On the Constituent Attributes of Software and Organizational Resilience

Abstract

The conjecture is put forward that a better understanding of resilience may be reached by decomposing it into a number of ancillary constituent properties, in the same way as a better insight into system dependability was obtained by breaking it down into safety, availability, reliability, and other sub-properties. Three of the main sub-properties of resilience proposed here refer respectively to the ability to perceive environmental changes; to understand the implications introduced by those changes; and to plan and enact adjustments intended to improve the system–environment fit. A fourth property characterizes the way the above abilities manifest themselves in computer systems. The four properties are then analyzed in three families of case studies, each consisting of three software systems that embed different resilience methods. Our major conclusion is that reasoning in terms of our resilience sub-properties may help reveal the characteristics and, in particular, the limitations of classic methods and tools meant to achieve system and organizational resilience. It is suggested that this method may be a prelude to meta-resilient systems, which are able to adjust optimally their own resilience with respect to changing environmental conditions.