Stretching the paradigm for software reliability assurance

Reliability of a software product is best assured by the same means as reliability of any other product is assured: by a systematic, end-to-end, design for reliability process that begins at product concept and follows through to customer service after delivery. Steps in this process are coordinated with the phases of the product realization (software development) process and include specific reliability improvement activities that complement each phase. This represents a new approach to software reliability assurance needs, contrasted with the traditional inspection and rework approach commonly taken to software reliability assurance via reliability growth testing and modelling. The program we describe draws on contemporary principles of quality management and reliability engineering for its overall structure. Also, several important and promising new areas of software reliability research devolving from this expanded paradigm are sketched.     

An analogy based estimation framework for design rework efforts

Analogy based estimation framework is developed aiming to estimate design rework efforts which are unnecessary repetition design efforts. Design rework factors were captured from literature reviews and then they were developed to be design rework drivers by mapping with results from semi structure interviews with three companies in automotive industries. There are six design rework drivers for probability occurrence, and there is only one driver for efforts required. Design structure matrix is used to identify interactions and addressed a key critical component or subsystem. The analogy based estimation framework is applied with the water pump development project from an engine manufacturer. The initial statistical validation method called mean magnitude of relative error is implemented and the results are in acceptable range, while experts from company C agreed on the validity of design rework drivers and opportunity to improve the framework. The ultimate goal of this development is to develop a framework to estimate design rework efforts in the product design and development projects at the early stage.     

Integrating business and software development models

Developing the right products the right way is challenging, not least in software product development. It requires sound business decisions as well as good engineering practices. Various software development life-cycle models can be mapped to business decision models by mapping business decision gates and major development milestones. Two well-known life-cycle models have been mapped to the ABB Gate Model, a business decision model for product development projects that was developed to ensure that released products could be successfully deployed into the marketplace.     

Managing the business of software product line: An empirical investigation of key business factors

Business has been highlighted as a one of the critical dimensions of software product line engineering. This paper’s main contribution is to increase the understanding of the influence of key business factors by showing empirically that they play an imperative role in managing a successful software product line. A quantitative survey of software organizations currently involved in the business of developing software product lines over a wide range of operations, including consumer electronics, telecommunications, avionics, and information technology, was designed to test the conceptual model and hypotheses of the study. This is the first study to demonstrate the relationships between the key business factors and software product lines. The results provide evidence that organizations in the business of software product line development have to cope with multiple key business factors to improve the overall performance of the business, in addition to their efforts in software development. The conclusions of this investigation reinforce current perceptions of the significance of key business factors in successful software product line business.     

“Failures” to be celebrated: an analysis of major pivots of software startups

In the context of software startups, project failure is embraced actively and considered crucial to obtain validated learning that can lead to pivots. A pivot is the strategic change of a business concept, product or the different elements of a business model. A better understanding is needed on different types of pivots and different factors that lead to failures and trigger pivots, for software entrepreneurial teams to make better decisions under chaotic and unpredictable environment. Due to the nascent nature of the topic, the existing research and knowledge on the pivots of software startups are very limited. In this study, we aimed at identifying the major types of pivots that software startups make during their startup processes, and highlighting the factors that fail software projects and trigger pivots. To achieve this, we conducted a case survey study based on the secondary data of the major pivots happened in 49 software startups. 10 pivot types and 14 triggering factors were identified. The findings show that customer need pivot is the most common among all pivot types. Together with customer segment pivot, they are common market related pivots. The major product related pivots are zoom-in and technology pivots. Several new pivot types were identified, including market zoom-in, complete and side project pivots. Our study also demonstrates that negative customer reaction and flawed business model are the most common factors that trigger pivots in software startups. Our study extends the research knowledge on software startup pivot types and pivot triggering factors. Meanwhile it provides practical knowledge to software startups, which they can utilize to guide their effective decisions on pivoting.     

PSO based approach for scheduling NPD projects including overlapping process

The efficient scheduling of the new product development (NPD) projects is important to reduce the required development time, and to offer the new product faster. Activity overlapping is commonly regarded as the most promising strategy to reduce product development times. However, overlapping must be well-planned by weighting the gain from the activity overlapping against the additional time for rework. The objective of this research was to develop a resource constrained scheduling methodology for NPD projects considering overlapping of activity couples. A particle swarm optimization based approach is used to schedule NPD projects that include overlapping process. The proposed PSO method is developed into a user friendly system so that the practitioners can utilize it. A real-life example of a product development project taken from the literature is used to show the efficiency of the software.     

Interactive assistants provide ease of use for novices: the development of prototypes and descendants

The purpose of this article is to relate early software development features, such as Microsoft Bob's “interactive assistants,” to the new software products on the market today that feature “intelligent, interactive assistants” and enhanced help features. Also, the role of training with intelligent software in the business and academic settings will be explored. This article is emphatically not meant to promote any singular software product or manufacturer, merely to analyze and discuss new and effective features of software, how they developed, and their impact on human users from a practical, rather than empirical, standpoint.     

The critical factors of success for information service industry in developing international market: Using analytic hierarchy process (AHP) approach

In the past few years, due to changes in industry structure, market and the saturation of the domestic market, information service firms have started to develop the international market. Hence, to continue running their operations and maintain profitability, they should effectively control the related factors in the development of targeting a market. The purpose of this paper is to find the critical operational factors of the information service industry in developing the market and to provide a referential framework for operations in the information service industry. This research is firstly base on the business model discussed in relevant literature, using cross-case study to observe different domains for the operational strategies and critical factors of those top information service companies combined with thorough interviews with their top management executives, experts, and consultants. Finally, we concludes by proposing six elements of business model and 20 critical factors for using AHP method, and also calculates the quantitative weight of those elements and factors. We also take typical commercial software companies for examples to analyze their strategies of entering the international market.     

Strategy-;driven reuse: Bringing reuse from the Engineering Department to the Executive Boardroom

Organizations have predominantly utilized reuse in Engineering Departments for the purposes of reducing the cost and improving the quality of the software they develop. While these strategies have been successful, we believe that the full potential of reuse can only be tapped when reuse is brought to the Executive Boardroom as well. We propose that organizations tap reuse not only for cutting costs, but also for strategic and wide-;ranging business initiatives such as entering new markets, increasing agility in response to a dynamic marketplace, and competitive positioning and advantage. In order to do so effectively, organizations must harness the potential of reuse by migrating reuse into the company's business and product-;line planning processes. We present a framework for analyzing and changing reuse business practices. Such practices include cost-;reduction reuse, when the organization utilizes reuse for cost savings purposes; reuse-;enabled business, when the organization uses reuse to create new business opportunities; and strategy-;driven reuse, when the organization incorporates reuse in the formulation of its business and product-;line strategy for the purposes of obtaining competitive positioning and advantage. To determine whether or not reuse is the proper software development strategy to pursue, we utilize concepts in competitive software engineering, an integrated approach to software development that is attuned to the competitive demands of the marketplace. First, a framework is established by identifying and analyzing the organization's goals, strengths, and limitations, its market and its competitive environment. Based on these analyses, possible business or product strategies are formulated and one or more are chosen that help achieve the organization's goals. Finally, a development strategy is chosen. Following this choice, each step of the decision cycle should be re-;evaluated to ensure that it is consistent with the chosen development strategy.     

A personal recollection: IBM's unbundling of software and services

Many people believe that one pivotal event in the growth of the business software products market was IBM's decision, in 1969, to price its software and services separately from its hardware. The author's recollections shed light on the internal process and surrounding business climate that led to IBM's decision     

Risk of using pirated software and its impact on software protection strategies

The software protection strategy of software developer and the inherent risk to end user in using pirated software are two major factors that affect a user's decision on whether to purchase or pirate a software product. This paper analyzes the optimal protection strategy for software developer in horizontally and vertically differentiated markets. We find that the implementation cost of software protection constitutes the primary factor for software developers to determine their software protection strategies. However, in a vertically differentiated market, the lower quality product should always adopt a non-protection strategy, regardless of the protection implementation cost. In other cases, protection would only be optimal if the protection implementation cost to the software developer is relatively small. These findings are consistent with anecdotal evidence.     

Software product roadmapping in a volatile business environment

Product roadmapping enhances the product development process by enabling early information and long-term decision making about the products in order to deliver the right products to the right markets at the right time. However, relatively little scientific knowledge is available on the application and usefulness of product roadmapping in software product development context. This study develops a framework for software product roadmapping, which is then used to study the critical aspects of the product roadmapping process. The collection of empirical evidence includes both quantitative and qualitative data which sheds further insight into the complexities involved in product roadmapping. Results revealed that organizations view the product roadmap mainly as a tool for strategic decision making as it aims at showing the future directions of the company's products. However, only a few companies appear to have an explicit approach for handling the mechanisms for creating and maintaining such a roadmap. Finally, it is suggested that the strategic importance of product roadmapping is likely to increase in the future and, as a conclusion, a new type of agility is required in order to survive in the turbulent and competitive software business environment.     

A business maturity model of software product line engineering

In the recent past, software product line engineering has become one of the most promising practices in software industry with the potential to substantially increase the software development productivity. Software product line engineering approach spans the dimensions of business, architecture, software engineering process and organization. The increasing popularity of software product line engineering in the software industry necessitates a process maturity evaluation methodology. Accordingly, this paper presents a business maturity model of software product line, which is a methodology to evaluate the current maturity of the business dimension of a software product line in an organization. This model examines the coordination between product line engineering and the business aspects of software product line. It evaluates the maturity of the business dimension of software product line as a function of how a set of business practices are aligned with product line engineering in an organization. Using the model presented in this paper, we conducted two case studies and reported the assessment results. This research contributes towards establishing a comprehensive and unified strategy for a process maturity evaluation of software product lines.     

Point/Counterpoint

Sales, profits, and success are the goals of any business, large or small. Many factors can influence success, but when software development is an important business constituent, the relationship between the software product's characteristics and business goals is strong. We don't always recognize this, of course, because most of us became engineers for nobler reasons than serving a business - the intellectual challenge, the free T-shirts, the 2 a.m. beer and pizza to celebrate unit tests that are finally passing. But ultimately we must allow the choices we make in software development to be influenced by business goals, or else risk business failure     

Creating a Decision-Making Model Using Association Rules

Being a highly significant and complex function of management, decision making requires methods and techniques that simplify the process of selecting one choice among all available options. Decision making is therefore selection of that particular choice over any of several alternatives. Because of the process complexity, a continuous research and improvement of the methods and techniques modern decision making involves is required. One of many modern business challenges is to discover any possible improvement in the decision-making process managers shall use in making the right decision. Any decision made by managers directly impacts the realized profit, business, and company’s position on the market. The fact is that mankind faces the decision-making problem in each phase of its social development, which has resulted in increased need for learning more about it. In this work, both the significance and application of association rules will be analyzed on an example of car sales business. The research was conducted on a sample of 1728 transactions in order to recognize and establish the association rules and then determine their impact on the sales and profit. For the purpose of this research, a large car sales database was used as a source of information, which is also described in this work. Once these association rules were established, they were then used to create a better and more complete market supply. The main contribution of the paper is providing business intelligence model for performing association rules in real-term business settings.     

Pareto process optimization of product development project using bi-objective hybrid genetic algorithm

Overlapping and iteration between development activities are the main reasons to cause complexity in product development (PD) process. Overlapping may not only reduce duration of a project but also create rework risk, while iteration increases the project duration and cost. In order to balance the duration and cost, this article presents four types of time models from the angle of time overlapping and activities dependent relationships based on Collaboration Degree Design Structure Matrix (CD-DSM) and builds the cost model considering the negation cost. On basis of the formulated model, a hybridization of the Pareto genetic algorithm (PGA) and variable neighborhood search (VNS) algorithm is proposed to solve the bi-objective process optimization problem of PD project for reducing the project duration and cost. The VNS strategy is implemented after the genetic operation of crossover and mutation to improve the exploitation ability of the algorithm. And then, an industrial example, a LED module PD project in an optoelectronic enterprise, is provided to illustrate the utility of the proposed approach. The optimization model minimizes the project duration and cost associated with overlapping and iteration and yields a Pareto optimal solution of project activity sequence for project managers to make decision following different business purposes. The simulation results of two different problems show that the proposed approach has a good convergence and robustness.     

Computing Completion Time and Optimal Scheduling of Design Activities in Concurrent Product Development Process

This paper proposes a time-computing model and a scheduling method for shortening the completion time of product development under the given rework cost budget. As overlapping and iteration exist between or among design activities in concurrent product development, predictability and efficiency of the process deserve attention. By using the corresponding design structure matrix, the characteristics of information flow are obtained and applied to analysis of the dynamic behavior of the product development process. A time-computing model is set up to estimate the rework cost and completion time of each of the activities, between which both iteration and overlapping are observed. Through sequential quadratic programming, an optimization algorithm is developed for minimizing the development completion time under the constraint of the given rework cost budget. Our application results acquired from our experiments have verified the feasibility and validity of the approach.     

Determining software schedules

Improving software productivity, shortening schedules or time to market, and improving quality are prominent topics in software journals in both contributed articles and advertising copy. Unfortunately, most of these articles and advertisements have dealt with software schedules, productivity, or quality factors in abstract terms. Now we can measure these factors with reasonable accuracy and collect empirical data on both average and best-in-class results. We are particularly interested in the wide performance gaps between laggards, average enterprises, and industry leaders, as well as differences among the various software domains. The function-point metric lets us establish a meaningful database of software performance levels. A simple algorithm raises function points to a total to obtain a useful first-order schedule estimate