Tanja Suomalainen

Continuous deployment of software intensive products and services: A systematic mapping study

Abstract The software intensive industry is moving towards the adoption of a value-driven and adaptive real-time business paradigm. The traditional view of software as an item that evolves through releases every few months is being replaced by the continuous evolution of software functionality. This study aims to classify and analyse the literature related to continuous deployment in the software domain in order to scope the phenomenon, provide an overview of the state-of-the-art, investigate the scientific evidence in the reported results and identify areas suitable for further research. We conducted a systematic mapping study and classified the continuous deployment literature. The benefits and challenges related to continuous deployment were also analysed. RESULTS: The systematic mapping study includes 50 primary studies published between 2001 and 2014. An in-depth analysis of the primary studies revealed ten recurrent themes that characterize continuous deployment and provide researchers with directions for future work. In addition, a set of benefits and challenges of which practitioners may take advantage were identified. CONCLUSION: Overall, although the topic area is very promising, it is still in its infancy, thus offering a plethora of new opportunities for both researchers and software intensive companies.

Software product roadmapping in a volatile business environment

Product roadmapping enhances the product development process by enabling early information and long-term decision making about the products in order to deliver the right products to the right markets at the right time. However, relatively little scientific knowledge is available on the application and usefulness of product roadmapping in software product development context. This study develops a framework for software product roadmapping, which is then used to study the critical aspects of the product roadmapping process. The collection of empirical evidence includes both quantitative and qualitative data which sheds further insight into the complexities involved in product roadmapping. Results revealed that organizations view the product roadmap mainly as a tool for strategic decision making as it aims at showing the future directions of the companys products. However, only a few companies appear to have an explicit approach for handling the mechanisms for creating and maintaining such a roadmap. Finally, it is suggested that the strategic importance of product roadmapping is likely to increase in the future and, as a conclusion, a new type of agility is required in order to survive in the turbulent and competitive software business environment.

Defining Continuous Planning Through a Multiple-Case Study

New and innovative approaches that support continuous development and planning throughout organisations are needed. Continuity is required in all levels of an organisation, from business strategy and planning to software development and operational deployment, as well as between these levels. Continuous planning is one of these activities. However, continuous planning is not commonly adopted and applied throughout organisations and currently involves only a certain level of planning, e.g., release planning. Based on the current literature, continuous planning is a relatively new and not yet fully studied field of research. To augment the knowledge relating to continuous planning, this paper presents a multiple-case study in which the various levels of planning, along with their timeframes, are explored. The research results point out the key activities, as well as the bottlenecks, of continuous planning.

Workshop-Based Corporate Foresight Process: A Case Study

Corporate foresight is a value-creation tool that helps companies survive in a competitive, ever-changing business environment. Foresight can be perceived as a company’s capability to commit to continuous environmental scanning and to respond quickly to the discovered market threats and opportunities. Currently, there is scarce literature about foresight application procedures in organizations. This paper presents a single-case study, with a foresight process that was experimented in a real industrial setting. Based solely on a workshop series, this simple and straightforward process used the participants’ tacit knowledge and insights as the main data sources. The participants presented different roles and departments of the case company. As a result, two new application areas, My Data and eHealth, were found, and a message to the company’s top management was formulated. The future will show how the results will be implemented in the company and what will be their business impact.

The CRUSOE framework : a holistic approach to analysing prerequisites for continuous software engineering

Continuous software engineering (CSE) is used for customer experiments and repetitive integrated processes within and between business planning and software development. First, this paper defines a new framework, called CRUSOE, for analysing CSE prerequisites. The framework allows for a more precise analysis of the interrelations and estimation of the changes that are prerequisites for moving from traditional product development to CSE. CRUSOE addresses prerequisites associated with and interdependencies among (1) the strategy, (2) architecture and (3) organisation. Second, this paper describes a case study conducted as part of a smartphone platform project to investigate the CSE prerequisites for product-focused software development. The results are synthesised together with recent related studies using the CRUSOE framework. The findings confirm challenges in moving towards CSE in embedded system development. Moreover, context-specific prerequisites should be considered, while it is still unclear as to how CSE can be systematically applied to the non-website development context.

Challenges for Product Roadmapping in Inter-company Collaboration

Product roadmapping is a critical activity in product development, as it provides a link between business aspects and requirements engineering and thus helps to manage a high-level view of the company’s products. Nowadays, inter-company collaboration, such as outsourcing, is a common way of developing software products, as through collaboration, organisations gain advantages, such as flexibility with in-house resources, savings in product development costs and gain a physical presence in important markets. The role of product roadmapping becomes even more critical in collaborative settings, since different companies need to align strategies and work together to create products. In order to support companies in improving their own product roadmapping processes, this paper first gives an overview of product roadmapping and then discusses in detail an empirical study of the current practices in industry. The presented results particularly focus on the most challenging and important activities of product roadmapping in collaboration.