Distributed software development in a financial services organisation

The outsourcing of IS functionality to offshore development firms has been a growth industry that has blossomed over the last 10 years. This is as a result of organisations, seeking to optimise costs, mitigate risks, and achieve greater return on shareholder value by delegating the delivery of business information systems and applications to third party vendors. At the same time, distributed approaches to software development has arisen, there has been a growing interest in the applicability of lightweight or Agile development methodologies. As such, this paper this paper discusses experiences of a European Financial Services firm in outsourcing, and subsequently offshoring, two of its IT projects to vendor firms in India, where Agile approaches were used. The authors provide a model of the financial firm’s critical success factors presented as a frame of reference for others interested and involved in this topical area

Applications of lean thinking: a briefing document

This report has been put together by the Health and Care Infrastructure Research and Innovation Centre (HaCIRIC) at the University of Salford for the Department of Health. The need for the report grew out of two main simple questions, o Is Lean applicable in sectors other than manufacturing? o Can the service delivery sector learn from the success of lean in manufacturing and realise the benefits of its implementation?The aim of the report is to list together examples of lean thinking as it is evidenced in the public and private service sector. Following a review of various sources a catalogue of evidence is put together in an organised manner which demonstrates that Lean principles and techniques, when applied rigorously and throughout an entire organization/unit, they can have a positive impact on productivity, cost, quality, and timely delivery of services

Web engineering security: essential elements

Security is an elusive target in today’s high-speed and extremely complex, Web enabled, information rich business environment. This paper presents the idea that there are essential, basic organizational elements that need to be identified, defined and addressed before examining security aspects of a Web Engineering Development process. These elements are derived from empirical evidence based on a Web survey and supporting literature. This paper makes two contributions. The first contribution is the identification of the Web Engineering specific elements that need to be acknowledged and resolved prior to the assessment of a Web Engineering process from a security perspective. The second contribution is that these elements can be used to help guide Security Improvement Initiatives in Web Engineering

SOA and BPM, a Partnership for Successful Organizations

In order to stay effective and competitive, companies have to be able to adapt themselves to permanent market requirements, to improve constantly their business process, to act as flexible and proactive economic agents. To achieve these goals, the IT systems within the organization have to be standardized and integrated, in order to provide fast and reliable data access to users both inside and outside the company. A proper system architecture for integrating company’s IT assets is a service oriented one. A service-oriented architecture (SOA) is an IT architectural style that allows integration of the company’s business as linked, repeatable tasks called services. A subject closely related to SOA is Business Process Management (BPM), an approach that aims to improve business processes. The paper also presents some aspects of this topic, as well as the relationship between SOA and BPM. They complement each other and help companies improve their business performance.Information Systems, SOA, Web Services, BPM

Organizational Change Perspectives on Software Process Improvement

Many software organizations have engaged in Software Process Improvement (SPI) and experienced the challenges related to managing such complex organizational change efforts. As a result, there is an increasing body of research investigating change management in SPI. To provide an overview of what we know and don’t know about SPI as organizational change, this paper addresses the following question: What are the dominant perspectives on SPI as organizational change in the literature and how is this knowledge presented and published? All journals on the AIS ranking list were screened to identify relevant articles and Gareth Morgan’s organizational metaphors (1996) were used to analyze this literature considering the following dimensions of each article: organizational perspective (metaphor), knowledge orientation (normative versus descriptive), theoretical emphasis (high versus low), main audience (practitioner versus academic), geographical origin (Scandinavia, the Americas, Europe, or the Asia-Pacific), and publication level (high versus low ranked journal). The review demonstrates that the literature on SPI as organizational change is firmly grounded in both theory and practice, and Scandinavia and the Americas are the main contributors to this research. The distribution of articles across Morgan’s metaphors is uneven and reveals knowledge gaps that present new avenues for research. The current literature offers important insights into organizational change in SPI from machine, organism, and brain perspectives. Practitioners may use these articles as a guide to SPI insights relevant to their improvement initiatives. In contrast, the impact of culture, dominance, psychic prison, flux and transformation, and politics in SPI have only received scant attention. We argue that these perspectives offer important insights into the challenges involved in managing change in SPI. Researchers are therefore advised to engage in new SPI research based on one or more of these perspectives. Overall, the paper provides a roadmap to help identify insights and specific articles related to SPI as organizational change.Software Process Improvement; Organizational Change; Organizational Metaphors; Images of Organization; Literature Review

Software development processes for games: a systematic literature review

This paper describes the methodology and results from a Systematic Literature Review (SLR) of the software processes used in game development. A total of 404 papers were analyzed as part of the review and the various process models that are used in industry and academia/research are presented. Software Process Improvement (SPI) initiatives for game development are dis-cussed. The factors that promote or deter the adoption of process models, and implementing SPI in practice are highlighted. Our findings indicate that there is no single model that serves as a best practice process model for game development and it is a matter of deciding which model is best suited for a particular game. Agile models such as Scrum and XP are suited to the knowledge intensive domain of game development where innovation and speed to market are vital. Hybrid approaches such as reuse can also be suitable for game development where the risk of the upfront investment in terms of time and cost is mitigated with a game that has stable requirements and a longer lifespan

Global Innovations in Measurement and Evaluation

We researched the latest developments in theory and practice in measurement and evaluation. And we found that new thinking, techniques, and technology are influencing and improving practice. This report highlights 8 developments that we think have the greatest potential to improve evaluation and programme design, and the careful collection and use of data. In it, we seek to inform and inspire—to celebrate what is possible, and encourage wider application of these ideas

Improving Practices in a Small Software Firm: An Ambidextrous Perspective

Despite documented best practices and specialized tools, software organizations struggle to deliver quality software that is on time, within budget, and meets customer requirements. Managers seeking improved software project outcomes face two dominant software paradigms which differ in their emphasis on upfront planning, customer collaboration, and product documentation: plan-driven and agile. Rather than promoting one approach over the other, this research advocates improving software management practices by developing the organization’s ambidextrous capability. Ambidextrous organizations have the ability to simultaneously succeed at two seemingly contradictory capabilities (e.g. discipline and agility) which leads to enhanced organizational performance. Overall, this study asks the question: How can an ambidextrous perspective facilitate improvement in software practices? Driven by this question, and based on a two year action research study at a small software firm, TelSoft, the objectives of this research are to: 1. Identify dualities involved in improving software practices 2. Design interventions based on these dualities to improve software practices 3. Explore the process of becoming an ambidextrous software organization The resulting dissertation consists of a summary and four papers that each identify and address particular dualities encountered during software process improvement. The first paper asserts that both process-driven and perception-driven inquiry should be used during assessment of software practices, presents a model that shows how this combination can occur, and demonstrates the use of this model at TelSoft. The second paper explicates two theories for understanding and resolving issues in requirements engineering practice – repeat-ability and response-ability – and argues for the need to negotiate between the two. The third paper identifies a tension between managing legacy and current processes and proposes a model for software process reengineering, a systematic process for leveraging legacy processes created during prior SPI efforts. Finally, the fourth paper applies the theoretical lens of ambidexterity to understand the overall change initiative in terms of the tension between alignment and adaptability. The study used a variety of data sources to diagnose software practices, including semi-structured interviews, software process documents, meeting interactions, and workshop discussions. Subsequently, we established, facilitated, and tracked focused improvement teams in the areas of customer relations, requirements management, quality assurance, project portfolio management, and process management. Furthermore, we created and trained two management teams with responsibility for ongoing management of SPI and project portfolio management respectively. We argue that these activities improved software practices at TelSoft and provided a stronger foundation for continuous improvement. Keywords: Ambidexterity, software process improvement (SPI), action research, requirements engineering assessment, action planning, software process reengineering, software management