2015 41st Euromicro Conference on Software Engineering and Advanced Applications, 2015
Customer involvement in software development is essential for building successful software produc... more Customer involvement in software development is essential for building successful software products. Incremental improvements and enhancements of software require an in-depth and continuous understanding of customer needs. Also, mechanisms for managing customer feedback data need to be in place. However, previous research shows that the feedback loops from customers are slow and the process for obtaining timely feedback is challenging. In this study, we investigate customer feedback mechanisms and the ways in which customer data can be used to inform continuous improvement of software products. The contribution of this paper is twofold. First, we present a multiple-case study conducted in five Finnish software companies, where we identify how customer feedback data is collected and used in different product development activities. Second, we provide an explanatory 'customer touch point' (CTP) model which provides an overall understanding of customer feedback data collection and the related challenges in the case companies during software development.
International Journal of Sustainable Economy, 2010
Environmental awareness has been raised up globally, and as a consequence sustainability is incre... more Environmental awareness has been raised up globally, and as a consequence sustainability is increasingly under focus. Due to increased demand from end-users, and tightened legislation, companies have to seriously take sustainability into account. The nature of business in the information and communications technology sector (ICT) is moving from pure product business to more service oriented approaches. Best results can be obtained through combining sustainability requirements directly to product development. This paper analyses how a significant ICT company combines sustainability and product development with design for excellence practices. The results include a description of practical realisation of design for sustainability together with its main challenges.
2016 49th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS), 2016
DevOps is a predominant phenomenon in the web domain. Its two core principles emphasize collabora... more DevOps is a predominant phenomenon in the web domain. Its two core principles emphasize collaboration between software development and operations, and the use of agile principles to manage deployment environments and their configurations. DevOps techniques, such as collaboration and behaviour-driven monitoring, have been used by web companies to facilitate continuous deployment of new functionality to customers. The techniques may also offer opportunities for continuous product improvement when adopted in the embedded systems domain. However, certain characteristics of embedded software development present obstacles for DevOps adoption, and as yet, there is no empirical evidence of its adoption in the embedded systems domain. In this study, we present the challenges for DevOps adoption in embedded systems using a multiple-case study approach with four companies. The contribution of this paper is to introduce the concept of DevOps adoption in the embedded systems domain and then to identify key challenges for the DevOps adoption.
Lecture Notes in Business Information Processing, 2015
The benefits and barriers that software development companies face when moving beyond agile devel... more The benefits and barriers that software development companies face when moving beyond agile development practices are identified in a multiplecase study in five Finnish companies. The practices that companies need to adopt when moving towards innovation experiment systems are recognised. The background of the study is the Stairway to Heaven (StH) model that describes the path that many software development companies take when advancing their development practices. The development practices in each case are investigated and analysed in relation to the StH model. At first the results of the analysis strengthened the validity of the StH model as a path taken by software development companies to advance their development practices. Based on the findings, the StH model was extended with a set of additional practices and their adoption levels for each step of the model. The extended model was validated in five case companies.
Software process defines the way in which software development is organized, managed, measured, s... more Software process defines the way in which software development is organized, managed, measured, supported and improved. This paper gives the classification and the features of the current most popular standards of software process assessment and improvement (including ISO, CMM, Bootstrap and QIP), and introduces the basic idea of Process Model Language (PML) and Process-sensitive Software Engineering Environment (PSEE).
One of the basic assumptions behind most software process improvement methods is that improved pr... more One of the basic assumptions behind most software process improvement methods is that improved processes lead to improved product quality. Despite the popularity of SPI methods, there is a lack of both methods and experience reports on the explicit relationship between software process improvement (SPI) and product improvement. PROFES is a methodology that helps to shift from generic process improvement towards focused improvement of the software processes based on explicit product quality requirements. It combines and enhances methods such as goal-oriented measurement (GQM), process assessment (ISO15504), product and process modelling, and experience factory. The integration of these methodologies helps to focus improvement activities and to use resources more efficiently. PROFES introduces a new method for establishing product process dependencies (PPD), which are used to describe the relationship and interdependency between process and product quality. PPDs are a core element of ...
Technological innovations have brought about substantially changes in the productivity and qualit... more Technological innovations have brought about substantially changes in the productivity and quality of the IS/SW development process during the last twarty years. Perhaps the most frequently refereed innovation today is Computer-Aided Software E+eerkg (CASE), which is highly recommended for incmasii the productivity and quality of the process snd quality of its products. This case study reparts empirical results of a CASE implementation in a large industrial company in Fiisnd with regard to productivity and quality of IS/SW development. The measurements include comparisons between development projects employing traditional development with Cobol. prototyping with the UFO application generator and integrated CASE tool environment IEW/ADW.
Information and communications technology (ICT) companies have realised how acknowledging the nee... more Information and communications technology (ICT) companies have realised how acknowledging the needs of both internal and external customers is a necessity for successful requirements engineering. Design for X (DfX) is a potential management approach for coordinating & communicating requirements emerging from both internal functions and external supply chain partners. This article studies the potential of DfX for improved requirements engineering. Qualitative interviews are utilised to analyse how different organisations implement the concept, including designers' actual work, methods & tools, and organisational aspects. The results include viewing DfX as means to achieve relevant competitive goals, and describing how different companies organise these activities, together with their benefits for modern ICT companies. This study highlights how the DfX concept can be used to manage, prioritise and to better communicate requirements.
... Systems Jorma Taramaal, Munish Khurana2., Pasi Kuvaja2, Jari Lehtonen3, Markku Oivol and Veik... more ... Systems Jorma Taramaal, Munish Khurana2., Pasi Kuvaja2, Jari Lehtonen3, Markku Oivol and Veikko Seppanen' ... ware. As software is easy to change or replace, it hasgot an increasingly important role in embedded systems. ...
Tivit-SRA NeedforSpeed Proposal to Tivit BoD v34.docx Acknowledgements Need For Speed (N4S) SRA i... more Tivit-SRA NeedforSpeed Proposal to Tivit BoD v34.docx Acknowledgements Need For Speed (N4S) SRA is the result of the joint effort of almost 200 participants of the preparation workshops held in Espoo, Tampere and Oulu Finland in February 2013. We wish to thank to these experts who brought their specific know-how and experience from different industry and research fields to the preparation process. The organizations involved were:
BOOTSTRAP methodology was initially developed in an ESPRIT project together with European industr... more BOOTSTRAP methodology was initially developed in an ESPRIT project together with European industry. After February 1993, the methodology has been managed and further developed by a European Economic Interest Group, called BOOTSTRAP Institute. BOOTSTRAP 3.0 was released in September 1997. It is compliant with the PDTR version of ISO 15504, the emerging standard on software engineering. The methodology contains a process model and an assessment method. The process model is based on the ISO 15504 reference model. In addition to the Process and Capability dimensions, it contains a Technology dimension. The Process dimension contains 33 different Processes organised in six clusters: Organisation, Life Cycle Dependent, Management, Support, Customer-Supplier, and Process Related. The Capability dimension consists of six levels, each level consisting of one of more Process Attributes, adopted from ISO 15504. An assessment is conducted at SPU and project levels. The BOOTSTRAP Institute organises and co-ordinates assessor training and registration scheme. BOOTSTRAP methodology is being used in two European projects, PROFES and SPAM.
Lecture Notes in Business Information Processing, 2010
This paper presents a comparison of test-first and test-last development approaches on a customer... more This paper presents a comparison of test-first and test-last development approaches on a customer account management software of a telecommunication company. While the management had plans for initiating a process that enforces test-first development over test-last, they also had concerns about the tradeoffs. Therefore, an exploratory case study with quantitative analysis is carried out on a pilot project where the code metrics and estimated manual inspection efforts of both approaches are compared. Our results indicate no statistical difference between the two approaches in terms of design (CK) metrics. On the other hand, we observe that test-last development yields significantly simpler code in terms of cyclomatic complexity and less (though not significant) manual inspection effort. Hence, our initial results indicate no superiority of test-first over test-last development in the described industrial context.
Lecture Notes in Business Information Processing, 2010
The main concern of the software industry is to deliver more products in shorter time-cycles to c... more The main concern of the software industry is to deliver more products in shorter time-cycles to customers with an acceptable economic justification. In virtue of these concerns, the software industry and researchers in the field of software engineering have engaged in the process of adopting lean principles. In this paper, we are seeking the knowledge that could help us better understand the nature of flows in software development. We define a generalized concept of the value creation points and an axiomatic system that capture the specifics of software development. Further, a generalized definition of the flow makes it possible to identify super-classes of waste sources. Finally, we define a concept of decision flow, suggesting what a value creation point could be in the software development context. The decision flow is an inseparable part of the software development activities and it carries capabilities of adding or diminishing the value of products.
Tissue inhibitor of metalloproteinases-1 (TIMP-1) is shown to be a potential marker for poor prog... more Tissue inhibitor of metalloproteinases-1 (TIMP-1) is shown to be a potential marker for poor prognosis in breast cancer, but the biology of TIMP-1 is only partially understood. In this study, TIMP-1 production was studied in a co-culture model of hormone-independent breast cancer cell lines and mesenchymal stem cells mimicking the stromal components of the tumor. In addition, the prognostic value of TIMP-1 was histologically evaluated in a clinical material of 168 patients with hormone-independent breast tumors. The hormone-independent breast cancer (BC) cell lines MDA-MB-231, M4A4 and NM2C5 did not produce TIMP-1 protein in measureable quantities. Six tested primary mesenchymal stem cell lines all produced TIMP-1. Co-culturing of mesenchymal stem cells and breast cancer cells resulted in positive immunocytochemical diffuse staining for TIMP-1 for both cell types. Culturing breast cancer cells with MSC-conditioned media resulted in a positive cytoplasmic immunoreactivity for TIMP-1, and TIMP-1 protein concentration in cell lysates increased 2.7-fold (range 1.1-4.7). The TIMP-1 mRNA levels remained unaffected in BC cells. This might suggest that breast cancer cells can take up TIMP-1 produced by stromal cells and are thus displaying cellular immunoreactivity. In addition, TIMP-1 was shown to improve stratification of prognosis in clinical material.
2015 41st Euromicro Conference on Software Engineering and Advanced Applications, 2015
Customer involvement in software development is essential for building successful software produc... more Customer involvement in software development is essential for building successful software products. Incremental improvements and enhancements of software require an in-depth and continuous understanding of customer needs. Also, mechanisms for managing customer feedback data need to be in place. However, previous research shows that the feedback loops from customers are slow and the process for obtaining timely feedback is challenging. In this study, we investigate customer feedback mechanisms and the ways in which customer data can be used to inform continuous improvement of software products. The contribution of this paper is twofold. First, we present a multiple-case study conducted in five Finnish software companies, where we identify how customer feedback data is collected and used in different product development activities. Second, we provide an explanatory 'customer touch point' (CTP) model which provides an overall understanding of customer feedback data collection and the related challenges in the case companies during software development.
International Journal of Sustainable Economy, 2010
Environmental awareness has been raised up globally, and as a consequence sustainability is incre... more Environmental awareness has been raised up globally, and as a consequence sustainability is increasingly under focus. Due to increased demand from end-users, and tightened legislation, companies have to seriously take sustainability into account. The nature of business in the information and communications technology sector (ICT) is moving from pure product business to more service oriented approaches. Best results can be obtained through combining sustainability requirements directly to product development. This paper analyses how a significant ICT company combines sustainability and product development with design for excellence practices. The results include a description of practical realisation of design for sustainability together with its main challenges.
2016 49th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS), 2016
DevOps is a predominant phenomenon in the web domain. Its two core principles emphasize collabora... more DevOps is a predominant phenomenon in the web domain. Its two core principles emphasize collaboration between software development and operations, and the use of agile principles to manage deployment environments and their configurations. DevOps techniques, such as collaboration and behaviour-driven monitoring, have been used by web companies to facilitate continuous deployment of new functionality to customers. The techniques may also offer opportunities for continuous product improvement when adopted in the embedded systems domain. However, certain characteristics of embedded software development present obstacles for DevOps adoption, and as yet, there is no empirical evidence of its adoption in the embedded systems domain. In this study, we present the challenges for DevOps adoption in embedded systems using a multiple-case study approach with four companies. The contribution of this paper is to introduce the concept of DevOps adoption in the embedded systems domain and then to identify key challenges for the DevOps adoption.
Lecture Notes in Business Information Processing, 2015
The benefits and barriers that software development companies face when moving beyond agile devel... more The benefits and barriers that software development companies face when moving beyond agile development practices are identified in a multiplecase study in five Finnish companies. The practices that companies need to adopt when moving towards innovation experiment systems are recognised. The background of the study is the Stairway to Heaven (StH) model that describes the path that many software development companies take when advancing their development practices. The development practices in each case are investigated and analysed in relation to the StH model. At first the results of the analysis strengthened the validity of the StH model as a path taken by software development companies to advance their development practices. Based on the findings, the StH model was extended with a set of additional practices and their adoption levels for each step of the model. The extended model was validated in five case companies.
Software process defines the way in which software development is organized, managed, measured, s... more Software process defines the way in which software development is organized, managed, measured, supported and improved. This paper gives the classification and the features of the current most popular standards of software process assessment and improvement (including ISO, CMM, Bootstrap and QIP), and introduces the basic idea of Process Model Language (PML) and Process-sensitive Software Engineering Environment (PSEE).
One of the basic assumptions behind most software process improvement methods is that improved pr... more One of the basic assumptions behind most software process improvement methods is that improved processes lead to improved product quality. Despite the popularity of SPI methods, there is a lack of both methods and experience reports on the explicit relationship between software process improvement (SPI) and product improvement. PROFES is a methodology that helps to shift from generic process improvement towards focused improvement of the software processes based on explicit product quality requirements. It combines and enhances methods such as goal-oriented measurement (GQM), process assessment (ISO15504), product and process modelling, and experience factory. The integration of these methodologies helps to focus improvement activities and to use resources more efficiently. PROFES introduces a new method for establishing product process dependencies (PPD), which are used to describe the relationship and interdependency between process and product quality. PPDs are a core element of ...
Technological innovations have brought about substantially changes in the productivity and qualit... more Technological innovations have brought about substantially changes in the productivity and quality of the IS/SW development process during the last twarty years. Perhaps the most frequently refereed innovation today is Computer-Aided Software E+eerkg (CASE), which is highly recommended for incmasii the productivity and quality of the process snd quality of its products. This case study reparts empirical results of a CASE implementation in a large industrial company in Fiisnd with regard to productivity and quality of IS/SW development. The measurements include comparisons between development projects employing traditional development with Cobol. prototyping with the UFO application generator and integrated CASE tool environment IEW/ADW.
Information and communications technology (ICT) companies have realised how acknowledging the nee... more Information and communications technology (ICT) companies have realised how acknowledging the needs of both internal and external customers is a necessity for successful requirements engineering. Design for X (DfX) is a potential management approach for coordinating & communicating requirements emerging from both internal functions and external supply chain partners. This article studies the potential of DfX for improved requirements engineering. Qualitative interviews are utilised to analyse how different organisations implement the concept, including designers' actual work, methods & tools, and organisational aspects. The results include viewing DfX as means to achieve relevant competitive goals, and describing how different companies organise these activities, together with their benefits for modern ICT companies. This study highlights how the DfX concept can be used to manage, prioritise and to better communicate requirements.
... Systems Jorma Taramaal, Munish Khurana2., Pasi Kuvaja2, Jari Lehtonen3, Markku Oivol and Veik... more ... Systems Jorma Taramaal, Munish Khurana2., Pasi Kuvaja2, Jari Lehtonen3, Markku Oivol and Veikko Seppanen' ... ware. As software is easy to change or replace, it hasgot an increasingly important role in embedded systems. ...
Tivit-SRA NeedforSpeed Proposal to Tivit BoD v34.docx Acknowledgements Need For Speed (N4S) SRA i... more Tivit-SRA NeedforSpeed Proposal to Tivit BoD v34.docx Acknowledgements Need For Speed (N4S) SRA is the result of the joint effort of almost 200 participants of the preparation workshops held in Espoo, Tampere and Oulu Finland in February 2013. We wish to thank to these experts who brought their specific know-how and experience from different industry and research fields to the preparation process. The organizations involved were:
BOOTSTRAP methodology was initially developed in an ESPRIT project together with European industr... more BOOTSTRAP methodology was initially developed in an ESPRIT project together with European industry. After February 1993, the methodology has been managed and further developed by a European Economic Interest Group, called BOOTSTRAP Institute. BOOTSTRAP 3.0 was released in September 1997. It is compliant with the PDTR version of ISO 15504, the emerging standard on software engineering. The methodology contains a process model and an assessment method. The process model is based on the ISO 15504 reference model. In addition to the Process and Capability dimensions, it contains a Technology dimension. The Process dimension contains 33 different Processes organised in six clusters: Organisation, Life Cycle Dependent, Management, Support, Customer-Supplier, and Process Related. The Capability dimension consists of six levels, each level consisting of one of more Process Attributes, adopted from ISO 15504. An assessment is conducted at SPU and project levels. The BOOTSTRAP Institute organises and co-ordinates assessor training and registration scheme. BOOTSTRAP methodology is being used in two European projects, PROFES and SPAM.
Lecture Notes in Business Information Processing, 2010
This paper presents a comparison of test-first and test-last development approaches on a customer... more This paper presents a comparison of test-first and test-last development approaches on a customer account management software of a telecommunication company. While the management had plans for initiating a process that enforces test-first development over test-last, they also had concerns about the tradeoffs. Therefore, an exploratory case study with quantitative analysis is carried out on a pilot project where the code metrics and estimated manual inspection efforts of both approaches are compared. Our results indicate no statistical difference between the two approaches in terms of design (CK) metrics. On the other hand, we observe that test-last development yields significantly simpler code in terms of cyclomatic complexity and less (though not significant) manual inspection effort. Hence, our initial results indicate no superiority of test-first over test-last development in the described industrial context.
Lecture Notes in Business Information Processing, 2010
The main concern of the software industry is to deliver more products in shorter time-cycles to c... more The main concern of the software industry is to deliver more products in shorter time-cycles to customers with an acceptable economic justification. In virtue of these concerns, the software industry and researchers in the field of software engineering have engaged in the process of adopting lean principles. In this paper, we are seeking the knowledge that could help us better understand the nature of flows in software development. We define a generalized concept of the value creation points and an axiomatic system that capture the specifics of software development. Further, a generalized definition of the flow makes it possible to identify super-classes of waste sources. Finally, we define a concept of decision flow, suggesting what a value creation point could be in the software development context. The decision flow is an inseparable part of the software development activities and it carries capabilities of adding or diminishing the value of products.
Tissue inhibitor of metalloproteinases-1 (TIMP-1) is shown to be a potential marker for poor prog... more Tissue inhibitor of metalloproteinases-1 (TIMP-1) is shown to be a potential marker for poor prognosis in breast cancer, but the biology of TIMP-1 is only partially understood. In this study, TIMP-1 production was studied in a co-culture model of hormone-independent breast cancer cell lines and mesenchymal stem cells mimicking the stromal components of the tumor. In addition, the prognostic value of TIMP-1 was histologically evaluated in a clinical material of 168 patients with hormone-independent breast tumors. The hormone-independent breast cancer (BC) cell lines MDA-MB-231, M4A4 and NM2C5 did not produce TIMP-1 protein in measureable quantities. Six tested primary mesenchymal stem cell lines all produced TIMP-1. Co-culturing of mesenchymal stem cells and breast cancer cells resulted in positive immunocytochemical diffuse staining for TIMP-1 for both cell types. Culturing breast cancer cells with MSC-conditioned media resulted in a positive cytoplasmic immunoreactivity for TIMP-1, and TIMP-1 protein concentration in cell lysates increased 2.7-fold (range 1.1-4.7). The TIMP-1 mRNA levels remained unaffected in BC cells. This might suggest that breast cancer cells can take up TIMP-1 produced by stromal cells and are thus displaying cellular immunoreactivity. In addition, TIMP-1 was shown to improve stratification of prognosis in clinical material.
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