Software Management Environment (SME) release 9.4 user reference material

This document contains user reference material for the Software Management Environment (SME) prototype, developed for the Systems Development Branch (Code 552) of the Flight Dynamics Division (FDD) of Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC). The SME provides an integrated set of management tools that can be used by software development managers in their day-to-day management and planning activities. This document provides an overview of the SME, a description of all functions, and detailed instructions concerning the software's installation and use

The Land Analysis System (LAS)

The Land Analysis System (LAS) is an interactive software system, available in the public domain, for the analysis, display, and management of multispectral and other digital image data. The system was developed to support earth sciences research and development activities. LAS provides over 240 applications functions and utilities, a flexible user interface, complete on-line and hardcopy documentation, extensive image data file management, reformatting, and conversion utilities, and high level device independent access to image display hardware. The capabilities are summarized of the latest release of the system (version 5). Emphasis is given to the system portability and the isolation of hardware and software dependencies in this release

Integrated SCM/PDM/CRM and delivery of software products to 160.000 customers

The release and deployment of enterprise application software is a potentially complex task for software vendors. This complexity can unfortunately result in a significant amount of work and risk. This paper presents a case study of a product software vendor that tries to reduce this complexity by integrating product data management (PDM), software configuration management (SCM), and customer relationship management (CRM) into one system. The case study shows that by combining these management areas in a single intelligent software knowledge base, software release and deployment processes can be automated and improved, thereby enabling a software vendor of enterprise software to serve a large number of customers with different product configuration

A Multi-Disciplinary View on Software Release Decisions

A relatively unexplored area in the field of software management is the implementation or release decision, deciding whether or not a software product can be transferred from its development phase to operational use. Many software manufacturers have difficulty in determining the right moment to release their software products. It is a trade-off between an early release, to capture the benefits of an earlier market introduction, and the deferral of product release, to enhance functionality, or improve quality. In this research project software release decisions are researched from three perspectives: economics, decision-making and software management. All perspectives are reviewed, explored in-depth, both from a theoretical and from an empirical point of view, by studying practical examples. The results are used in a proposed methodology to improve strategic software release decisions, characterized by the existence of large prospective financial loss outcomes, including the presence of high costs for reversing a decision. The methodology identifies the critical factors for a high quality decision outcome, being the sum of quality of the decision inputs and the quality of the decision-making process

Software Service Innovation: An Action Research into Release Cycle Management

Fierce competition in the market is driving software vendors to rely on Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) strategies and to continuously match new software versions with customers’ needs and competitors’ moves. Although release management as a recurrent activity related to SaaS arguably shapes how a vendor services its customers, the literature is surprisingly limited on how software releases are managed to support SaaS strategies. Against this backdrop, we present a collaborative action-research study with Software Inc., a large multi-national software provider, focused on improving the release cycle management process for a complex security software service. The study is part of a comprehensive intervention into Software Inc. that combines a perspective rooted in software process improvement and engineering practices with one rooted in service delivery and customer interactions. The part that is reported in this dissertation draws on the service-dominant logic framework to analyze how the release cycle management process was organized to improve Software Inc.’s ongoing value co-creation with its customers. As a result, the study contributed to improving release cycle management at Software Inc. and it expands industry knowledge about the challenges and opportunities for software vendors to manage releases and improve the value delivered to and co-created with their customers. This added knowledge is of interest to both practitioners and researchers as SaaS strategies increasingly shape the industry with important implications for how software is released

Toward a Model for Customer-Driven Release Management

Undetected software bugs frequently result in service disruptions, productivity losses, and in some instances significant threat to human life. One way to prevent such bugs is to engage customers in acceptance testing prior to the production software release, yet there is a considerable lack of empirical examination of the release process from the customer’s perspective. To address this research-practice gap, this study proposes a model for customer-driven release management that has been shown to minimize the number of software bugs discovered in production systems. The model is evaluated during a 27 month study at a municipality using the action research method. Following the model, 361 software bugs were detected and eliminated prior to final production releases, confirming the value of customer-driven release management for elimination of production software bugs

Release and deployment at Planon: a case study

This case study report describes the research results of a case study at Planon into the processes of development, release, and deployment. The research was done to document the release and deployment processes at Planon, to uncover strengths and weaknesses in these processes, and to compare Planon to other product software vendors. The case study was performed by doing interviews and examining development documentation, Planon software, and internally used tools. The results of the case study are organizational descriptions, Planon software descriptions, and the descriptions of the development, release, and deployment processes. The main conclusions of the case study are twofold. First the case study shows that striving for more integrated software knowledge management can relieve the processes of release and deployment. Secondly, the case study displays that extensive variation management can effectively increase the customer base for a software vendo