Software-intensive Organizations Research Articles

SWEBOK Matters: Report and Reflection of a SEKE Panel on the Educational and Professional Implications of SWEBOK

This paper provides a summary of the proceedings of a panel on the Guide to the Software Engineering Body of Knowledge (SWEBOK) held under the auspices of the Thirty-Fourth International Conference on Software Engineering and Knowledge Engineering (SEKE 2022), as well as the discussion that ensued thereafter among the panelists. In this regard, a synopsis of the underlying motivation and structure of SWEBOK is given, and the means for integrating SWEBOK in software-intensive organizations and educational institutions offering software engineering-related courses are highlighted and illustrated by pedagogically-oriented examples.

Team autonomy and digital transformation

The organizational theory literature is reasonably unanimous that team autonomy is a key factor for employee well-being and motivation as well as organizational performance. However, team autonomy is challenged when its processes and outputs need to be aligned with actors and factors external to a team. There are likely challenges and conflicts between team autonomy and the need for coherence in the wider system. Team autonomy has a range of implications and is challenged by a number of factors, such as knowledge complexity and decision-making, learning, large-scale problems, product and technical interdependencies, the use of platforms, virtual collaboration and diversity. Alignment with the external is particularly necessary in multi-team environments with many technical interdependencies, where a single team’s failure to deliver a sufficient level of quality may lead to system-wide consequences. Therefore, teams in complex environments increasingly need to regulate and manage their work in cooperation with internal and external partners and systems. Such dependencies challenge team autonomy. In this special issue of AI&S, we want to address these topics in more detail, particularly in the context of software-intensive organizations and digital transformations. The scope and, thus, the consequences of a team’s work can be far-reaching when the team’s effort and output take place partially or completely in fully digitized contexts and processes. The articles in this special issue show various ways of dealing with the challenge of balancing autonomy and alignment with the external. A key focus is to show the buffering function: how teams, with the help of processes, technology, new organizational forms and time and space are able to find the buffer needed for maintaining team autonomy.

Do scaling agile frameworks address global software development risks? An empirical study

Driven by the need to coordinate activities of multiple agile development teams cooperating to produce a large software product, software-intensive organizations are turning to scaling agile software development frameworks. Despite the growing adoption of various scaling agile frameworks, there is little empirical evidence of how effective their practices are in mitigating risk, especially in global software development (GSD), where project failure is a known problem.In this study, we develop a GSD Risk Catalog of 63 risks to assess the degree to which two scaling agile frameworks–Disciplined Agile Delivery (DAD) and the Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe)–address software project risks in GSD. We examined data from two longitudinal case studies implementing each framework to identify the extent to which the framework practices address GSD risks.Scaling agile frameworks appear to help companies eliminate or mitigate many traditional risks in GSD, especially relating to users and customers. However, several important risks were not eliminated or mitigated. These persistent risks in the main belonged to the Environment quadrant highlighting the inherent risk in developing software across geographic boundaries. Perhaps these frameworks (and arguably any framework), would have difficulty alleviating, issues that appear to be outside the immediate control of the organization.

What to share, when, and where: balancing the objectives and complexities of open source software contributions

Context:Software-intensive organizations’ rationale for sharing Open Source Software (OSS) may be driven by both idealistic, strategic and commercial objectives, and include both monetary as well as non-monetary benefits. To gain the potential benefits, an organization may need to consider what they share and how, while taking into account risks, costs and other complexities.Objective:This study aims to empirically investigate objectives and complexities organizations need to consider and balance between when deciding on what software to share as OSS, when to share it, and whether to create a new or contribute to an existing community.Method:A multiple-case study of three case organizations was conducted in two research cycles, with data gathered from interviews with 20 practitioners from these organizations. The data was analyzed qualitatively in an inductive and iterative coding process.Results:12 contribution objectives and 15 contribution complexities were found. Objectives include opportunities for improving reputation, managing suppliers, managing partners and competitors, and exploiting externally available knowledge and resources. Complexities include risk of loosing control, risk of giving away competitive advantage, risk of creating negative exposure, costs of contributing, and the possibility and need to contribute to an existing or new community.Conclusions:Cross-case analysis and interview validation show that the identified objectives and complexities offer organizations a possibility to reflect on and adapt their contribution strategies based on their specific contexts and business goals.

Exploring the Link Between Leadership and Devops Practice and Principle Adoption

Our research focuses in software-intensive organizations and highlights the challenges that surface as a result of the transitioning process of highly-structured to DevOps practices and principles adoption. The approach collected data via a series of thirty (30) interviews, with practitioners from the EMEA region (Czech Republic, Estonia, Italy, Georgia, Greece, The Netherlands, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, UAE, UK), working in nine (9) different industry domains and ten (10) different countries. A set of agile, lean and DevOps practices and principles were identified, which organizations select as part of DevOps-oriented adoption. The most frequently adopted ITIL® service management practices, contributing to DevOps practice and principle adoption success, indicate that DevOps-oriented organizations benefit from the existence of change management, release and deployment management, service level management, incident management and service catalog management. We also uncover that the DevOps adoption leadership role is required in a DevOps team setting and that it should, initially, be an individual role.

The Strategies to Increase Customer Value in Agile: A Survey of Brazilian Software Industry

Previous empirical studies have demonstrated the relevance of the concept of customer value to the software industry and the state-of-the-art of strategies to increase customer value in Agile Software Development (ASD) has been recently documented in a Systematic Literature Review (SLR). However, to date, there are no studies on the state of practice for this area focusing on issues similar to those investigated in the SLRs mentioned above. The objective of this article was to report on the state of the practice of adopting strategies to increase customer value in the ASD and to detail these strategies concerning goals pursued, customer value metrics, challenges and usage impacts, and the reasons for non-adoption. A survey was performed using a web questionnaire answered by software professionals who are members of agile teams. Data were collected from 378 respondents from 123 Brazilian software intensive organizations. Prioritizing the development of high-value customer features and validating them frequently (92.3%), as well as focusing on value aspects of the client’s market segment and applying the most relevant agile practices to make them viable (64.8%), appeared to be the strategies most frequently practiced by agile teams. Generally, the experiences of using these strategies appear to be very positive, although challenges have also been identified, such as defining what customer value and customer collaboration is.

The Future of Supply Chain Information Systems: The Open Source Ecosystem

The open source phenomenon has made a significant impression, not only on the software industry, but also on software-intensive organizations in both the public and private sectors. The collaborative model offered by the open source ecosystem can potentially change the collective nature of organizations and is claimed to increase innovation and technology adoption while reducing costs. These potential advantages are influencing how organizations acquire software and are leading to significant adoption of open source products across several domains. In fact, a recent Forrester Research report found that 78% of companies surveyed are running part or all of their operations on open source and 66% use open source to create software applications for their customers. Unfortunately, limited research exists regarding the implications and boundaries of open source technologies employed for supply chain management. For a firm to decide whether or not to pursue open source strategies, the field needs more research that helps us to understand how a firm’s use of open source information systems relate to flexibility, agility, operational performance, and the triple bottom line. In this brief thought piece, we describe the potential for open source software to change the nature of supply chain information systems.

Improving the delivery cycle: A multiple-case study of the toolchains in Finnish software intensive enterprises

Context: Software companies seek to gain benefit from agile development approaches in order to meet evolving market needs without losing their innovative edge. Agile practices emphasize frequent releases with the help of an automated toolchain from code to delivery.Objective: We investigate, which tools are used in software delivery, what are the reasons omitting certain parts of the toolchain and what implications toolchains have on how rapidly software gets delivered to customers.Method: We present a multiple-case study of the toolchains currently in use in Finnish software-intensive organizations interested in improving their delivery frequency. We conducted qualitative semi-structured interviews in 18 case organizations from various software domains. The interviewees were key representatives of their organization, considering delivery activities.Results: Commodity tools, such as version control and continuous integration, were used in almost every organization. Modestly used tools, such as UI testing and performance testing, were more distinctly missing from some organizations. Uncommon tools, such as artifact repository and acceptance testing, were used only in a minority of the organizations. Tool usage is affected by the state of current workflows, manual work and relevancy of tools. Organizations whose toolchains were more automated and contained fewer manual steps were able to deploy software more rapidly.Conclusions: There is variety in the need for tool support in different development steps as there are domain-specific differences in the goals of the case organizations. Still, a well-founded toolchain supports speedy delivery of new software.

Practices and Techniques for Engineering Process Capability Models


 
 
 Software Process Improvement, based on a Maturity Level or a Process Capability Profile, from a Capability Maturity Model or an ISO/IEC 15504-based model, is well established in the software industry as a successful practical means for improving software intensive organizations. In consequence there is an opportunity to understand how these models have been developed and consolidate this knowledge to support the development of new models by a broader community including the industry. This article introduces practices and techniques of a Method Framework for Engineering Process Capability Models as an element of a methodology on a Process Capability Profile to drive Process Improvement. This method framework is based on previous experiences to develop different process capability models. Its current version is composed of sequential practices, customization rules, guidelines for using the framework, a repository for examples of utilization and another repository for examples of techniques. This method framework is part of a methodology. An initial validation indicates a first confidence that this method framework is a useful proposal for developing methods and processes for engineering process capability models.
 
 

Ten factors that impede improvement of verification and validation processes in software intensive organizations

AbstractIn spite of the potential benefits that the correct application of software verification and validation processes, techniques and tools can provide, their institutionalized use in the software industry does not reach the minimum capability levels required to gain these benefits. Moreover, this circumstance is aggravated in the small and medium SIOs because of the lack of available human and economic resources.In this paper, ten of the most important factors that prevent the correct institutionalization of the software verification and validation efficient practices are presented. These factors are obtained from the authors' experience in several software process improvement initiatives in software verification and validation processes. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.