e public sector is facing a massive digitalization process in order to provide faster and more au... more e public sector is facing a massive digitalization process in order to provide faster and more automated services to the public. Several new projects in this sector are developing so ware using agile methodologies. ere is, however, a lack of empirical research on how these methods are used in practice, how they are adapted to these complex and large se ings, and how the projects achieves good coordination. In this paper we outline our initial research proposal to study a large-scale agile development program in the public sector. Our primary focus is to make sure the research is grounded in the reality of the practitioners and so we seek to follow an engaged scholarship model in order to make our research relevant as well as rigorous. CCS CONCEPTS •So ware and its engineering →Agile so ware development;
Stadig flere prosjekter inkluderer grader av digitalisering, spesielt prosjekter med innovasjon i... more Stadig flere prosjekter inkluderer grader av digitalisering, spesielt prosjekter med innovasjon i produkter, tjenester eller arbeidsmetoder. Slike prosjekter har hatt utfordringer med å levere på nytte, teknisk produktkvalitet, kostnadskontroll, tidskontroll eller effektivitet i prosjektarbeid. Et forbedringstiltak som er foreslått i en tidligere rapport er mer hensiktsmessig organisering av prosjekter. Denne rapporten beskriver erfaringer og forskningsfunn om organisering av store digitaliseringsprosjekt, med funn fra tre vellykkede store prosjekt i norsk offentlig sektor. Vi beskriver endring i prosjektorganisering, fra det vi beskriver som en kombinasjon av råd fra prosjektledelse med råd fra programvareutvikling i «førstegenerasjons metoder for storskala smidig utvikling», til mer tilpassede måter å organisere digital produktutvikling i «andregenerasjon metoder for storskala smidig utvikling». Vi beskriver organisering gjennom praksiser, roller og artefakter brukt i prosjektene. Videre beskriver vi erfaringer og forskningsfunn på spesielle utfordringer i store digitaliseringsprosjekt hvor mange team jobber i parallell med oppgaver som å definere behov og krav, utvikle og teste produkt. Spesielt ser vi på håndtering av kundebehov, hvordan en sikrer gode tekniske løsninger og hvordan arbeid koordineres og kunnskap deles på tvers av team. Denne rapporten gir et innblikk i intern organisering på et felt hvor de finnes mange foreslåtte beste praksiser, men få studier internasjonalt på hva som faktisk gjøres i praksis. Rike beskrivelser av organisering viser erfaringsbaserte praksiser som kan være nyttige for kommende digitaliseringsprosjekt
Fish farmers manage assets of considerable value on a daily basis. Many aspects of the daily oper... more Fish farmers manage assets of considerable value on a daily basis. Many aspects of the daily operation are automated in some way, such as the feeding sys- tem. Sensory equipment steadily becomes cheaper and more ubiquitous, yielding data that can be used by automated systems and for post-processing (i.e. data min- ing) to discover hidden trends in the data. However, a lot of information is only known informally by the fish farmers themselves, through years of experience. Companies that can store this information and reuse it will have an advantage; even more so if high-level human expertise can be linked to low-level sensor data. This paper presents early developments of a system that stores this informal knowledge using case based-reasoning, combined with corresponding sensor data.
Agile Processes in Software Engineering and Extreme Programming – Workshops, 2020
Following the highly pervasive and effective use of agile methods for software development, atten... more Following the highly pervasive and effective use of agile methods for software development, attention has now turned to the much more difficult challenge of applying these methods in large scale, organization-wide development. However, identifying to what extent certain factors influence success and failure of sustaining large-scale agile transformations remains unclear and there is a lack of theoretical frameworks to guide such investigations. By adopting Normalization Process Theory and specifically ‘coherence’, we compare two large-scale agile transformation case studies and the different perspectives individuals and teams had when faced with the problem of operationalizing the agile method as part of their large-scale agile transformation. The key contributions of this work are: (i) this is a first attempt to present the results of a comparison between a successful and failed large-scale agile transformations; and (ii) we describe the challenges in understanding the rationale, d...
Coordination was early identified as a key challenge in software development, and in particular i... more Coordination was early identified as a key challenge in software development, and in particular in large development projects. With the arrival of agile methods and their increasing use also in large-scale projects, this calls for rethinking how the software engineering community addresses coordination. We argue for increasing the focus on coordination in software engineering and describe four directions for research. Focus on these areas can supplement advice given in current development methods with relevant research-based advice.
Agile Processes in Software Engineering and Extreme Programming – Workshops, 2020
Following the highly pervasive and effective use of agile methods for software development, atten... more Following the highly pervasive and effective use of agile methods for software development, attention has now turned to the much more difficult challenge of applying these methods in large scale, organization-wide development. However, identifying to what extent certain factors influence success and failure of sustaining large-scale agile transformations remains unclear and there is a lack of theoretical frameworks to guide such investigations. By adopting Normalization Process Theory and specifically ‘coherence’, we compare two large-scale agile transformation case studies and the different perspectives individuals and teams had when faced with the problem of operationalizing the agile method as part of their large-scale agile transformation. The key contributions of this work are: (i) this is a first attempt to present the results of a comparison between a successful and failed large-scale agile transformations; and (ii) we describe the challenges in understanding the rationale, d...
Proceedings of the 11th International Workshop on Cooperative and Human Aspects of Software Engineering, 2018
Coordination was early identified as a key challenge in software development, and in particular i... more Coordination was early identified as a key challenge in software development, and in particular in large development projects. With the arrival of agile methods and their increasing use also in large-scale projects, this calls for rethinking how the software engineering community addresses coordination. We argue for increasing the focus on coordination in software engineering and describe four directions for research. Focus on these areas can supplement advice given in current development methods with relevant research-based advice.
Lecture Notes in Business Information Processing, 2018
Agile methods are increasingly used in large development projects, with multiple development team... more Agile methods are increasingly used in large development projects, with multiple development teams. A central question is then what is needed to coordinate feature teams efficiently. This study examines three mechanisms for coordination: Shared mental models, communication and trust in a large-scale development project with 12 feature teams running over a four-year period. We analyse the findings in relation to suggested frameworks for large-scale agile development and a theory on coordination, and provide new recommendations for practice and theory.
Proceedings of the Scientific Workshop Proceedings of XP2016, 2016
When scaling agile development methods, the principle of continuous improvement is challenged sin... more When scaling agile development methods, the principle of continuous improvement is challenged since most practices to support it is described on the team level and not on the project level. In this study we compare practices from two published empirical case studies on large-scale agile development implementations, with a focus on knowledge networks and process improvement. Our findings indicate that continuous process improvement will be influenced by the project type. There is a clear need for dynamic structures for learning and coordination, and these structures needs to be supported by a clear decision making process. We also describe informal arenas as an alternative to knowledge sharing in the traditional communities of practice suggested by large scale frameworks. CCS Concepts Software and its engineering → Software creation and management → Software development process management → Software development methods → Agile software development
The Rational Unified Process (RUP) is a comprehensive software development process framework emph... more The Rational Unified Process (RUP) is a comprehensive software development process framework emphasizing use-cases, architecture focus and an iterative approach. RUP is widely known and many organizations have tried to adopt it. Being a framework, RUP has to, in some way, be tailored to the specific context of use, no software development project is alike. This paper presents a case study of a Norwegian SME that tried to adopt RUP in the simplest way, by introducing the methodology by providing comprehensive documentation and some simple training. Our study shows that the use of RUP had some positive effects but also that the use has been scattered. Interviews with users of RUP show that there is a great need of better training and practical support in getting most value out of RUP. The key message is that if you consider taking RUP into use you have to invest resources in it. Training and support are key success factors.
Smoothed particle hydrodynamics (SPH) simulations are often initialized on a regular Cartesian gr... more Smoothed particle hydrodynamics (SPH) simulations are often initialized on a regular Cartesian grid. Ten SPH kernels were analyzed numerically with respect to their ability to correctly reproduce a uniform density distribution. Three types of kernels were identified. The number of neighboring particles required to represent the density with an accuracy of 0.1% was obtained for the 10 kernels in 1, 2 and 3 dimensions. The effect of random particle displacements from grid nodes on the error was investigated. The results of the study are important for correct application of initial conditions in SPH simulations.
Farmed fish is the third biggest export in Norway (around NOK 30 billion/e3.82 billion/US$ 5.44 b... more Farmed fish is the third biggest export in Norway (around NOK 30 billion/e3.82 billion/US$ 5.44 billion in 2010), and large fish farms have biomass worth around NOK 150 million/e19.38 million/US$ 26.72 million. Several processes are automated (e.g. the feeding system), and sensory logging systems are becoming ubiquitous. Still, the key to successful management of a site is the operational knowledge possessed by the fish farmers. In most cases, this information is not stored formally. To capture, store and reuse this knowledge in a more systematic way is called for. We present a system that employs case-based reasoning (CBR) for such knowledge management, combined with sensor data and numerical models. The CBR system will ultimately be the core part of a decision support for regional managers surveying fish farming sites. Data is acquired from multiple fish farms, spanning several years. We present recent results in testing how well the CBR system finds similar cases. An important part of this test is the evaluation of three different methods for case retrieval (kNN, linear programming for setting feature weights, Echo State Network).
The Rational Unified Process (RUP) is a comprehensive software development process framework emph... more The Rational Unified Process (RUP) is a comprehensive software development process framework emphasizing use-cases, architecture focus and an iterative approach. RUP is widely known and many organizations have tried to adopt it. Being a framework, RUP has to, in some way, be tailored to the specific context of use, no software development project is alike. This paper presents a case study of a Norwegian SME that tried to adopt RUP in the simplest way, by introducing the methodology by providing comprehensive documentation and some simple training. Our study shows that the use of RUP had some positive effects but also that the use has been scattered. Interviews with users of RUP show that there is a great need of better training and practical support in getting most value out of RUP. The key message is that if you consider taking RUP into use you have to invest resources in it. Training and support are key success factors.
RUP is a comprehensive software development process framework that has gained a lot of interest b... more RUP is a comprehensive software development process framework that has gained a lot of interest by the industry. One major challenge of taking RUP into use is to tailor it to specific needs and then to introduce it into a development organization. This study presents a review and a systematic assembly of existing studies on the tailoring and introduction of RUP. From a systematic search for study reports on this topic we found that most research is anecdotal and focus on the effects of RUP itself. Only a few number of studies address tailoring and introduction. We have found that tailoring RUP is a considerable challenge by itself and that it must be closely related to existing best practices. We see a tendency of turning from large complete process frameworks towards smaller and more lightweight processes which may impose a smoother transition from process model to process in use.
ABSTRACT COTS-based development is gaining more and more attention. Effective COTS component clas... more ABSTRACT COTS-based development is gaining more and more attention. Effective COTS component classification will help integrators to successfully control the development process, such as selection and integration. In this paper, we present an empirical study to investigate the characterized classification proposed by previous research. From the result of this study, we conclude that some attributes are not good because they are either not measurable or unnecessary. We also propose one other attribute that will affect the development process dramatically. Our future study will focus on investigating these attributes in a larger sample.
We suggest to study learning software organizations in three projects; one to analyse the current... more We suggest to study learning software organizations in three projects; one to analyse the current situation for local software and system houses, one to study improvement and learning through examining knowledge flows, and a third to study the impact of a large-scale interaction process: Open Space Technology to share domain knowledge.
The Unified Process is a widely used process framework for software development. The framework is... more The Unified Process is a widely used process framework for software development. The framework is covering many of the roles, activities and artifacts needed in a software development project. However, a tailoring of the framework is necessary to fit specific needs. This tailoring may be accomplished in various ways. In this paper we describe a concrete attempt to tailor the Rational Unified Process to a defined project type; a Mainstream Software Development Project Type. The paper has focus on the process of creating the tailored Rational Unified Process as well as the resulting Rational Unified Process. The paper makes some conclusions and has a proposition for further research.
e public sector is facing a massive digitalization process in order to provide faster and more au... more e public sector is facing a massive digitalization process in order to provide faster and more automated services to the public. Several new projects in this sector are developing so ware using agile methodologies. ere is, however, a lack of empirical research on how these methods are used in practice, how they are adapted to these complex and large se ings, and how the projects achieves good coordination. In this paper we outline our initial research proposal to study a large-scale agile development program in the public sector. Our primary focus is to make sure the research is grounded in the reality of the practitioners and so we seek to follow an engaged scholarship model in order to make our research relevant as well as rigorous. CCS CONCEPTS •So ware and its engineering →Agile so ware development;
Stadig flere prosjekter inkluderer grader av digitalisering, spesielt prosjekter med innovasjon i... more Stadig flere prosjekter inkluderer grader av digitalisering, spesielt prosjekter med innovasjon i produkter, tjenester eller arbeidsmetoder. Slike prosjekter har hatt utfordringer med å levere på nytte, teknisk produktkvalitet, kostnadskontroll, tidskontroll eller effektivitet i prosjektarbeid. Et forbedringstiltak som er foreslått i en tidligere rapport er mer hensiktsmessig organisering av prosjekter. Denne rapporten beskriver erfaringer og forskningsfunn om organisering av store digitaliseringsprosjekt, med funn fra tre vellykkede store prosjekt i norsk offentlig sektor. Vi beskriver endring i prosjektorganisering, fra det vi beskriver som en kombinasjon av råd fra prosjektledelse med råd fra programvareutvikling i «førstegenerasjons metoder for storskala smidig utvikling», til mer tilpassede måter å organisere digital produktutvikling i «andregenerasjon metoder for storskala smidig utvikling». Vi beskriver organisering gjennom praksiser, roller og artefakter brukt i prosjektene. Videre beskriver vi erfaringer og forskningsfunn på spesielle utfordringer i store digitaliseringsprosjekt hvor mange team jobber i parallell med oppgaver som å definere behov og krav, utvikle og teste produkt. Spesielt ser vi på håndtering av kundebehov, hvordan en sikrer gode tekniske løsninger og hvordan arbeid koordineres og kunnskap deles på tvers av team. Denne rapporten gir et innblikk i intern organisering på et felt hvor de finnes mange foreslåtte beste praksiser, men få studier internasjonalt på hva som faktisk gjøres i praksis. Rike beskrivelser av organisering viser erfaringsbaserte praksiser som kan være nyttige for kommende digitaliseringsprosjekt
Fish farmers manage assets of considerable value on a daily basis. Many aspects of the daily oper... more Fish farmers manage assets of considerable value on a daily basis. Many aspects of the daily operation are automated in some way, such as the feeding sys- tem. Sensory equipment steadily becomes cheaper and more ubiquitous, yielding data that can be used by automated systems and for post-processing (i.e. data min- ing) to discover hidden trends in the data. However, a lot of information is only known informally by the fish farmers themselves, through years of experience. Companies that can store this information and reuse it will have an advantage; even more so if high-level human expertise can be linked to low-level sensor data. This paper presents early developments of a system that stores this informal knowledge using case based-reasoning, combined with corresponding sensor data.
Agile Processes in Software Engineering and Extreme Programming – Workshops, 2020
Following the highly pervasive and effective use of agile methods for software development, atten... more Following the highly pervasive and effective use of agile methods for software development, attention has now turned to the much more difficult challenge of applying these methods in large scale, organization-wide development. However, identifying to what extent certain factors influence success and failure of sustaining large-scale agile transformations remains unclear and there is a lack of theoretical frameworks to guide such investigations. By adopting Normalization Process Theory and specifically ‘coherence’, we compare two large-scale agile transformation case studies and the different perspectives individuals and teams had when faced with the problem of operationalizing the agile method as part of their large-scale agile transformation. The key contributions of this work are: (i) this is a first attempt to present the results of a comparison between a successful and failed large-scale agile transformations; and (ii) we describe the challenges in understanding the rationale, d...
Coordination was early identified as a key challenge in software development, and in particular i... more Coordination was early identified as a key challenge in software development, and in particular in large development projects. With the arrival of agile methods and their increasing use also in large-scale projects, this calls for rethinking how the software engineering community addresses coordination. We argue for increasing the focus on coordination in software engineering and describe four directions for research. Focus on these areas can supplement advice given in current development methods with relevant research-based advice.
Agile Processes in Software Engineering and Extreme Programming – Workshops, 2020
Following the highly pervasive and effective use of agile methods for software development, atten... more Following the highly pervasive and effective use of agile methods for software development, attention has now turned to the much more difficult challenge of applying these methods in large scale, organization-wide development. However, identifying to what extent certain factors influence success and failure of sustaining large-scale agile transformations remains unclear and there is a lack of theoretical frameworks to guide such investigations. By adopting Normalization Process Theory and specifically ‘coherence’, we compare two large-scale agile transformation case studies and the different perspectives individuals and teams had when faced with the problem of operationalizing the agile method as part of their large-scale agile transformation. The key contributions of this work are: (i) this is a first attempt to present the results of a comparison between a successful and failed large-scale agile transformations; and (ii) we describe the challenges in understanding the rationale, d...
Proceedings of the 11th International Workshop on Cooperative and Human Aspects of Software Engineering, 2018
Coordination was early identified as a key challenge in software development, and in particular i... more Coordination was early identified as a key challenge in software development, and in particular in large development projects. With the arrival of agile methods and their increasing use also in large-scale projects, this calls for rethinking how the software engineering community addresses coordination. We argue for increasing the focus on coordination in software engineering and describe four directions for research. Focus on these areas can supplement advice given in current development methods with relevant research-based advice.
Lecture Notes in Business Information Processing, 2018
Agile methods are increasingly used in large development projects, with multiple development team... more Agile methods are increasingly used in large development projects, with multiple development teams. A central question is then what is needed to coordinate feature teams efficiently. This study examines three mechanisms for coordination: Shared mental models, communication and trust in a large-scale development project with 12 feature teams running over a four-year period. We analyse the findings in relation to suggested frameworks for large-scale agile development and a theory on coordination, and provide new recommendations for practice and theory.
Proceedings of the Scientific Workshop Proceedings of XP2016, 2016
When scaling agile development methods, the principle of continuous improvement is challenged sin... more When scaling agile development methods, the principle of continuous improvement is challenged since most practices to support it is described on the team level and not on the project level. In this study we compare practices from two published empirical case studies on large-scale agile development implementations, with a focus on knowledge networks and process improvement. Our findings indicate that continuous process improvement will be influenced by the project type. There is a clear need for dynamic structures for learning and coordination, and these structures needs to be supported by a clear decision making process. We also describe informal arenas as an alternative to knowledge sharing in the traditional communities of practice suggested by large scale frameworks. CCS Concepts Software and its engineering → Software creation and management → Software development process management → Software development methods → Agile software development
The Rational Unified Process (RUP) is a comprehensive software development process framework emph... more The Rational Unified Process (RUP) is a comprehensive software development process framework emphasizing use-cases, architecture focus and an iterative approach. RUP is widely known and many organizations have tried to adopt it. Being a framework, RUP has to, in some way, be tailored to the specific context of use, no software development project is alike. This paper presents a case study of a Norwegian SME that tried to adopt RUP in the simplest way, by introducing the methodology by providing comprehensive documentation and some simple training. Our study shows that the use of RUP had some positive effects but also that the use has been scattered. Interviews with users of RUP show that there is a great need of better training and practical support in getting most value out of RUP. The key message is that if you consider taking RUP into use you have to invest resources in it. Training and support are key success factors.
Smoothed particle hydrodynamics (SPH) simulations are often initialized on a regular Cartesian gr... more Smoothed particle hydrodynamics (SPH) simulations are often initialized on a regular Cartesian grid. Ten SPH kernels were analyzed numerically with respect to their ability to correctly reproduce a uniform density distribution. Three types of kernels were identified. The number of neighboring particles required to represent the density with an accuracy of 0.1% was obtained for the 10 kernels in 1, 2 and 3 dimensions. The effect of random particle displacements from grid nodes on the error was investigated. The results of the study are important for correct application of initial conditions in SPH simulations.
Farmed fish is the third biggest export in Norway (around NOK 30 billion/e3.82 billion/US$ 5.44 b... more Farmed fish is the third biggest export in Norway (around NOK 30 billion/e3.82 billion/US$ 5.44 billion in 2010), and large fish farms have biomass worth around NOK 150 million/e19.38 million/US$ 26.72 million. Several processes are automated (e.g. the feeding system), and sensory logging systems are becoming ubiquitous. Still, the key to successful management of a site is the operational knowledge possessed by the fish farmers. In most cases, this information is not stored formally. To capture, store and reuse this knowledge in a more systematic way is called for. We present a system that employs case-based reasoning (CBR) for such knowledge management, combined with sensor data and numerical models. The CBR system will ultimately be the core part of a decision support for regional managers surveying fish farming sites. Data is acquired from multiple fish farms, spanning several years. We present recent results in testing how well the CBR system finds similar cases. An important part of this test is the evaluation of three different methods for case retrieval (kNN, linear programming for setting feature weights, Echo State Network).
The Rational Unified Process (RUP) is a comprehensive software development process framework emph... more The Rational Unified Process (RUP) is a comprehensive software development process framework emphasizing use-cases, architecture focus and an iterative approach. RUP is widely known and many organizations have tried to adopt it. Being a framework, RUP has to, in some way, be tailored to the specific context of use, no software development project is alike. This paper presents a case study of a Norwegian SME that tried to adopt RUP in the simplest way, by introducing the methodology by providing comprehensive documentation and some simple training. Our study shows that the use of RUP had some positive effects but also that the use has been scattered. Interviews with users of RUP show that there is a great need of better training and practical support in getting most value out of RUP. The key message is that if you consider taking RUP into use you have to invest resources in it. Training and support are key success factors.
RUP is a comprehensive software development process framework that has gained a lot of interest b... more RUP is a comprehensive software development process framework that has gained a lot of interest by the industry. One major challenge of taking RUP into use is to tailor it to specific needs and then to introduce it into a development organization. This study presents a review and a systematic assembly of existing studies on the tailoring and introduction of RUP. From a systematic search for study reports on this topic we found that most research is anecdotal and focus on the effects of RUP itself. Only a few number of studies address tailoring and introduction. We have found that tailoring RUP is a considerable challenge by itself and that it must be closely related to existing best practices. We see a tendency of turning from large complete process frameworks towards smaller and more lightweight processes which may impose a smoother transition from process model to process in use.
ABSTRACT COTS-based development is gaining more and more attention. Effective COTS component clas... more ABSTRACT COTS-based development is gaining more and more attention. Effective COTS component classification will help integrators to successfully control the development process, such as selection and integration. In this paper, we present an empirical study to investigate the characterized classification proposed by previous research. From the result of this study, we conclude that some attributes are not good because they are either not measurable or unnecessary. We also propose one other attribute that will affect the development process dramatically. Our future study will focus on investigating these attributes in a larger sample.
We suggest to study learning software organizations in three projects; one to analyse the current... more We suggest to study learning software organizations in three projects; one to analyse the current situation for local software and system houses, one to study improvement and learning through examining knowledge flows, and a third to study the impact of a large-scale interaction process: Open Space Technology to share domain knowledge.
The Unified Process is a widely used process framework for software development. The framework is... more The Unified Process is a widely used process framework for software development. The framework is covering many of the roles, activities and artifacts needed in a software development project. However, a tailoring of the framework is necessary to fit specific needs. This tailoring may be accomplished in various ways. In this paper we describe a concrete attempt to tailor the Rational Unified Process to a defined project type; a Mainstream Software Development Project Type. The paper has focus on the process of creating the tailored Rational Unified Process as well as the resulting Rational Unified Process. The paper makes some conclusions and has a proposition for further research.
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Papers by Finn Bjørnson