The concept of problem complexity

Alejandro Salado, Roshanak Nilchiani

    Research output: Contribution to journalConference articlepeer-review

    22 Scopus citations

    Abstract

    Recognizing the impact of system complexity on the success of a system's development has created significant research efforts towards measuring system complexity In particular, the research community has proposed techniques to measure three types of system complexity (1) structural complexity, which measures the complexity resulting from physical interconnection of components, (2) functional complexity, which measures the complexity resulting from interconnection of system functions, and (3) organizational complexity, which measures the contractual interconnection of the different organizations developing the system The majority of these metrics focus on measuring aspects of the complexity of an existing system or design However, a metric to anticipate the complexity induced by the problem itself on a system's development is lacking We therefore present the concept of Problem Complexity as the complexity level that a set of requirements can impose to any system fulfilling them In addition, we mathematically demonstrate using the concept of joint entropy how problem complexity defines the minimum level of complexity a system can achieve for a given set of requirements The paper suggests an analytic formulation to measure the complexity induced by a set of requirements in a system's development that is based on a set of heuristics that facilitate identification of conflicts between requirements The use of such analytical formulation is showcased on a notional case-study

    Original languageEnglish
    Pages (from-to)539-546
    Number of pages8
    JournalProcedia Computer Science
    Volume28
    DOIs
    StatePublished - 2014
    Event12th Annual Conference on SystemsEngineering Research, CSER 2014 - Redondo Beach, CA, United States
    Duration: 21 Mar 201422 Mar 2014

    Keywords

    • Entropy
    • Problem definition
    • System complexity

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