Geir Kjetil Hanssen

Applying Systematic Reviews to Diverse Study Types: An Experience Report

Systematic reviews are one of the key building blocks of evidence-based software engineering. Current guidelines for such reviews are, for a large part, based on standard meta-analytic techniques. However, such quantitative techniques have only limited applicability to software engineering research. In this paper, therefore, we describe our experience with an approach to combine diverse study types in a systematic review of empirical research of agile software development.The software engineering research community has been adopting systematic reviews as an unbiased and fair way to assess a research topic. Despite encouraging early results, a systematic review process can be time consuming and hard to conduct. Thus, tools that help on its planning or execution are needed. This article suggests the use of visual text mining (VTM) to aid systematic reviews. A feasibility study was conducted comparing the proposed approach with a manual process. We observed that VTM can contribute to systematic review and we propose a new strategy called VTM-Based systematic review.

A longitudinal case study of an emerging software ecosystem: Implications for practice and theory

Software ecosystems is an emerging trend within the software industry, implying a shift from closed organizations and processes towards open structures, where actors external to the software development organization are becoming increasingly involved in development. This forms an ecosystem of organizations that are related through the shared interest in a software product, leading to new opportunities and new challenges to the industry and its organizational environment. To understand why and how this change occurs, we have followed the development of a software product line organization for a period of approximately five years. We have studied their change from a waterfall-like approach, via agile software product line engineering, towards an emerging software ecosystem. We discuss implications for practice, and propose a nascent theory on software ecosystems. We conclude that the observed change has led to an increase in collaboration across (previously closed) organizational borders, and to the development of a shared value consisting of two components: the technology (the product line, as an extensible platform), and the business domain it supports. Opening up both the technical interface of the product and the organizational interfaces are key enablers of such a change.

Process fusion: An industrial case study on agile software product line engineering

This paper presents a case study of a software product company that has successfully integrated practices from software product line engineering and agile software development. We show how practices from the two fields support the companys strategic and tactical ambitions, respectively. We also discuss how the company integrates strategic, tactical and operational processes to optimize collaboration and consequently improve its ability to meet market needs, opportunities and challenges. The findings from this study are relevant to software product companies seeking ways to balance agility and product management. The findings also contribute to research on industrializing software engineering.

Automated Acceptance Testing: A Literature Review and an Industrial Case Study

Automated acceptance testing is a quite recent addition to testing in agile software development holding great promise of improving communication and collaboration. This paper summarizes existing literature and also presents a case study from industry on the use of automated acceptance testing. The aim of this paper is to establish an up to date overview of existing knowledge to benefit practice and future research. We show that some of the proposed benefits are realistic but that further research and improvements are needed to get the full potential value.

Extending Agile Methods: Postmortem Reviews as Extended Feedback

Agile software development methods, such as Extreme Programming, focus on informal learning mechanisms like pair programming. Yet powerful methods, new knowledge that is gained in a project will not spread rapidly in an organisation if knowledge and experience is not externalised. We propose to combine a lightweight externalisation method: postmortem reviews with agile methods to strengthen the overall learning, and suggest how this can be done. We use practical experience from an Extreme Programming development project, and from conducting postmortem analysis in several companies in our discussion.

Agile customer engagement: a longitudinal qualitative case study

In this longitudinal case study we have followed a small software product company that has turned from a waterfall-like process to evolutionary project management (Evo). The most prominent feature of the new process is the close engagement of customers. We have interviewed both internals and customers to investigate the practicalities, costs, gains and prerequisites of such a transition. We have gathered data from a period of two years covering four consecutive release projects using the new process and analyzed the material in detail. Our findings implicate that close customer engagement does give certain benefits but that it comes with a cost and needs careful attention to management.

Developing software with scrum in a small cross-organizational project

In an action research study, we describe the application of the scrum software development process in a small cross-organizational development project. The stakeholders in the project report many of the benefits we have found in previous studies, such as increased overview of the project, flexibility and motivation. In addition, we have found that estimation can be challenging in cross-organizational projects due to the customer-provider relationship between the participating organizations.

Post Mortem – An Assessment of Two Approaches

Learning from experience is the key to successes for all that develop software. Both the successes and the failures in software projects can help us to improve. Here we discuss two versions of Post Mortem Analysis (PMA) as methods for harvesting experience from completed software projects, which can be part of a larger knowledge management program. The two methods are tailored for use in small and medium size companies and are conceptually easy to apply. In addition, they require few resources compared to other methods in the field. We think that the methods are useful for companies when they need to document their knowledge, find improvement actions and as a start of systematic knowledge harvesting.

From offshore outsourcing to insourcing and partnerships: four failed outsourcing attempts

Most large software companies are involved in offshore development, now small- and medium-sized companies are starting to undertake global sourcing too. Empirical research suggests that offshoring is not always successful; however, only a few comprehensive failure stories have been reported. The objective of our study has been to understand why small and medium-sized companies terminate their offshore outsourcing relationships and what alternative arrangements they undertake afterwards. Therefore, we designed a multiple case study of four medium-sized Scandinavian software companies that have terminated their offshore outsourcing relationships. Our results are based on data collected through semi-structured interviews, informal dialogues and analysis of company documents. We found that all companies terminated their offshore contracts because of low quality of the software being developed. This was caused by an inability to build the necessary human and social capital. The companies reported challenges with domain knowledge, a lack of commitment of external developers, cultural clashes, poor communication and high turnover, which only amplified the problems. After termination all four companies changed their sourcing strategy from offshore outsourcing to offshore insourcing and partnerships. We conclude that successful offshore software development requires a change from a cost-driven focus to an intellectual capital-driven focus. To prevent continuous investments into contracts that are destined to fail, companies should look for signs of escalating commitments and terminate relationships that cannot be corrected. Those companies that choose outsourcing shall also take into account that mismatch between the size of the offshore contract relative to the vendor may have a negative effect on a relationship.

From Offshore Outsourcing to Offshore Insourcing: Three Stories

Most large software companies are involved in offshore development of some sort, and now the trend is that small and medium sized companies are also going global. While empirical research suggests that offshoring are not always successful, evidence explaining the reasons for terminated collaborations is scarce, especially for small and medium sized companies. In this paper we explore the stories of three Scandinavian medium-sized software companies that have terminated their offshore outsourcing relationships and changed to offshore insourcing arrangements. The main reason for termination was disappointing low quality of the software delivered, being caused by insufficient domain knowledge, high turnover and a lack of motivation among the remote and external developers. We apply the theory of single-loop and double-loop learning in order to explain why the companies failed to correct the experienced problems, and the theory of escalating commitment to explain why the companies did not correct the failing course of action earlier. Finally we describe the change in the choice of the principle sourcing strategy from outsourcing to insourcing.