Marko Komssi

Linking Requirements and Testing in Practice

An increasing number of organizations are interested in binding requirements and testing more closely together. Based on a series of practitioner interviews conducted in five Finnish organizations, this paper presents a set of good practices that can be applied to create a stronger link between requirements engineering and testing. These practices include early tester participation particularly in requirements reviews, setting up traceability policies, taking feature requests from testers into account, and linking testing personnel with requirement owners. Due to reported hardships in implementing complete test traceability to requirements, communication links between testers and requirement owners are suggested in order to overcome the deficiencies of document links.

What are Hackathons for

A swift execution from idea to market has become a key competitive advantage for software companies to enable them to survive and grow in turbulent business environments. To combat this challenge, companies are using hackathons. A hackathon is a highly engaging, continuous event in which people in small groups produce working software prototypes in a limited amount of time. F-Secure, a software product company, views hackathons as a possible solution to the fundamental business problem of how to make revenue from an idea, spanning the phases from creating the idea to producing a software prototype. However, hackathons pose the challenge of how to transform those promising prototypes into finalized products that create revenue and real business value.

Linking business and requirements engineering: is solution planning a missing activity in software product companies?

A strong link between strategy and product development is important, since companies need to select requirements for forthcoming releases. However, in practice, connecting requirements engineering (RE) and business planning is far from trivial. This paper describes the lessons learned from four software product companies that have recognized the need for more business-oriented long-term planning. The study was conducted using the action research approach. We identified five practices that seem to strengthen the link between business decisions and RE. These are (1) explicating the planning levels and time horizons; (2) separating the planning of products’ business goals from R&D resource allocation; (3) planning open-endedly with a pre-defined rhythm; (4) emphasizing whole-product thinking; and (5) making solution planning visible. To support whole-product thinking and solution planning, we suggest that companies create solution concepts. The purpose of the solution concept is to provide a big picture of the solution and guide RE activities.

From Feature Development to Customer Value Creation

Marketing experts emphasize that the creation of superior customer value is a key element for companies’ success. Understanding how to create value for customers, however, is not trivial in practice. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the role of requirements engineering (RE) in customer value creation. The paper describes experiences gained from six Finnish companies that develop software-intensive products and services for global markets. In practice, the focus of RE activities is mainly on product features. Customer value creation is, however, more than developing a competitive set of product features. It is important for companies to understand customers’ processes and develop solutions that support these processes. To enable practitioners to change the focus from feature development to customer value creation, we propose a set of RE practices.

Industrial Experiences of Organizing a Hackathon to Assess a Device-centric Cloud Ecosystem

A hackathon (hacking marathon) is an event to innovate and develop prototypes, typically lasting at most a few days. Despite several innovations having been reported resulting from hackathons and the increasing popularity of hackathons, results about, organizing of, and experiences regarding hackathons have been scarcely reported. We studied a hackathon as a means to assess a device-centric cloud ecosystem in industrial settings. We provide a descriptive account of a three-days hackathon. The experience was that the hackathon was realistic as well as an efficient and effective assessment of the requirements and design of the ecosystem, providing guidance for future development. We also summarize the lessons learned about successfully organizing a hackathon. The results also highlight encouraging experience about the hackathon among the participants in terms of the social benefits, such as collaboration, inspiration, and work motivation, resulting in repeating hackathons for various purposes in the near future. In general, the results indicate a hackathon as a promising new approach in software engineering, where speed of development is becoming essential.

Transforming a Software Product Company into a Service Business: Case Study at F-Secure

The transformation from products to services is a current tendency in software companies. While companies expect services to increase their revenue and competitive advantage, the shift is reported to cause challenges. To study a transformation, a case study was performed at F-Secure. As a result, a set of success factors and challenges related to utilizing Software as a Service model over time are presented. The main findings indicate that a dedicated service team and close collaboration with customers are vital in service development. Furthermore, a long-term view and emphasis on service culture seem to be critical when shifting from products to services.

The Role of Platform Boundary Resources in Software Ecosystems: A Case Study

The success of software ecosystems highly depends on the variety and quality of end-user applications. Therefore, attracting third-party developers and facilitating application development is crucial. Platform boundary resources enable third-party developers to create the applications. Thus, the platform boundary resources expose and extend the platform architecture. We conducted an industrial case study on third-party developer experience, particularly on the role of platform boundary resources in exposing the platform architecture and facilitating development. The studied ecosystem is centered on managing end-users content across devices, the ecosystem was in its pre-commercial phase. The results identify the platform boundary resources in the case study and propose a model for classifying the resources. Further, designing the platform boundary resources is not only about opening up the platform architecture. Instead, the platform boundary resources need to account for a rich variety of applications, or at least not limit too much the creativity of third-party developers, while still aiming at the ease of development. We conclude that the platform boundary resources need to be created for the third-party developers, rather than from the platform architecture.

Integrating analysis of customers' processes into roadmapping: The value-creation perspective

Roadmapping has been recognized as a critical activity for combining a business strategy with release planning. Furthermore, the marketing literature has placed increasing emphasis on the importance of understanding customers processes and customer value. This paper presents an action research study on the roadmapping problems of two software product companies. The key findings were that customer knowledge was fragmented across different functions of the companies and that roadmapping neglected service development. To solve these problems, analysis of customer value and customers processes was integrated into roadmapping. Facilitated workshops with cross-functional teams were used to analyze the customers processes in their entirety and to create a holistic view to roadmapping. The lessons learned offer practical means with which software companies can shift their focus from the prioritization of software features to the analysis of customers processes and the prioritization of customers activities. The shift promotes value creation from the customers perspective and the discovery of new service business opportunities.

Roadmapping problems in practice: value creation from the perspective of the customers

Roadmapping has been recognized as a critical activity for adding business value to a software product. The marketing literature has placed increasing emphasis on customer value and that value is created in customers’ everyday activities. This paper presents an action research study on the roadmapping problems of two software product companies. The key findings were that customer knowledge was fragmented across different functions of the companies and that roadmapping neglected service development. To solve these problems, the analysis of customer value and customers’ processes was integrated into roadmapping. Facilitated workshops with cross-functional teams were used to analyze the customers’ processes in their entirety and to create a holistic view to roadmapping. The lessons learned offer practical means for software companies to shift their focus from the prioritization of software features to the analysis of customers’ processes and the prioritization of customers’ activities. That shift can promote value for customers and uncover new service business opportunities. Accordingly, this paper provides a six-step approach to adopt the value-creation logic from the customers’ perspective into the existing roadmapping process of a company.

Transformations of a Solution Strategy: A Case Study

Fast-paced and turbulent business environments force companies to make repeated decisions concerning their solution strategy. This paper presents a retrospective case study that investigated changes in the strategy of a successful SaaS solution provided by a medium-sized Finnish software company. The study concentrated on the following research question: “How did the solution strategy evolve during the life-cycle of the software solution?” The main finding of the study is that the solution strategy has undergone four distinct stages over nine years. The stages differed in terms of whether the focus was on existing or new services offered to potential or new customers. Each of the four stages contributed to sustaining the solution’s revenue growth in an increasingly competitive and maturing market. The study’s findings suggest that customers’ customers are crucial for growth opportunities, particularly once the original market has become mature.