Ericsson AB Research Articles

Software selection in large-scale software engineering: A model and criteria based on interactive rapid reviews

ContextSoftware selection in large-scale software development continues to be ad hoc and ill-structured. Previous proposals for software component selection tend to be technology-specific and/or do not consider business or ecosystem concerns.ObjectiveOur main aim is to develop an industrially relevant technology-agnostic method that can support practitioners in making informed decisions when selecting software components for use in tools or in products based on a holistic perspective of the overall environment.MethodWe used method engineering to iteratively develop a software selection method for Ericsson AB based on a combination of published research and practitioner insights. We used interactive rapid reviews to systematically identify and analyse scientific literature and to support close cooperation and co-design with practitioners from Ericsson. The model has been validated through a focus group and by practical use at the case company.ResultsThe model consists of a high-level selection process and a wide range of criteria for assessing and for evaluating software to include in business products and tools.ConclusionsWe have developed an industrially relevant model for component selection through active engagement from a company. Co-designing the model based on previous knowledge demonstrates a viable approach to industry-academia collaboration and provides a practical solution that can support practitioners in making informed decisions based on a holistic analysis of business, organisation and technical factors.

Aspects of modelling requirements in very-large agile systems engineering

Using models for requirements engineering (RE) is uncommon in systems engineering, despite the widespread use of model-based engineering in general. One reason for this lack of use is that formal models do not match well the trend to move towards agile developing methods. While there exists work that investigates challenges in the adoption of requirements modelling and agile methods in systems engineering, there is a lack of work studying successful approaches of using requirements modelling in agile systems engineering. To address this gap, we conducted a case study investigating the application of requirements models at Ericsson AB, a Swedish telecommunications company. We studied a department using requirements models to bridge agile development and plan-driven development aspects. We find that models are used to understand how requirements relate to each other, and to keep track with the product’s evolution. To cope with the effort to maintain models over time, study participants suggest to rely on text-based notations that bring the models closer to developers and allow integration into existing software development workflows. This results in tool trade-offs, e.g., losing the possibility to control diagram layout.

Business Model Flexibility and Software-intensive Companies: Opportunities and Challenges

Background: Software plays an essential role in enabling digital transformation via digital services added to traditional products or fully digital business offerings. This calls for a better understanding of the relationships between the dynamic nature of business models and their realization using software engineering practices. Aim: In this paper, we synthesize the implications of digitalization on business model flexibility for software-intensive companies based on an extensive literature survey and a longitudinal case study at Ericsson AB. We analyze how software-intensive companies can better synchronize business model changes with software development processes and organizations. Method: We synthesize six propositions based on the literature review and extensive industrial experience with a large software-intensive company working in the telecommunication domain. Conclusions: Our work is designed to facilitate the cross-disciplinary analysis of business model dynamics and business model flexibility by linking value, transaction, and organizational learning to business model change. We believe that software engineering tools and methods can play a crucial role in enabling more automated synchronization between technology and business model changes.

Cooperative Intersection Crossing Over 5G

Autonomous driving is a safety critical application of sensing and decision-making technologies. Communication technologies extend the awareness capabilities of vehicles, beyond what is achievable with the on-board systems only. Nonetheless, issues typically related to wireless networking must be taken into account when designing safe and reliable autonomous systems. The aim of this work is to present a control algorithm and a communication paradigm over 5G networks for negotiating traffic junctions in urban areas. The proposed control framework has been shown to converge in a finite time and the supporting communication software has been designed with the objective of minimizing communication delays. At the same time, the underlying network guarantees reliability of the communication. The proposed framework has been successfully deployed and tested, in partnership with Ericsson AB, at the AstaZero proving ground in Goteborg, Sweden. In our experiments, three heterogeneous autonomous vehicles successfully drove through a 4-way intersection of 235 square meters in an urban scenario.

Complementary Technology Traces in Software Practice: A Retrospective Reflection over Sixteen Years of Evolution at Ericsson

ABSTRACT To advance knowledge about evolution of practices within a software organisation, we offer a retrospective reflection based on several years of research into a software unit at Ericsson AB. Covering 16 years of evolution, we developed multiple publications from continuously expanding sources of software technology implementation data. While these publications report from specific junctures of software practice evolution at the unit, our retrospective reflection allows us to consider the impacts of the unit’s investments into two technology paradigms over the sixteen-year period: first into CMM-RUP with a focus on discipline and structured practices and years later into Agile-Lean with a focus on flexibility and responsive practices. Hence, we adopt retrospective reflection to investigate how imprints from the two paradigms, despite considerable timespan between the related technology implementations, eventually complemented each other in the unit’s software practices. Because one paradigm focuses on discipline and structured practices and the other on flexibility and responsive practices, our retrospective reflections consider how the two paradigms together impacted the software unit’s ambidextrous capability. As a result, we advance the idea that as software organisations over time invest in complementary technology paradigms they leave important technology traces with sustainable impacts on their software practices.

Introducing intents to the OODA-loop

Together with Ericsson AB, we are using the design science framework when investigating how to create an intent-driven system for their business support system and its business studio. The aim is to present our initial results on how an extended OODA-loop can be used to realize a robust, but still flexible, software architecture for an intent-driven system. We explain how an extended OODA-loop is constructed and provide suggestions of how different part of it can be implemented. The initial results are promising but further research is needed to use the extended OODA-loop as reusable components in intent-driven systems. Our next step is to extend the generic methods with knowledge representation and reasoning capabilities.

Chapter 6 – Mobility, migration and transnational connectivity

Chapter 6 – Mobility, migration and transnational connectivity

Strategic Marketing Plan: A Case Study of Ericsson AB

Ericsson AB plays a vital role in shaping the way people communicate through innovation, and champions the next generation technologies for more efficient and better quality deliveries. This strategic marketing plan report provides a critical market perspective analysis on Ericsson’s AB situation analysis, marketing strategy, financials, and controls. It further presents concise and integrated information with insights about the organization’s marketing objectives of its products and services of “IP Networks and Transports” towards the Network Society. These products are routing and switching products that are simple, smart and scalable that allow mobile operators to handle broadband growth and ensure a smooth evolution to all-IP in the Information and Communication Technology (ICT) industry. The paper presents an analysis of the telecoms market that described the rapid evolution of the Internet during the recent years that has shaken the foundations of the industry, and catalyzed social and economic change. Further highlights were given in the areas of market summary that captured evolutionary transitioning shift from just a product-dominant focus to a service-dominant focus with focus on market analysis, trends, and needs. SWOT Analysis of the company was also highlighted to show the strengths, weakness, opportunities and threats. Market competition from its competitors such as Huawei, ZTE, and Cisco was also discussed. Furthermore, product offerings in the area of IP Networks and Transport with key successes and critical issues were highlighted as well. While target markets in terms of Ericsson’s business were discussed with positioning, strategies, marketing mix (4 Ps) and marketing research; analysis of the organization’s financials with insights on the financial results of first quarter 2015 showing profit margins, net sales and operating income were highlighted. Finally, a control mechanism that need to be enforced by the organization to remain sustainable competitive, recommendation, and implementation strategy scheduled for over 2 years were presented.

The pragmatics of clone detection and elimination

The occurrence of similar code, or `code clones', can make program code difficult to read, modify and maintain. This paper describes industrial case studies of clone detection and elimination using a refactoring and clone detection tool. We discuss how the studies have informed the design of the tool; more importantly, we use the studies to illustrate the complex set of decisions that have to be taken when performing clone elimination in practice. The case studies were performed in collaboration with engineers from Ericsson AB, and used the refactoring tool Wrangler for Erlang. However, the conclusions we draw are largely language-independent, and set out the pragmatics of clone detection and elimination in real-world projects as well as design principles for clone detection decision-support tools.

Introducing a Novel Security-Enhanced Agile Software Development Process

In this paper, a novel security-enhanced agile software development process, SEAP, is introduced. It has been designed, tested, and implemented at Ericsson AB, specifically in the development of a mobile money transfer system. Two important features of SEAP are 1) that it includes additional security competences, and 2) that it includes the continuous conduction of an integrated risk analysis for identifying potential threats. As a general finding of implementing SEAP in software development, the developers solve a large proportion of the risks in a timely, yet cost-efficient manner. The default agile software development process at Ericsson AB, i.e. where SEAP was not included, required significantly more employee hours spent for every risk identified compared to when integrating SEAP. The default development process left 50.0% of the risks unattended in the software version that was released, while the application of SEAP reduced that figure to 22.5%. Furthermore, SEAP increased the proportion of risks that were corrected from 12.5% to 67.9%, a more than five times increment.

FLOW-assisted value stream mapping in the early phases of large-scale software development

Value stream mapping (VSM) has been successfully applied in the context of software process improvement. However, its current adaptations from Lean manufacturing focus mostly on the flow of artifacts and have taken no account of the essential information flows in software development. A solution specifically targeted toward information flow elicitation and modeling is FLOW. This paper aims to propose and evaluate the combination of VSM and FLOW to identify and alleviate information and communication related challenges in large-scale software development. Using case study research, FLOW-assisted VSM was used for a large product at Ericsson AB, Sweden. Both the process and the outcome of FLOW-assisted VSM have been evaluated from the practitioners’ perspective. It was noted that FLOW helped to systematically identify challenges and improvements related to information flow. Practitioners responded favorably to the use of VSM and FLOW, acknowledged the realistic nature and impact on the improvement on software quality, and found the overview of the entire process using the FLOW notation very useful. The combination of FLOW and VSM presented in this study was successful in systematically uncovering issues and characterizing their solutions, indicating their practical usefulness for waste removal with a focus on information flow related issues.

Evaluation of simulation-assisted value stream mapping for software product development: Two industrial cases

Context: Value stream mapping (VSM) as a tool for lean development has led to significant improvements in different industries. In a few studies, it has been successfully applied in a software engineering context. However, some shortcomings have been observed in particular failing to capture the dynamic nature of the software process to evaluate improvements i.e. such improvements and target values are based on idealistic situations.Objective: To overcome the shortcomings of VSM by combining it with software process simulation modeling, and to provide reflections on the process of conducting VSM with simulation.Method: Using case study research, VSM was used for two products at Ericsson AB, Sweden. Ten workshops were conducted in this regard. Simulation in this study was used as a tool to support discussions instead of as a prediction tool. The results have been evaluated from the perspective of the participating practitioners, an external observer, and reflections of the researchers conducting the simulation that was elicited by the external observer.Results: Significant constraints hindering the product development from reaching the stated improvement goals for shorter lead time were identified. The use of simulation was particularly helpful in having more insightful discussions and to challenge assumptions about the likely impact of improvements. However, simulation results alone were found insufficient to emphasize the importance of reducing waiting times and variations in the process.Conclusion: The framework to assist VSM with simulation presented in this study was successfully applied in two cases. The involvement of various stakeholders, consensus building steps, emphasis on flow (through waiting time and variance analysis) and the use of simulation proposed in the framework led to realistic improvements with a high likelihood of implementation.

Reasons for bottlenecks in very large-scale system of systems development

ContextSystem of systems (SoS) is a set or arrangement of systems that results when independent and useful systems are to be incorporated into a larger system that delivers unique capabilities. Our investigation showed that the development life cycle (i.e. the activities transforming requirements into design, code, test cases, and releases) in SoS is more prone to bottlenecks in comparison to single systems. ObjectiveThe objective of the research is to identify reasons for bottlenecks in SoS, prioritize their significance according to their effect on bottlenecks, and compare them with respect to different roles and different perspectives, i.e. SoS view (concerned with integration of systems), and systems view (concerned with system development and delivery). MethodThe research method used is a case study at Ericsson AB. ResultsResults show that the most significant reasons for bottlenecks are related to requirements engineering. All the different roles agree on the significance of requirements related factors. However, there are also disagreements between the roles, in particular with respect to quality related reasons. Quality related hinders are primarily observed and highly prioritized by quality assurance responsibles. Furthermore, SoS view and system view perceive different hinders, and prioritize them differently. ConclusionWe conclude that solutions for requirements engineering in SoS context are needed, quality awareness in the organization has to be achieved end to end, and views between SoS and system view need to be aligned to avoid sub optimization in improvements.

Early identification of bottlenecks in very large scale system of systems software development

System of systems are of high complexity, and for each system, many different requirements are implemented in parallel. Systems are developed with some degree of managerial independence but later on have to work together. In this situation, many requirements are written, implemented, and tested in parallel for different systems that are to be integrated. This makes identifying bottlenecks challenging, and visualizations often used on project level (such as Kanban boards or burndown charts) have to be extended/complemented to cope with the increased complexity. In response to these challenges, the contributions of this study are to propose the following: (i) a visualization for early identification and proactive removal of bottlenecks; (ii) a visualization to check on the success of bottleneck resolution; and (iii) to provide an industry evaluation of the visualizations in a case study of a system of systems developed at Ericsson AB in Sweden. The feedback by the practitioners showed that the visualizations were perceived as useful in improving throughput and lead time. The quantitative analysis showed that the visualizations were able in identifying bottlenecks and showing improvements or the lack thereof. On the basis of the qualitative and quantitative data collected, we conclude that the visualizations are useful in bottleneck identification and resolution. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

An elicitation instrument for operationalising GQM+Strategies (GQM+S-EI)

A recent approach for measurement program planning, GQM+Strategies, provides an important extension to existing approaches linking measurements and improvement activities to strategic goals and ways to achieve these goals. There is a need for instruments aiding in eliciting information from stakeholders to use GQM+Strategies. The success of GQM+Strategies highly depends on accurately identifying goals, strategies and information needs from stakeholders. The research aims at providing an instrument (called GQM+S-EI), aiding practitioners to accurately elicit information needed by GQM+Strategies (capturing goals, strategies and information needs). The research included two phases. In the first phase, using action research method, the GQM+S-EI was designed in three iterations in Ericsson AB. Thereafter, a case study was conducted to evaluate whether the information elicited with the designed instrument following the defined process was accurate and complete. We identified that the industry requires elicitation instruments that are capable to elicit information from stakeholders, not having to know about the concepts (e.g. goals and strategies). The case study results showed that our proposed instrument is capable of accurately and completely capturing the needed information from the stakeholders. We conclude that GQM+S-EI can be used for accurately and completely eliciting the information needed by goal driven measurement frameworks. The instrument has been successfully transferred to Ericsson AB for measurement program planning.

Collaborative prioritization of architectural concerns

Efficient architecture work involves balancing the degree of architecture documentation with attention to needs, costs, agility and other factors. This paper presents a method for prioritizing architectural concerns in the presence of heterogeneous stakeholder groups in large organizations that need to evolve existing architecture. The method involves enquiry, analysis, and deliberation using collaborative and analytical techniques. Method outcomes are action principles directed to managers, and assessment of user needs directed to architects, along with evidence. The method results from 4 years of action research at Ericsson AB with the purpose of adding missing views to architecture documentation and removing superfluous ones. It is illustrated on a case where 29 senior engineers and managers within Ericsson prioritized 37 architectural concerns areas to arrive at 8 action principles, 5 prioritized improvement areas, and 24 improvement suggestions. Feedback from the organization is that the method has been effective in prioritizing architectural concerns, that data collection and analysis is more extensive compared to traditional prioritization practices, but that extensive analysis seems inevitable in architecture improvement work.

Factors Determining Long-term Success of a Measurement Program: An Industrial Case Study

Introducing measurement programs into organizations is a lengthy process aected by organizational and technical constraints. There exist several aspects that determine whether a measurement program has the chances of succeeding, like management commitment or existence of proper tool support. The establishing of a program, however, is only a part of the success. As organizations are dynamic entities, the measurement programs should constantly be maintained and adapted in order to cope with changing needs of the organizations. In this paper we study one of the measurement programs at Ericsson AB in Sweden and as a result we identify factors determining successful adoption and use of the measurement program. The results of our research in this paper are intended to support quality managers and project managers in establishing and maintaining successful metrics programs.

A method for alignment evaluation of product strategies among stakeholders (MASS) in software intensive product development

AbstractCurrent practices in the industry are moving towards the market‐driven development of software intensive products compared to customer‐specific system development. Consequently, product management is faced with several challenges that have to be addressed as a part of the market‐driven requirements engineering process. One of the important challenges is how to select the right mix of requirements, balancing short‐term and long‐term gains. One way to address this challenge is to utilize product strategies for selecting requirements. However, in order to do this the internal success‐critical stakeholders (SCS) involved in strategies creation and requirements selection need to be aligned with respect to a product's strategic goals and objectives. This paper presents a method to enable the evaluation of degree of alignment between SCS with respect to the understanding and interpretation of a product's strategy. Further, the method not only enables the evaluation of alignment, but also specifically shows misalignment, and enables the identification of leading causes. The method has been developed in collaboration with the industry and its application is shown through a case study at Ericsson AB. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

The effect of moving from a plan-driven to an incremental software development approach with agile practices

So far, only few in-depth studies focused on the direct comparison of process models in general, and between plan-driven and incremental/agile approaches in particular. That is, it is not made explicit what the effect is of moving from one model to another model. Furthermore, there is limited evidence on advantages and issues encountered in agile software development, this is specifically true in the context of large-scale development. The objective of the paper is to investigate how the perception of bottlenecks, unnecessary work, and rework (from hereon referred to as issues) changes when migrating from a plan-driven to an incremental software development approach with agile practices (flexible product backlog, face-to-face interaction, and frequent integration), and how commonly perceived these practices are across different systems and development roles. The context in which the objective should be achieved is large-scale development with a market-driven focus. The selection of the context was based on the observation in related work that mostly small software development projects were investigated and that the investigation was focused on one agile model (eXtreme programming). A case study was conducted at a development site of Ericsson AB, located in Sweden in the end of 2007. In total 33 interviews were conducted in order to investigate the perceived change when migrating from plan-driven to incremental and agile software development, the interviews being the primary source of evidence. For triangulation purposes measurements collected by Ericsson were considered, the measurements relating to unnecessary work (amount of discarded requirements) and rework (data on testing efficiency and maintenance effort). Triangulation in this context means that the measurements were used to confirm the perceived changes with an additional data source. In total 64 issues were identified, 24 being of general nature and the remaining 40 being local and therefore unique to individual’s opinions or a specific system. The most common ones were documented and analyzed in detail. The commonality refers to how many persons in different roles and across the systems studied have mentioned the issues for each of the process models. The majority of the most common issues relates to plan-driven development. We also identified common issues remaining for agile after the migration, which were related to testing lead-time, test coverage, software release, and coordination overhead. Improvements were identified as many issues commonly raised for the plan-driven approach were not raised anymore for the incremental and agile approach. It is concluded that the recent introduction (start in 2005 with the study being conducted in the end of 2007) of incremental and agile practices brings added values in comparison to the plan-driven approach, which is evident from the absence of critical issues that are encountered in plan-driven development.

From Traditional to Streamline Development — opportunities and challenges

AbstractTraditional software development processes have shown to be inappropriate for markets where it is necessary to quickly respond to changing customer needs. To address this issue, a number of modern development processes have been developed that attempt to improve customer responsiveness. One such modern process is Streamline Development (SD), a process developed by and for Ericsson AB. This article presents an early evaluation of the suitability of SD for Ericsson. The evaluation was performed by finding positive and negative aspects of introducing SD, as well as identifying issues to address if implementing the new process. The data regarding the impact of introducing SD was collected in a series of interviews and then structured using a modification of Force Field Analysis (FFA). Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.