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... Software engineering (SE) research has traditionally been primarily technical and tends to adhere to the viewpoint of individual development projects as far as management is concerned [14], thus neglecting the portfolio perspective. To make up for this, SE has recently started looking for answers from the field of new product development (NPD) [6] [15] [20] where product portfolio management has been studied for more than two decades. However, adopting these lessons to the SE context is still at its beginning. ...

... First, the Stage-Gate is reminiscent of the waterfall life cycle for software development. However, it does not prescribe the life cycle model used for software development, thus in principle allowing for iterative and incremental software development processes [15] [20]. Second, the Stage-Gate [7] seems more descriptive of the life cycle of a completely new product of than that of a single release of an existing product – especially regarding the front-end phases of ideation, preliminary investigation and business case building. ...

... Second, the Stage-Gate [7] seems more descriptive of the life cycle of a completely new product of than that of a single release of an existing product – especially regarding the front-end phases of ideation, preliminary investigation and business case building. As explained in [15], this can be accounted for by correctly emphasising different stages for different kinds of releases. ...

  • Jarno Vähäniitty Jarno Vähäniitty

Product portfolio management is crucial to product-oriented software companies' long-term success but is mostly overlooked by current software engineering research. This paper presents preliminary results from a multiple case study on the state-of-the-practice and improvement of product portfolio management processes in three small product-oriented software companies. Our findings suggest that implementing portfolio management as explained in the literature is based on assumptions about the product development process that do not hold in the context of small software product businesses. Based on the limitations of existing research this paper presents a number of questions to guide further work.

... Bass (2003) distinguishes between " structure, " which is the actual architecture of a system, and " views, " which are particular representations of that structure. Hohmann (2003) further distinguishes between " marketecture " (marketing views for customers) and " tarchitecture " (technical views for developers); the two are related but not necessarily the same, and may need to be managed separately. Teams need to decide which views must be maintained; note that in software projects, it may be possible to generate certain views automatically. ...

  • Clif Kussmaul Clif Kussmaul

This paper describes lessons learned from developing and managing products and projects in the software industry, and how they apply to undergraduate team projects. Significant challenges include changing requirements, distrib - uted teams, and resource limitations. Useful responses to these challenges include agile methodologies, improved communication, issue and risk track- ing, and reusable components and product lines. The paper describes these challenges and responses, and how they apply to product teams in industry and in academia.

... While initiatives for integrating the perspectives of business and development have started to appear in the software engineering literature (e.g. [3] [6] [7] [11] [17]), there is ample room for extending the body of knowledge in this area of research. ...

For a software company it is essential to understand how to link business management and software development decision-making. Agile methods adhere to the viewpoint of individual development projects, leaving business concerns such as long-term product and release planning and multi-project management mostly unaddressed. With poorly governed fast-paced development, the big picture of the ongoing work and its link to the company's overall business goals and strategy may become unclear. The difficulties in linking business and development are also reflected in current project management/issue tracking tool support. In this paper we present a conceptual framework of the links between long-term business, product and release planning and agile software development. The framework aims to provide a common language through which the big picture of software development - including needed roles, responsibilities and decision structures - can be analyzed, communicated and discussed. We also present Agilefant, a proof-of-concept tool based on the framework.

... However, increased awareness and communication between the managerial and technical side of the companies in this study could in many cases have led to both management decisions that were more aligned to the capabilities of the development department, and developer decisions that were more targeted at the current business strategies. These issues have been affirmed by Hohmann [7] and Faulk et al [8]. Further work from these initial results should therefore focus on finding the links between business goals and strategies, over quality attributes, to not only architectural strategies, but also to ways for how to organize development around selected strategies. ...

  • Josef Nedstam

This Student Paper describes work in progress within the field of architectural evolution. The research done for this PhD Thesis has involved study of individual architectural changes, a view that is now integrated to study how companies have evolved with their software architectures. Participation in EDSER will provide opportunity to discuss the relation between an organi-zation's business model and software architecture; and to discuss how architectural initiatives are best funded and organized.

  • Mel Ó Cinnéide Mel Ó Cinnéide
  • Paddy Fagan

The application of a design pattern in an industrial context is frequently a much more involved task than is described the pattern description itself. In this experience paper we report on a number of problems encountered in the application of several common patterns in commercial software systems. The problems we examine range in nature from details of the runtime environment that hamper pattern implementa-tion (Singleton), to the software upgrade process breaking a pattern's promise (Abstract Factory), to the consequences of the tight source code coupling produced by pattern ap-plication (Facade). Our conclusion is that while design patterns are indeed useful in industrial software development, there are more potential pitfalls in this area than is generally realised. In applying a design pattern, more must be taken into account than just the design context into which the pattern fits; is-sues to do with the low-level runtime environment as well as the higher-level software architecture, software process and social environment also play a role.

  • J. Vahaniitty
  • Kristian Rautiainen Kristian Rautiainen

Managing product development activities as an explicit portfolio is crucial to the long-term success of product-oriented software companies. Portfolio management has been studied in the field of new product development for over two decades, but existing approaches transfer poorly to small software companies due to contextual differences. Based on new product development and software engineering literature and three company cases, this paper presents an approach for implementing portfolio management in small, product-oriented software companies, along with initial experiences. The approach integrates portfolio management basics such as strategic alignment, portfolio balancing and go/kill/hold decision-making with modern, time-paced software development processes for the small company context. Our findings suggest that using the proposed approach increases awareness of what projects and other development activities are underway, and how these are resourced. It also helps in making informed decisions and trade-offs when necessary.

  • Matthias Tomann
  • Werner Steck

Erfolgreiches Retail Banking erfordert einerseits Flexibilität und schnelles Reaktionsvermögen auf Marktherausforderungen, andererseits Kostendisziplin, um ein insgesamt überdurchschnittliches Marktergebnis zu erzielen. Eine wichtige Voraussetzung hierfür ist das erfolgreiche Management der System- und Anwendungslandschaft der Finanzdienstleister. In der jüngeren Vergangenheit hat hier insbesondere das Konzept der Enterprise Application Integration (EAI) an Bedeutung gewonnen. Vorliegender Beitrag zeigt vor dem Hintergrund von zahlreichen in Projekten gewonnenen Erfahrungen Möglichkeiten und Grenzen dieses Konzeptes auf und veranschaulicht, wie der EAI-Ansatz durch den Einsatz von Servicebasierten Architekturen bestmöglich ergänzt werden kann.

Technical agility refers to the ability to quickly change the type and flow of information within an enterprise. Technical agility parameters are affected by enterprise architecture. IT advance has not yet satisfied business requirements due to improper software architectures. SOA addresses technical agility requirements by presenting composability, modularity, and loose coupling concepts as services that wrap underlying IT infrastructure, databases, and legacy systems and present them via standard interface. There is a need to stabilize IT infrastructure rather than developing new ones and SOA enables this stabilization. Enterprises should balance IT to become better positioned and more agile. Services are the building Blocks of an agile enterprise. This paper discusses the importance of enterprise architecture in meeting systems' non-functional requirements and examines different software architecture paradigms, driving and restraining forces for each one in meeting systems integration as one of the most desirable requirement. Integration has different techniques, and different software architecture paradigms can address different techniques. This paper presents a proposed mapping of different software architecture paradigms to different integration techniques while highlighting driving forces that encourages software architects to utilize it and restraining forces that discourages architects from utilizing them.

  • Philipp Häfele

Das Software Engineering ist heute geprägt von schnelllebigen Technologien und Trends, verteilten, arbeitsteiligen Projekten mit vielen Interessenvertretern (Stakeholdern) und einem umkämpften globalen Markt. In diesem Umfeld wird es zur Herausforderung, gewonnene Erkenntnisse festzuhalten und daraus als gesamte Organisation zu lernen, um Fehler nicht zu wiederholen oder gar ganz zu vermeiden. Information und Wissen sowie Kommunikation und Wissenstransfer zusammen mit wohl reflektierten Entscheidungen werden daher immer mehr zum kritischen Erfolgsfaktor einer Organisation. Rationale Management (RM) (engl. Begründungsmanagement) ist ein Ansatz, um diese Erfolgsfaktoren auf allen Ebenen einer Organisation einzubeziehen. Durch das Aufzeigen der Gestaltungsalternativen (design space analysis) sollen die Entscheidungsträger (gegebenenfalls in einem kollaborativen Prozess) anhand von adäquaten Kriterien zu konsistenten und argumentativ begründeten Entscheidungen gelangen. Über eine geeignete Erfassung, Aufbereitung und Nutzung des Rationale soll eine Verbesserung der Entscheidungskommunikation, des Wissenstransfers und der Informationsgewinnung über individuelle, organisatorische und funktionale Grenzen der Organisation hinweg erreicht werden. In der vorliegenden Arbeit werden die im Kontext des Software Engineering diskutierten Ansätze für Rationale Management zusammengetragen. Sie werden strukturiert nach verschiedenen Wissensbereichen des Software Engineering aufbereitet und gegenübergestellt. Basierend darauf und am Beispiel der SAP AG wird untersucht wie Rationale Management in unterschiedlichen Bereichen eines Vorgehensmodells gewinnbringend integriert werden könnte. Hierzu werden konkrete Vorschläge im Umfeld der Kommunikation von Projektlenkungsentscheidungen oder der Erfassung von Rationale im Kontext von Anforderungspriorisierungen erarbeitet. Die dabei gewonnenen Erkenntnisse bei der Integration von Rationale Management in die Prozesse – auch in Bezug auf die Projektpolitik – werden abschließend festgehalten.

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