Viable systems: the control paradigm for software architecture revisited

An emerging class of software applications are identified as "complex" systems. They are complex in that they must adapt to a changing environment. This motivates us to revisit the "control paradigm" for software architecture. In this paper, we go beyond that approach and introduce the concept of viability as the overall characteristic of the behaviour desired in such systems. We present an architecture to guide the software engineering of this class of complex system. The architecture is based on a cybernetic model called the "viable system model". As an application of the approach, we are developing a "smart lecture room". We report on our efforts in employing the architecture to develop this application.