Achim Botzenhardt

Software for People: Fundamentals, Trends and Best Practices

The highly competitive and globalized software market is creating pressure on software companies. Given the current boundary conditions, it is critical to continuously increase time-to-market and reduce development costs. In parallel, driven by private life experiences with mobile computing devices, the World Wide Web and software-based services, peoples general expectations with regards to software are growing. They expect software that is simple and joyful to use. In the light of the changes that have taken place in recent years, software companies need to fundamentally reconsider the way they develop and deliver software to their customers. This book introduces fundamentals, trends and best practices in the software industry from a threefold perspective which equally takes into account design, management, and development of software. It demonstrates how cross-functional integration can be leveraged by software companies to successfully build software for people. Professionals from business and academia give an overview on state-of-the-art knowledge and report on key insights from their real-life experience. They provide guidance and hands-on recommendation on how to create winning products. This combined perspective fosters the transfer of knowledge between research and practice and offers a high practical value for both sides. The book targets both, practitioners and academics looking for successfully building software in the future. It is directed at Managing Directors of software companies, Software Project Managers, Product Managers and Designers, Software Developers as well as academics and students in the area of Software and Information Systems Engineering, Human Computer Interaction (HCI), and Innovation Management.

Developing a domain ontology for software product management

Software product management has gained much attention in recent years for its positive influence on corporate success in software companies. However, despite its relevance and positive influence there is only little and vague guidance concerning software product management. There is no extensive body of knowledge as in Software Engineering or Project Management. The work presented in this paper aims at developing an adequate and precise conceptual representation of the software product management domain by means of creating a domain ontology. It defines domain-specific knowledge on a more fundamental level. The developed ontology captures basic aspects of the software product management domain and represents a reasonable approach to provide a common conceptual understanding of the domain. Software Product Management, Domain Ontology, Ontology Engineering

Towards a performance measurement reference model for software product management

The success of any software company heavily depends on the quality and performance of its product management. Several researchers have focused on identifying and describing best-practice reference processes for software product management (SPM). Performance measurement is a pre-condition for process excellence. Therefore, it is crucial to establish an appropriate performance measurement for SPM. In this paper, we present our ongoing work with the goal of establishing performance measurement reference models for software product management.

AskEris--A Many-to-One Communication Platform for Higher Education

In recent years much research has been conducted examining the opportunities of using modern Web 2.0 applications in teaching. Today, wikis, forums, pod casts or classical email communication are widely used media through which students can get in touch with their instructors or can discuss certain topics with each other. However, the usage of so-called many-to one communication, where a number of persons transmit their messages to one recipient, has been considered only rarely. In this paper, we present Askeris - an innovative many-to-one communication platform for higher education. It bases on previous investigations regarding various communication forms and their use in higher education. In this article, we describe its development and benefits. Finally, we provide insights into the evaluation of Askeris. Due to the positive results of this evaluation, Asker is was forwarded to the internal university computer center, which integrated Asker is into the university-wide document and communication platform.

Interaktion in Web-Communities als Erfolgsfaktor der Erlebniskommunikation

Web-Communities bieten bislang nicht dagewesene Moglichkeiten zum Informations- und Meinungsaustausch und erfreuen sich daher steigender Beliebtheit seitens der Internetnutzer. Auch Unternehmen haben Communities bereits als Kommunikationskanal fur sich entdeckt. Mit hohen Investitionen wollen sie von der kumulativen Reichweite dieser Onlineplattformen profitieren. Im Rahmen des Erlebnismarketing stellen virtuelle Communities ein wichtiges Kommunikationsinstrument zur Ubermittlung von Informationen, aber auch Emotionen, dar. Daher befasst sich auch die Marketingwissenschaft zunehmend mit der Erforschung von Web-Communities. Bisherige Studien vernachlassigen jedoch die Analyse der Wirkung von Interaktion zwischen verschiedenen Akteuren und dem damit wahrgenommenen Erlebniswert in der Community. Die Ergebnisse dieser Studie zeigen, dass die Interaktionsmoglichkeiten und das daraus resultierende Community-Erlebnis aufseiten der Konsumenten wichtige Instrumente zur Steuerung zentraler Marketingkonstrukte sind.

Introduction of product management in a banking & retail IT solutions company — An experience report

The importance of product management in the software industry is widely recognized and has been empirically validated. Despite its importance, the maturity level of software product management in companies is still low and many companies struggle with the challenge of introducing product management. This paper describes an industry field report on a product management introduction project carried out in a banking & retail IT solutions company. We illustrate the initial situation as it was conceived prior to the product management introduction project, the approach pursued within the introduction project and the experience gathered during and after the project.

Software for People: A Paradigm Change in the Software Industry

The highly competitive and globalized software market is creating pressure on software companies. Given the current boundary conditions, it is critical to continuously increase time-to-market and reduce development costs. In parallel, driven by private life experiences with mobile computing devices, the World Wide Web and software-based services, peoples’ general expectations with regards to software are growing. They expect software that is simple and joyful to use. Given these boundary conditions, software companies need to fundamentally reconsider the way they develop and deliver software to their customers. This editorial article motivates the paradigm change towards “software for people”. We first illustrate in more detail the two important categories of challenges software companies are currently faced with. Building on a short review of the historic evolution of software, we explain the major reasons that caused these challenges. Driven by the more mature automotive industry, we outline a set of key principles that may help software companies to tackle these challenges. Finally, we summarize the structure and content of the book, building on these key principles and providing a comprehensive overview on fundamentals, trends and best practices for building software for people.