Adopting the Essence Framework to Derive a Practice Library for the Development of IoT Systems

Abstract

The Internet of Things (IoT) is a global network of smart devices which enables these objects to collect and exchange data. Research in the IoT is still progressing, and it is now being applied in various domains. One of the key observations is that the development of IoT systems is not trivial and needs to be carefully managed to meet the required functional and quality concerns. Due to the heterogeneous aspects including software, hardware, and communication, developing the IoT systems implies various challenges that need to be explicitly considered in the development process and successfully resolved. Unfortunately, less focus has been provided so far on the development methods for the IoT systems. To address the particular IoT development concerns, we analyze and discuss the existing approaches that target the development of IoT systems. For this purpose, we use the Essence Framework, which has been recently developed as a framework for modeling various kinds of software development practices and methods. We propose an initial practice library, which can be used to develop and/or tailor project-specific IoT system development methods.