Kari Liukkunen

Supporting Collaboration in the Geographically Distributed Work with Communication Tools in the Remote District SME's

In the global software development environment, the companies face the challenges of collaboration. This is particularly challenging for software companies in rural areas, which are typically small companies with limited resources. Often their customers and partners are also geographically dispersed. These factors, in addition to geographical distances, highlight the challenges of communication and collaboration. The focus of this research is to find out how to support geographically dispersed/distributed projects. We addressed this problem by identifying the key categories of collaboration challenges from the literature and conducting an empirical study on companies of the area. The study consists of 30 interviews with 13 companies sited mostly in Finnish rural area, Kainuu region. The company interviews revealed that, instead of the project management purposes, communication tools are needed to provide an infrastructure for collaborative sessions, to interact with colleagues and customers. Limited resources also add the challenges of the communication tools and processes implementation.

Student perceptions and attitudes towards the software factory as a learning environment

Industry needs graduates from universities having knowledge and skills to tackle the practical issues of real life software development. To facilitate software engineering students and fulfill industry need, the Department of Information Processing Science, University of Oulu, Finland, built a Software Factory laboratory (SWF) in 2012 based on Lean concept. This study examines factors in the SWF learning environment that affect learning of a SWF course by the students. It employs amended Computer laboratory Environment Inventory (CLEI) and Attitude towards Computers and Computing Courses Questionnaire instrument (ACCC) with two additional constructs: 1) Kanban board 2) Collaborative learning. The general findings indicate that SWF learning environment, collaborative learning and Kanban board play important role in software engineering students learning, academic achievements and professional skills gaining. The findings are helpful to develop a better understanding about learning environments. The information gathered in this study can also be used to improve the software engineering learning environment.

Comparing Requirements Decomposition Within the Scrum, Scrum with Kanban, XP, and Banana Development Processes

Context: Eliciting requirements from customers is a complex task. In Agile processes, the customer talks directly with the development team and often reports requirements in an unstructured way. The requirements elicitation process is up to the developers, who split it into user stories by means of different techniques. Objective: We aim to compare the requirements decomposition process of an unstructured process and three Agile processes, namely XP, Scrum, and Scrum with Kanban. Method: We conducted a multiple case study with a replication design, based on the project idea of an entrepreneur, a designer with no experience in software development. Four teams developed the project independently, using four different development processes. The requirements were elicited by the teams from the entrepreneur, who acted as product owner and was available to talk with the four groups during the project. Results: The teams decomposed the requirements using different techniques, based on the selected development process. Conclusion: Scrum with Kanban and XP resulted in the most effective processes from different points of view. Unexpectedly, decomposition techniques commonly adopted in traditional processes are still used in Agile processes, which may reduce project agility and performance. Therefore, we believe that decomposition techniques need to be addressed to a greater extent, both from the practitioners’ and the research points of view.

Exploring Processes in Small Software Companies: A Systematic Review

Context: To attain an advantage over competitors, small software companies (SSCs) need to have an efficient software development process. However, systematic review studies that have examined the software development process within the context of SSCs are limited. Objective: Therefore, the objective of this paper is to rigorously assess the current state of practice of the software development process of SSCs using ISO/IEC 12207 standard as an analyzing framework. Method: A systematic literature review was conducted to analyze relevant papers published between 2004 and 2014. The selected papers were categorized according to the empirical technique used. A total of 41 primary papers focusing on various aspects of the software development process of SSCs were discovered out of 3841 papers. Results: Based on the evidence found in primary papers, requirement engineering, project planning, life cycle model management and configuration management are the frequently considered processes for improvement when software process improvement (SPI) programs are conducted in SSCs. In addition, understanding the collected requirements and communication barriers between product management and the rest of the work team were among the challenges observed and experienced by SSCs during the software development process.

The Effect of Competitor Interaction on Startup’s Product Development

[Context and motivation] Due to lack of resources and teams with low levels of experience, startups face several challenges during their product development, such as product customization, attracting new customers, and mastering the technology uncertainty. To increase their market presence and compensate for their lack of resources, startups need to consider other options such as joint ventures and partnerships. [Question/problem] Some companies that share highly similar resources and businesses can be potential competitors with one another. The effect of interaction with such potential competitors with respect to startups to obtain expertise has not been often reported in the literature to date. [Principal ideas/results] In this study, we simulated two software startups in a controlled experiment to evaluate the effect of interaction with a potential competitor in the effort estimation process. A real startup case was also involved in analyzing the effect. The results of the study show that there is a statistically significant difference in the effectiveness when co-operating with a competitor in the process. Experiment participants also considered the interaction with the potential competitor useful based on the exchange of important information and ideas regarding the product domain. [Contribution] This paper contributes by demonstrating the effect of interaction with a potential competitor in the effort estimation process. In addition, our study encourages further research on startups working in with the competitors in other software engineering knowledge areas.

How Are Product Ideas Validated

Although software startups are considered important for economic development due to their ability to quickly create cutting-edge technologies and their potential to scale to a wide market, contextual knowledge about the product idea development process of startups is poorly understood in the literature. This study explores the idea validation process of software startups in an attempt to understand the practices used for idea validation, discover how the process is affected by the founder’s prior competencies, and determine the effect of those practices on requirement gathering. We conducted an exploratory multiple case study in nine software startups to determine the kind of practices they used for idea validation. We identified ten practices used as elements of the idea validation process. Our results show that idea validation is a highly non-linear process in which several validation practices are used in varying combinations and timing. The most frequently used practices included copying existing products, prototyping, utilizing expert support, and cooperating closely with customers. The founder’s prior competencies also influenced the selected practices. Copying and prototyping were common practices when the founders had prior competencies in the application area, while utilizing expert support was a widespread practice to compensate for the founder’s missing competencies. We also observed that the idea validation practices identified in the study serve requirement gathering at different levels of abstraction, varying from business-related requirements down to design-level requirements.

Comparing Communication Effort within the Scrum, Scrum with Kanban, XP, and Banana Development Processes

[Context]: Communication plays an important role in any development process. However, communication overhead has been rarely compared among development processes. [Objective]: The goal of this work is to compare the communication overhead and the different channels applied in three agile processes (XP, Scrum, Scrum with Kanban) and in an unstructured process. [Method]: We designed an empirical study asking four teams to develop the same application with the four development processes, and we compare the communication overhead among them. [Results]: As expected, face-to-face communication is most frequently employed in the teams. Scrum with Kanban turned out to be the process that requires the least communication. Unexpectedly, despite requiring much more time to develop the same application, the unstructured process required comparable communication overhead (25% of the total development time) as the agile processes.

On the Feasibility of Startup Models as a Framework for Research on Competence Needs in Software Startups

Background--Until recently, mainstream research on software engineering targeted software development in established companies. However, startup companies have become more important in developing new software-intensive products and services. Consequently, research focusing on software startups has emerged. Understanding competence needs during the evolution of a software startup company is crucial to its success. Competence needs are, however, a difficult topic to study because software startups are rapidly and constantly changing. Aim--This paper presents the preliminary results of our on-going research on competence needs in software startups, compares them to the startup models identified in the recent literature, and figures out the feasibility of the models as a research framework. Method--We interview key persons from nine software startup companies in three European countries. From the interview material, we identify characteristics of competence needs. We investigate the recent literature models created for software startups. We then compare our empirical findings to the models identified in the literature and conclude with the feasibility of the models as a framework for the future research. Result--The results of our preliminary study indicate a need for a new startup model that combines aspects of the existing models in order to get a comprehensive framework for the research of competence needs in software startups.

Validating Applicability of Smart-M3 Platform for a Multi-vendor Micropayment System in the Context of Small Business

To be economically feasible, micropayment systems are expected to be efficient, with low transaction and computing costs and light security protection. In addition, a micropayment system is a networked good involving both consumers and merchants subject to positive network effects: the value of the system to consumers depends on the number of merchants adopting the system and vice versa. The objective of this study was to implement a micropayment system pilot for small business with restricted resources, scarce labor force and growing number of products and vendors. Based on the results of a literature review conducted in this study, an account-based system was considered an appropriate starting point for the pilot. Further, applicability of Smart-M3 platform for the system was validated. The results of the study show that the implemented system provides small business with opportunities of additional services and products, cost savings, and inclusion of new vendors.

Virtual Prototypes in Developing Mobile Software Applications and Devices

The goal of this paper is to study how software based virtual prototypes and hardware simulation tools can be combined. By combining these tools and techniques we can shorten the time to market with parallel concurrent design and more importantly, we can provide a real-time simulation environment for virtual prototypes. Application designers get access to a simulated realistic real-time mobile device well before the first prototypes are available from the device manufacturer. The research work was done in two cases. In the first case the virtual prototypes were used to illustrate and help to select new mobile application concepts and to test new applications usability. In the second case the virtual prototypes were used for modelling the product platforms, e.g. the computer system and the simulation of the complete system including both hardware and software. Our approach facilitates early simulation and testing of the final user experience and system behaviour in cases where they are heavily dependent on the characteristics and performance of the underlying computer platform.