What Can Be Learnt from Experienced Data Scientists? A Case Study

Data science has the potential to create value and deep customer insight for service and software engineering. Companies are increasingly applying data science to support their service and software development practices. The goal of our research was to investigate how data science can be applied in software development organisations. We conducted a qualitative case study with an industrial partner. We collected data through a workshop, focus group interview and feedback session. This paper presents the data science process recommended by experienced data scientists and describes the key characteristics of the process, i.e., agility and continuous learning. We also report the challenges experienced while applying the data science process in customer projects. For example, the data scientists highlighted that it is challenging to identify an essential problem and ensure that the results will be utilised. Our findings indicate that it is important to put in place an agile, iterative data science process that supports continuous learning while focusing on a real business problem to be solved. In addition, the application of data science can be demanding and requires skills for addressing human and organisational issues.Peer reviewe

Customer Involvement in Continuous Deployment: A Systematic Literature Review

Abstract. [Context and motivation] In order to build successful software products and services, customer involvement and an understanding of customers' requirements and behaviours during the development process are essential. [Question/Problem] Although continuous deployment is gaining attention in the software industry as an approach for continuously learning from customers, there is no common overview of the topic yet. [Principal ideas/results] To provide a common overview, we conduct a secondary study that explores the state of reported evidence on customer input during continuous deployment in software engineering, including the potential benefits, challenges, methods and tools of the field. [Contribution] We report on a systematic literature review covering 25 primary studies. Our analysis of these studies reveals that although customer involvement in continuous deployment is highly relevant in the software industry today, it has been relatively unexplored in academic research. The field is seen as beneficial, but there are a number of challenges related to it, such as misperceptions among customers. In addition to providing a comprehensive overview of the research field, we clarify the gaps in knowledge that need to be studied further

Continuous Experimentation Cookbook : An introduction to systematic experimentation for software-intensive businesses

An increasing number of companies are involved in building software-intensive products and services – hence the popular slogan “every business is a software business”. Software allows companies to disrupt existing markets because of its flexibility. This creates highly dynamic and competitive environments, imposing high risks to businesses. One risk is that the product or service is of only little or no value to customers, meaning the effort to develop it is wasted. In order to reduce such risks, you can adopt an experimentdriven development approach where you validate your product ideas before spending resources on fully developing them. Experiments allow you to test assumptions about what customers really want and react if the assumptions are wrong. This book provides an introduction to continuous experimentation, which is a systematic way to continuously test your product or service value and whether your business strategy is working. With real case examples from Ericsson, Solita, Vaadin, and Bittium, the book not only gives you the concepts needed to start performing continuous experimentation, but also shows you how others have been doing it

Continuous experimentation cookbook : an introduction to systematic experimentation for software-intensive businesses. - (DIMECC result publications ; 3) - (DIMECC publications series no. 15)

The business landscape is changing radically because of software. Companies in all industry sectors are continously finding new flexibilities in this programmable world. They are able to deliver new functionalities even after the product is already in the customer's hands. But success is far from guaranteed if they cannot validate their assumptions about what their customers actually need. A competitor with better knowledge of customer needs can disrupt the market in an instant. This book introduces continuous experimentation, an approach to continuously and systematically test assumptions about the company's product or service strategy and verify customers' needs through experiments. By observing how customers actually use the product or early versions of it, companies can make better development decisions and avoid potentially expensive and wasteful activities. The book explains the cycle of continuous experimentation, demonstrates its use through industry cases, provides advice on how to conduct experiments with recipes, tools, and models, and lists some common pitfalls to avoid. Use it to get started with continuous experimentation and make better product and service development decisions that are in-line with your customers' needs