Application of Multidimensional Scaling for Responsibility Distribution of Objects: Soft Systems Methodology Artifact-Based Approach

Abstract

In the field of systems development, linking models are expected for each process for improving understandability and productivity. For example, when Soft Systems Methodology is applied to the uppermost process in a stream and an Object-Oriented Approach is applied to the upstream and midstream processes, if the conceptual activity model of the former and the class diagram of the latter can be linked, then we can build systems that are intuitively simple to understand, easily maintained, and reusable. This paper considers a system's root definition and proposes an approach for spatial arrangement through multidimensional scaling of responsibilities extracted from a conceptual activity model. We tested our proposed approach on several samples and obtained a spatial responsibility arrangement that is considerably reasonable. Therefore, we believe this approach has the potential to bridge artifacts from the uppermost stream, including conceptual activity models and midstream artifacts represented by class diagrams.