciences (Prof Justin Keen). Dr Andreas Hild and Mr Kanwar Adeel Waheed
Khan also worked on the LSCITS team along from 2008-2011, examining complexity in organisations aspects.
University of Oxford. Department of Computer Science (Prof Marta Kwiatkowska)
University of St Andrews. School of Computer Science (Prof Ian Sommerville)
University of York. Department of Computer Science (Prof John McDermid, Prof Tim Kelly, Prof Richard Paige, Dr
Radu Calinescu)

Research
The LSCITS stack (Figure 1) shows the research areas that are particularly relevant to LSCITS.

The focus of the work of the project was initially in the following areas:
Complexity in organisations (led by University of Leeds)

 Socio-technical systems engineering (led by University of St Andrews).

Predictable software systems(led by University of Oxford)
High-integrity systems (led by University of York)

The LSCITS EngD programme

The LSCITS EngD programme is an Engineering Doctorate scheme, coordinated by the University of York[10] that focuses
on training and research in complex IT systems. Students on the programme take a range of core and optional taught
modules and carry out research in conjunction with an industrial sponsor. The key difference between this programme and a
conventional PhD is that students spend the majority of their time working with the industrial sponsor and may submit a
portfolio thesis, describing several related research projects on a common theme, rather than a single topic.
Core modules on the scheme include
Empirical Methods for LSCITS
High-Integrity Systems Engineering
Predictable Software Systems

 Socio-Technical Systems
Systems Engineering for LSCITS
Technology Innovation
Students take a number of optional modules in addition to these core topics from computer science, mathematics and
management. Overall, the core and optional modules are intended to provide EngD students with breadth as well as depth in
LSCITS topics.

Management and governance

Operational management of the entire LSCITS Initiative is the responsibility of the Director (Dave Cliff), and the two
Initiative Co-Directors (Ian Sommerville and John McDermid). Ian Sommerville manages integration across the various
LSCITS work-packages and activities. John McDermid works with Richard Paige, the LSCITS EngD Centre Director, to
manage the York-based LSCITS Engineering Doctorate programme.
The Director reports to the chair of the LSCITS International Scientific Advisory Board, and to the chair of the LSCITS
National Stakeholder Board.[11] These two boards provide their guidance and advice on the LSCITS research and training
programmes.

Key publications
The papers below, organised according to the LSCITS stack shown in Figure 1, describe the work of the project. A full list
of publications is available on the LSCITS web site.[12]

LSCITS in general
R. Calinescu & M. Kwiatkowska (2010). Software Engineering Techniques for the Development of Systems of
Systems. In C. Choppy & O. Sokolski (editors), Foundations of Computer Software. Future Trends and Techniques
for Development, vol. 6026 of LNCS, pp. 5982, Springer. Preprint available online.[13]
D. Cliff & L. Northrop (2011). The Global Financial Markets: An Ultra-Large Scale Systems Perspective. Briefing
paper for UK Government Office for Science Foresight project on The Future of Computer Trading in the Financial
Markets. September 2011.

 I. Sommerville, D. Cliff, R. Calinescu, J. Keen, T. Kelly, M. Kwiatkowska, J. McDermid, and R. Paige. (2011) Large
Scale Complex IT Systems.

Complexity in organisations
J. Rooksby and I. Sommerville. (2012) The Management and Use of Social Network Sites in a Government
Department. Computer-supported Cooperative Work - The Journal of Collaborative Computing.
J. Keen. (2011) The Governance of Privacy and Confidentiality. Paper prepared for IRSPM XV, Dublin, 1113 April
2011.
J. Keen. (2009) Integration At Any Price: The Case of the NHS National Programme for IT. In: H Margetts, C Hood
and 6 P (eds) Paradoxes of Modernization. Oxford, Oxford University Press.

Socio-technical systems engineering

G. Baxter & I. Sommerville (2010). Socio-Technical Systems: From Design Methods to Systems Engineering.
Interacting With Computers. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.intcom.2010.07.003
I. Sommerville (editor). The Socio-technical Systems Engineering Handbook. (2011). University of St Andrews.

High-integrity systems
X. Ge, R.F. Paige, J. McDermid: Probabilistic Failure Propagation and Transformation Analysis. SAFECOMP 2009:
215-228.
R.F. Paige, A. Galloway, R. Charalambous, X. Ge, P.J. Brooke: High-integrity agile processes for the development of
safety critical software. IJCCBS 2(2): 181-216 (2011). doi:10.1504/IJCCBS.2011.041259
J.R. Williams, S.M. Poulding, L.M. Rose, R.F. Paige, F.A. C. Polack: Identifying Desirable Game Character
Behaviours through the Application of Evolutionary Algorithms to Model-Driven Engineering Metamodels. SSBSE
2011: 112-126. doi:10.1007/978-3-642-23716-4_13.

Predictable software systems

R. Calinescu, L. Grunske, M. Kwiatkowska, R. Mirandola, G. Tamburrelli (2011). Dynamic QoS Management and
Optimisation in Service-Based Systems. In: IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering.

 L. Feng, M. Kwiatkowska and D. Parker. (2011) Automated Learning of Probabilistic Assumptions for Compositional
Reasoning. Proc. 14th International Conference on Fundamental Approaches to Software Engineering (FASE'11),
volume 6603 of LNCS, pages 217, Springer.
M. Kwiatkowska. (2007) Quantitative Verification: Models, Techniques and Tools. Proc. 6th joint meeting of the
European Software Engineering Conference and the ACM SIGSOFT Symposium on the Foundations of Software
Engineering (ESEC/FSE), pages 449-458, ACM Press.
M. Kwiatkowska, G. Norman and D. Parker. (2009) PRISM: Probabilistic Model Checking for Performance and
Reliability Analysis. ACM SIGMETRICS Performance Evaluation Review, 36(4), pages 4045, ACM.

Cloud computing
John Cartlidge and Ilango Sriram (2011). Modelling resilience in cloud-scale data centres. Proceedings of 23rd
European Modeling and Simulation Symposium, Rome. September 2011

 A. Khajeh-Hosseini, D. Greenwood, J. W. Smith & I. Sommerville (2011). The Cloud Adoption Toolkit: Supporting
Cloud Adoption Decisions in the Enterprise. Software: Practice and Experience - Special Issue on Software
Architectures and Application Development Environments for Cloud Computing.

Publications by similar groups

Ultra-large scale systems: Overview. Software Engineering Institute, Carnegie Mellon University.
G. Goth (2008) "Ultralarge Systems: Redefining Software Engineering?" IEEE Software, vol. 25, no. 3, pp. 9194,
May/June 2008, doi:10.1109/MS.2008.82
H. Sillitto, (2010) "Design Principles for Ultra-Large-Scale Systems". Proc. 20th Annual International Council on
Systems Engineering (INCOSE) International Symposium, July, 2010, Chicago, IL, USA.
Northrop, L. et al. (2006). Ultra-Large-Scale Systems: The Software Challenge of the Future. Software Engineering
Institute, Carnegie Mellon University. (6.5MB download)