Georg Herzwurm

The leading edge in QFD for software and electronic business

In this article an overview of the state‐of‐the‐art of Quality Function Deployment (QFD) in software development or also called software QFD is given. The differences between classic QFD in manufacturing industries and software QFD are described. Following that certain software‐specific QFD models (Zultner, Shindo, Ohmori, Herzwurm and Schockert), which can be considered the most appreciated ones in theory as well as in practice, are introduced. Experiences in practice with these software QFD models are presented as well. Finally, through explaining the main principles of a special QFD variant for e‐commerce, called continuous QFD (CQFD), the article will show that QFD is suitable for planning electronic business applications as well.

A critical look at ISO 9000 for software quality management

A considerable number of software suppliers report improvements in product and service quality, development costs and time to market achieved with the help of the ISO 9000 standards. Nevertheless, the ISO 9000 family has received unfavourable criticism in journals, textbooks and at software quality conferences. The paper summarizes, discusses and reviews eleven of the most popular arguments against the ISO 9000 standards. The review of the criticism is based on findings of two empirical surveys among European software suppliers that have implemented an ISO 9000 quality system. The paper concludes with suggestions and guidelines for advances in software quality management concepts, such as the ISO 9000 family, CMM, BOOTSTRAP and the emerging SPICE standard.

QFD for customer-focused requirements engineering

Here an overview of the state of the art of QFD in software development or also called software QFD is given. The differences between classic QFD in manufacturing industries and software QFD are described. Following certain software specific QFD models (Zultner, Shindo, Ohmori, Herzwurm and Schockert), which can be considered as the most appreciated ones in theory as well as in practice, are introduced. Experiences in practice with these software QFD models are presented as well. Finally, through explaining the main principles of a special QFD variant for e-commerce, called continuous QFD (CQFD), we will show that QFD is suitable for planning electronic business applications as well.

Software process improvement via ISO 9000? Results of two surveys among European software houses

Presents the results of two surveys among European software houses. One of the goals was to find out whether software companies have actually achieved software process improvements via ISO 9000. The first survey was conducted among 20 German software houses that have received an ISO 9001 certificate. The study focuses on five elements of an ISO 9000 quality system: code reviews and inspections software testing, product and process measurements, measurement of quality costs, and demonstration of quality improvements. Many software houses included in our first survey have not carried out any modifications of the five elements. Thus, it seemed that ISO 9000 had not led to significant improvements. Nevertheless, nearly 100% of the companies would decide in favor of implementing an ISO 9000 quality system once again. We decided to conduct a second study to gain a better understanding of the software process improvements achieved via ISO 9000. We analyzed experience reports and conducted interviews with quality managers from a total of 36 European software houses. It turned out that software houses have indeed achieved process improvements. Unfortunately, most software houses are not able to quantify the benefits of implementing an ISO 9000 quality system. We identified ten key success factors that the respondents of our studies considered to be the most helpful when implementing an ISO 9000 quality system. Astonishingly, only two of the ten factors are explicit requirements of ISO 9001. This shows that it is necessary to implement a more comprehensive approach to achieve substantial software process improvements.

Software product lines, service-oriented architecture and frameworks: worlds apart or ideal partners?

Service-oriented Architectures and Software Product Lines are two concepts that currently get a lot of attention in research and practice. Both promise to make the development of flexible, cost-effective software systems and support high levels of reuse. But at the same time they are quite different from one another: while Software Product Lines focus on one producer alone developing a set of systems based on a common platform (often in the embedded systems-domain), most proponents of Service-oriented Architecture propose systems consisting of loosely coupled services or company-wide infrastructures including a variety of systems that are loosely coupled using services. In any case, the services are usually developed by various companies (e.g. SAP develops services for their platform itself, but explicitly allows other companies to develop and sell their services for the platform, too). Focus of this paper is the comparison of these concepts and the concept of component frameworks and show where they differ and analyze if they are mutually exclusive or (at least partially) complementary.

QFD-PPP: product line portfolio planning using quality function deployment

In today’s competitive business environment, it is extremely important to offer customers exactly the products they want. Software product lines have the potential to enable companies to offer a large variety of products while still being able to manage the complexity caused by this increased number of products. But offering a large range of variants does not necessarily mean increased profits, as many manufacturing companies had to notice in the early 1990ies. The task of Product Portfolio Planning is the development of a product portfolio that optimally satisfies customer demands and at the same time restricts the number of products offered. Quality Function Deployment (QFD) is a well-known and successfully used Quality Management method that can help companies to identify true customer needs and the features needed to fulfil these needs. This paper demonstrates how QFD can be used for Product Portfolio Planning, thus offering potentially great benefits.

Reconciling marketed and engineered software product lines

Basically all companies today go beyond the development of single products and offer set(s) of similar and related products. In marketing, one such set is often called a product line. Nevertheless, still today most products are not yet engineered as product lines, i.e., they are not yet derived from a single platform. In this paper, we explore the relation of these two forms of product lines. It is shown that under certain circumstances engineered and marketed software product line subsume different products. This paper shows how these two perspectives differ and why a difference in products between these perspectives may be appropriate from a company perspective. Finally, it is argued that activities currently subsumed under product management and scoping should be closely coordinated, allowing companies to optimize their product portfolios since decision-making is facilitated.

Wertschöpfungsnetzwerke deutscher Cloud-Anbieter

ZusammenfassungCloud Computing hat nicht nur das Potenzial, IT-Nutzung signifikant umzugestalten, sondern auch IT-Angebote erheblich zu innovieren. Insbesondere für Wertschöpfungsnetzwerke von IT-Unternehmen eröffnen sich neue Optionen. Daher werden in diesem Beitrag die Wertschöpfungsnetzwerke deutscher Cloud-Anbieter anhand einer Clusteranalyse näher untersucht. Auf Basis der Ergebnisse und vorgestellten Fallbeispiele sind Cloud-Anbieter in der Lage, sich einem der Cluster zuzuordnen, ihr eigenes Wertschöpfungsnetzwerk zu analysieren sowie Optionen zur Neukonfiguration zu identifizieren.

Guidelines for the Analysis of IT Business Models and Strategic Positioning of IT-Products

Depending on the perspectives and the stage within the life cycle IT product are viewed and managed differently. A model is presented that integrates different perspectives and stages serving as an aid for the analysis of business models purposeful and focused positioning of IT-products. Four generic business models are analysed with regard to the product management function in general and the positioning field for IT-products specifically: off-the-shelf, license plus service, project, and system service.

Software Business. From Physical Products to Software Services and Solutions

Business models have become a topic of increasing academic interest and have emerged as a unit of analysis for performance studies. The software industry has been the source of major business model innovations and is hence of particular interest to researchers and practitioners. In this paper we collect business model data for 120 public U.S. software firms. While some data can be retrieved from Thomson Reuters database, most variables specific to the software firms are obtained from a tedious expert classification of 10-K and 20-F annual reports. The results show that the business model variables under study significantly impact financial performance, but are hardly reflected in market performance. Thus, they determine firm success, but do not necessarily affect investor decisions. Our cross-disciplinary research is rooted in the fields of strategic management and software business. We contribute by providing insights into business model characteristics and the determinants of software firm performance.