Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Topics in Software, Systems and Services Process Improvement

2010; Wiley; Volume: 24; Issue: 5 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1002/smr.506

2047-7481

Miklós Bíró, Richard Messnarz,

Collaboration in agile enterprises

An annual EuroSPI conference supported by Software Process Improvement Networks from different EU countries. Establishing an Internet-based knowledge library, newsletters, and a set of proceedings and recommended books. Establishing an effective team of national representatives (from each EU country) growing step by step into more countries of Europe. Establishing a European Qualification Framework for a pool of professions related to SPI and management. This is supported by European certificates and exam systems. A typical characterisation of EuroSPI was stated by a company using the following words: ‘ … the biggest value of EuroSPI lies in its function as a European knowledge and experience exchange mechanism for SPI and innovation’. EuroSPI 22009 was held in Alcala, a historical city close to Madrid. The University of Alcala, as the host of EuroSPI 2009, is one of the oldest universities of Europe and was then a model for establishing other universities across Europe. They also act as the reference University for all the Spanish Speaking Countries world wide and they issue the annual Cervantes price of the literature. The university stands for collaboration and networking with an impressive history. As in previous years, a joint best paper award was jointly delivered at the conference by EuroSPI and the ASQ (American Society of Quality). This year, experts from 14 countries met before the conference and established a first version of an SPI manifesto. EuroSPI hosted its foundation in Alcala on 3.9.2009 and the manifesto has been released on 1.2.2010. This SPI Manifesto is published across the world during 2010. It gives expression to the state-of-the-art knowledge on systems, software and services process improvement grounded in hundreds of man years of practice and experience from organizations worldwide. Also at EuroSPI 2009, the scope of the conference was expanded from software process improvement to systems, software, and services-based process improvement. EMIRAcle is the institution for innovation in manufacturing being a result of the largest network of excellence for innovation in manufacturing in Europe. EMIRAcle's key representative joined the EuroSPI community. Papers, case studies for process improvement on systems and product level will be included in the future. EMIRAcle and Grenoble Institute of Technology are the hosts for EuroSPI 22010. Networking, experience exchange and continuous improvement can help in creating a competitive advantage on the market. Among the 24 countries represented at EuroSPI'2009, the contributions were highly relevant for the European industry. The SPI manifesto creates a future vision, the extension of SPI to the systems and product level will lead to the involvement of major European manufacturing firms, and the contributions include good practices about how to achieve that. Systems, Software and Services-based Process Improvement meanwhile is a major learning and success factor worldwide for staying competitive on a global and dynamically developing world market. Readers are welcome to the next conference in the EuroSPI series to be held in Grenoble, France, from 1st to 3rd September, 2010. Since 1994 the EuroSPI initiative is financed and coordinated by a group of leading applied research companies and quality networks. Since 1998 the following board members have been important drivers for the initiative: American Society for Quality Software Division, http://www.asq.org; German SW Quality Association ASQF, http://www.asqf.de; DELTA, Denmark, http://www.delta.dk; ISCN, Ireland and Austria, http://www.iscn.com; SINTEF, Norway, http://www.sintef.no; STTF and FiSMA (Finish Software Measurement Association), http://www.sttf.fi. In 2009, the University of Alcala closely collaborated with this board to coordinate EuroSPI 22009. The value of this selection of papers lies in the fact that they present actual industrial experiences. Research-oriented EuroSPI 22009 papers were published in a separate proceedings. Since its beginning in 1994 in Dublin, the EuroSPI initiative outlines that there is no single silver bullet to solve SPI issues but you need to understand a combination of different SPI methods and approaches to achieve real benefits. Therefore, each proceeding covers a variety of different topics and at the conference we discuss the potential synergies and the combined use of such methods and approaches. This proceeding contains selected industrial experience papers for different complementary topics, such as: SPI and Testing; SPI in Small Companies; SPI and Safety/Quality; SPI and Knowledge; SPI and Systems Improvement; SPI and Agile; SPI and Industrial Measurement Standards. This strategy reflects the EuroSPI multi-dimensional approach in which the three fundamental components of process improvement are known to be people & skills, process and technology. A further component which is considered in several papers in this special issue is ‘business’. We will use these general components and their special approach to categorize the papers. Patricia A. McQuaid describes disasters that happened at NASA and defense projects in the US and the lessons learned. She concludes that in all cases more professional testing, systems analysis and reviews, and optimized processes would have avoided the disasters. Monique Blaschke, Michael Philipp, Tomas Schweigert describe an ISO/IEC 15504 conformant test assessment approach. They review the common approaches of ISTQB, TMM and TPI/TMAP and outline a first version of Spice 4 Test. Ivan Garcia, Carla Pacheco, Jose Calvo-Manzano, Gonzalo Cuevas, Tomás San Feliu, Eloy Mendoza describe that SPI methods usually work in scenarios within large companies. The authors describe how they helped small software development organizations to adopt an iterative approach by providing a Process Improvement Web-based Tool. Antonia Mas, Bartomeu Fluxà, Esperança Amengual describe a first-hand experience in Software Process Improvement within a Spanish company which, since 2002, has been involved in an improvement program led by their research group. Experiences and results of this improvement programme, as well as the lessons learned to deal with new future improvement initiatives in other companies are discussed. Mika Johansson, Risto Nevalainen give an insight into the certification of safety-critical software as a multi-disciplinary topic. Process assessment is an essential part of that, but is not enough for software certification. Certification also employs several other method families, such as inspections and reviews, independent V&V, conformance with selected reference standard(s) and use of selected measurements and analyses. Jose A. Calvo-Manzano, Gonzalo Cuevas, Gerzon Gómez, Jezreel Mejia, Mirna Muñoz, Tomás San Feliu, Angel Sánchez describe a methodology that implements a smooth and continuous process improvement, depending on the organization's business goals, but allowing users to establish their improvement implementation pace. The methodology focuses on a process improvement basic component known as ‘best practice’. Tomas Schweigert, Richard Messnarz, Morten Korsaa, Jorn Johansen, RistoNevalainen, Miklos Biro state that while there is widespread knowledge about the performance of assessments, the real implementation of SPI (Software, Systems and Services Process Improvement) takes a lot of effort and experience to achieve an actual ROI (Return on Investment). To ensure the success of the improvement actions, another additional qualification is needed, which is the (SPI) Software, System and Services Process Improvement Manager. The paper describes these skills and offers participation in the SPI manifesto. Volker Bachmann, Richard Messnarz describe the principles of a platform strategy based on experiences in automotive engineering companies implementing mechatronic system with mechanics, electronics and software. It shows how requirements management, architectural design and solutions for products for a number of different customers with a high capability level and reuse factor can be established. The paper by Andreas Riel, Serge Tichkiewitch, Anca Draghici, George Draghici, Damian Grajewski Collaboration outlines that for systems improvement, integrated design skills have become an incontestable necessity for professionals in engineering teams. Engineering teams are becoming more and more interdisciplinary and distributed, products and the environments they are created, used and recycled in are increasingly complex. Design engineers, system architects as well as requirements engineers and managers have to be able to understand the product and its whole life cycle in order to be able to respect the constraints and requirements that are imposed on the product by different actors. Padraig O'Leary, Fergal McCaffery, Ita Richardson, Steffen Thiel discuss Software Product Lines (SPL) and Agile practices which have emerged as new paradigms for developing software. Both approaches share common goals, such as improving productivity, reducing time to market, decreasing development costs and increasing customer satisfaction. These common goals provide the motivation for this research. In this paper, they present an outline of their Agile framework for product derivation that was developed through industry-based case study research. Elli Georgiadou and Kerstin V. Siakas offer a new model for knowledge sharing and learning for workplaces in general but particularly for virtual workplaces where there is a need for a methodology for identifying and converting individual expertise, skills and experience into organizational knowledge. This is a highly relevant need in the systems, software and services business. Alain Abran, Jean-Marc Desharnais and Juan Jose Cuadrado-Gallego discuss the standards ISO 15939 and ISO 9126 and outline the differences between the standards. They present the Measurement Information Model in ISO 15939 and illustrate the use of this standard with two examples from ISO 9126, focusing on a single attribute and the second one attempting to quantify a set of relationships across a number of product quality attributes. We express our thanks to the members of the EuroSPI 22009 Industrial Programme Committee for their contribution to the review and selection of the papers: B ACHMANN Volker Sibac GmbH Germany, B ALSTRUP Bo Center for Software Innovation Denmark, B ARAFORT Beatrix Centre de Recherche Public Henri Tudor Luxembourg, B RESKE Eva Robert Bosch GmbH Germany, Christiansen Mads D ELTA Denmark, C OLLINOAlessandro O NION S.p.A. Italy, Colomo Palacios Ricardo Universidad Carlos III de Madrid Spain, Daughtrey Taz H. James Madison University U.S.A., Davies Richard Schlumberger WesternGeco Norway, Dussa-zieger Claudia Method Park Software AG Germany, E KERT Damjan ISCN Austria, Fehrer Detlef Sick AG Germany, Hagenmeyer Philipp ZF Friedrichshafen AG Germany, Hind Tim Axa Sun Life U.K., Johansson Mika Finnish Software Measurement Association FiSMA Finland, Kastner Norbert sepp.med gmbh Germany, Lichtenecker Gerhard Magna Steyr Fahrzeugtechnik Austria, Messnarz Richard ISCN Ireland, Morgenstern Jens Tuev Germany, Nevalainen Risto Falcon Leader Oy Finland, O Leary Eugene EQN Ltd. Ireland, Pikkarainen Mika VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland Finland, POTH Alexander SQS Software Quality Systems AG Germany, Renault Samuel Centre de Recherche Public Henri Tudor Luxembourg, Riel Andreas Grenoble Institute of Technology France, Romcea Cristina Conti Temic microelectronic GmbH Germany, Sanders Marty U.K., Schweigert Tomas SQS Software Quality Systems AG Germany, SEHL Georg iMBUS AG Germany, Smite Darja Blekinge Inst. of Technology Sweden, Spork Gunther Magna Powertrain Austria, Stefanova-pavlova Maria Center for Innovation and Technology Transfer-Global Bulgaria, Ulsund Tor Geomatikk AS Norway, Von Bronk Peter Systemberatung Software-Qualität Germany, Wöran Bruno Danube Austria.