Customer configuration updating in a software supply network

Product software development is the activity of development, modification, reuse, re-engineering, maintenance, or any other activities that result in packaged configurations of software components or software-based services that are released for and traded in a specific market \cite{XuBrinkkemper}. An increasingly important part of product software development is Customer Configuration Updating (CCU). \textit{CCU is the combination of the vendor side release process, the product or update delivery process, the customer side deployment process, and the activation process}. Product software vendors encounter particular problems when trying to improve these processes, because vendors have to deal with multiple revisions, variable features, different deployment environments and architectures, different customers, different distribution media, and dependencies on external products. Also, there are not many tools available that support the delivery and deployment of software product releases that are generic enough to accomplish these tasks for any product. In 9 industrial case studies it was discovered that as much as 15% of the deployments and product updates of new products do not proceed as planned and require unplanned extra support from the software vendor. These organizations are held back in their growth, due to the fact that they cannot handle larger customer bases, since it would result into more configurations that require maintenance and updates. When software vendors attempt to improve CCU three things become apparent: (1) there are no adequate process descriptions for CCU, (2) there is a lack of tools to support CCU, (3) software vendors lose a lot of time automating CCU tasks, even though these tasks are similar for all software vendors. This thesis proposes a multidirectional approach, where best practices from management are combined with up to date reviews of CCU support tools, new tools and tool proposals, and finally a CCU process model. The contribution is threefold: 1. Gives a detailed view of the state of the practice of CCU, i.e., release, delivery, deployment, and activation and usage . This tells the scientific community where the unsolved issues are, what practices are currently prevalent, and what practices are more successful than others in the industry through case studies and a survey. 2. Proposes a number of improvements for software release planning, software development, and business development within a software supply network, based on the results found in (1), to improve the art of CCU. 3. Provides a tool to improve deployment and configuration of components in large product lines. Furthermore, a tool is provided that improves customer-vendor relations by proposing an infrastructure for communication about software. These tools and fourteen others are evaluated using the product updater evaluation method. The contributions allow software vendors to stop dabbling around small customer numbers, and to make the jump to larger customer bases, with only a small increase in manpower and effort. Simultaneously, when applied correctly, the presented principles for CCU enable product software vendors to shorten release times, by reduction of release and upgrade costs. This in turn facilitates quicker feedback cycles from customers and more agility for the product software vendor, enabling them to potentially reach higher quality levels for their products

Ten Misconceptions about Product Software Release Management explained using Update Cost/Value Functions

The decision for a young product software vendor to release a version of their product is dependent on different factors, such as development decisions (it feels right), sales decisions (the market needs it), and quality decisions (the product is stable). Customers of these products, however, are much more cost oriented when deciding whether to update their product or not, and will look mainly at the cost and value of an update. Product software vendors would gain tremendously if their release package planning method was supported by a similar cost/value overview. This paper presents cost/value functions for product software vendors to support their release package planning method. These cost/value functions are supported by ten misconceptions encountered in seven case studies of product software vendors that these vendors had to adjust during their lifetime. Finally, a number of cost saving opportunities are presented to enable quicker adoption of a release and thus shorten release times and customer feedback cycles

Evaluating the Release, Delivery, and Deployment Processes of Eight Large Product Software Vendors applying the Customer Configuration Update Model

For software vendors the processes of release, delivery, and deployment to customers are inherently complex. However, software vendors can greatly improve their product quality and quality of service by applying a model that focuses on customer interaction if such a model were available. This paper presents a model for customer configuration updating (CCU) that can evaluate the capabilities of a software vendor in these processes. Eight extensive case studies of medium to large product software vendors are presented and evaluated using the model, thereby uncovering issues in their release, delivery, and deployment processes

Software Release and Deployment at Exact : A Case Study Report

For vendors of product software it is becoming more and more difficult to manage and control the software configurations of all their users at the customer's site. It is labour intensive and error-prone to (semi)automatically register detailed lists of the software artefacts in use by each customer. To alleviate this problem the Deliver project proposes an Intelligent Software Knowledge Base that contains all facts about all artefacts together with their relevant attributes, relations and constraints. In this way, high-quality software configurations can be calculated automatically from a small set of key parameters. It also becomes possible to pose what-if questions about necessary or future upgrades of a customer's configuration. This document describes a case study performed at Exact Software into the processes of release and deployment. The results of the case study are presented, existing of process descriptions of the development, release and deployment processes at Exact Software, a comparison to the Intelligent Software Knowledge Base, and an analysis of the results

Understanding the dynamics of product software development using the concept of coevolution

The context in which software is developed determines its evolution. Specifically for software developed as a product by startups, the uncertainty of market, platform and team not only determine the evolution of the product, but also of the process. During the lifecycle of the product the organization changes and different product improvement and process improvement patterns can be observed. With this in mind the Abernathy and Utterback dynamic innovation model proves to be an applicable view for the evolution of product software and its process. In this paper we introduce this theoretical model as a basis for further research in the co-evolution of product software development. Based on an anecdotal case study of a Software-asa- Service product an example of the co-evolution of process and product in the software product industry is provided

Understanding the dynamics of product software development using the concept of coevolution

The context in which software is developed determines its evolution. Specifically for software developed as a product by startups, the uncertainty of market, platform and team not only determine the evolution of the product, but also of the process. During the lifecycle of the product the organization changes and different product improvement and process improvement patterns can be observed. With this in mind the Abernathy and Utterback dynamic innovation model proves to be an applicable view for the evolution of product software and its process. In this paper we introduce this theoretical model as a basis for further research in the co-evolution of product software development. Based on an anecdotal case study of a Software-asa- Service product an example of the co-evolution of process and product in the software product industry is provided

Gaia Catalogue of Nearby Stars - GCNS

VizieR online Data Catalogue associated with article published in journal Astronomy & Astrophysics with title 'Gaia Early Data Release 3: The Gaia Catalogue of Nearby Stars.' (bibcode: 2021A&A...649A...6G