Desired Quality in Cloud Application Development

Leah Riungu-Kalliosaari, Ossi Taipale and Kari Smolander have released an article on cloud applications and quality. This research publication is a part of ongoing STX project, which is partially funded by FiSMA. More information on this article, and other STX publications can be found from the address http://www2.it.lut.fi/project/STX/ or by contacting the project manager Ossi Taipale (D.Sc.) via email at ossi.taipale@ lut.fi

Abstract from the paper: ”This qualitative case study describes how software development organizations reach for their own context - dependent quality in cloud application development. The study collected the data from selected organizations through interviews and applied the grounded theory method in the analysis. The study concludes that the desired quality varies among the organizations. However, usability was found to be an important quality characteristic n all the organizations. The organizations involved a set of three similar activities to attain the desired quality characteristics. These activities are summarized as (1) Selecting a suitable life-cycle model, during which (2) the customer is engaged and (3) the most suitable tools are used. The organizations incorporated these activities so as to establish supportive working practices for acquiring the desired quality."

ALDES - Agile and Lean Development of Embedded Systems

FiSMA is one party in the international consortium for the ALDES project. For applying funding the project plan was submitted in mid-September for EU’s ECSEL program and for Tekes as well. The fundamental idea of ALDES is to tackle the challenges on ever increasing complexity and diversity of safety-critical cyber-physical systems (CPS) by developing Agile and Lean product development practices for European CPS industry. Agile and Lean methods are utilised on several domains and their positive impact on product development efficiency has been widely recognised. ALDES brings these methods into development of complex safety-critical CPSs. ALDES consortium consists of 45 organisations from 12 European countries enabling broad applicability and extensive collaboration on developing common practices related research, development and innovation (R&D&I).

The main objectives of ALDES are:

• Development of Agile and Lean methods for CPS industry
• Development of practices to handle safety-critical requirements in Agile and Lean processes
• Development of practices for smooth and efficient collaboration of remote stakeholders
• Dissemination and exploitation of the results extensively among the European CPS industry

Commercial advantages to be achieved include:

• Better products with decreased time-to-market
• More frequent deliveries and reduced failure demand
• New markets and
• Decreased development and certification costs.

FiSMA Research Forum kokous 16.12.

Tutkimusfoorumin kokous pidettiin 16.12. Innopoli 2:ssa. FiSMA blogia testataan parhaillaan. Leah Riungu-Kalliosaari esitteli väitöskirjansa: Empirical study on the adoption, use and effects of cloud-based testing.

Seuraava kokous on 3.3.2015 klo 10:15 Innopoli 2:ssa, Espoossa. Pääaihe on tulevan tutkimusyhteistyötä kehittävän työpajan valmistelu, käsiteltävien tutkimusaihoiden valinta ja viimeistely.

FiSMAn jäsenille aineisto on jakelussa: Research Forum: https://fismary.atlassian.net/wiki/x/C4AW

Towards better software process quality using LAPPI

SPI (Software Process Improvement) is undeniably important. Understanding the current state of software processes and their problem points is vital if we want any kind of improvement to happen in the way software is produced. Without understanding where we stand at the moment, the improvement resources, in most cases scarce to begin with, can easily be misplaced. So where to start from when aiming to initiate SPI?

‘LAPPI’ (Light-weight Technique to Practical Process Modeling and Improvement Target Identification) technique aims to solve this problem. The technique is suited to organizations of all sizes, and can be integrated with various SPI initiatives. LAPPI was developed incrementally in multiple academia-industry collaboration projects and by industry actors themselves. The LAPPI technique has been used in over 30 companies with excellent results. The technique enables modeling the current process (not the one that the quality manual tells the company is following - but the one that is actually followed in daily work) and can identify the points of improvement in the process. Based on LAPPI’s results, it is easy to start implementing improvements.

LAPPI focuses on people. It emphasizes the roles and responsibilities in the software process. Who is actually responsible in which process phase and what information is needed to enable the right people to do their job? In the end, process is always only as good as the people implementing it.

See below what software professionals think of the technique.

“Makes things [how processes really are executed] visible in a way that other methods tried do not”, “Opens discussion in a way that is not enabled by normal process assessments”, “Makes you feel like a part of the effort, good for motivation”, “Makes challenges visible and makes it easier to talk about them”, “Makes it easier to be honest [about how work is actually done in our company]”, “Easy to apply, doesn’t require any special skills, all you need to know is what you do in your day-to-day job”

So why not try LAPPI in your company? For more information, contact Anu Raninen, anu.raninen@spinet.fi

How applicable is ISO/IEC 29110 in Game Software Development?

Jussi Kasurinen, Risto Laine and Kari Smolander have released an article on the application of ISO/IEC 29110 in the game development context. This research publication was part of the Lappeenranta University of Technology’s Game Research Interest Group research project SOCES, in which the differences and process similarities between software developers and game developers were examined.

Abstract from the paper: Software development in a small development team is a challenge, as people have to fulfill several roles, which in larger groups would have separate, dedicated people for the work. To help small development teams to organize their activities, ISO/IEC standardization body has developed a draft for the standard ISO/IEC 29110, Lifecycle profiles for Very Small Entities. Our study focuses on the application of this model in the game industry, an industry that develops software. However, the game industry has its own set of unusual features in software development, such as the demand for artistic vision, need for novelty and demand for creative designs. In this study we analyze how the standard would work in seven different game industry companies and identify a set of additions that would help these organizations to apply the standard in practice. Based on our results, the ISO/IEC 29110 should incorporate more support for iterative development to allow easier adaptation to real-life organizations.

A model for start-ups and small teams

ISO/IEC has prepared a set of standards for very small entities (VSE). This set is intended for small companies, departments and projects with typically less than 25 people. The 29110 standard describes various process models for systems and software development in different stages of an entity, which makes it applicable to many companies. A recent
application of the model is for highly iterative software development. The processes can be assessed to verify improvements and some countries also certify companies using the standard.

This international model is already very popular in especially South America. Other advanced countries include Canada, Thailand, Japan, Belgium, Czech Republic and Ireland. We believe that the model could be useful to many development teams also in Finland. The standard is partly freely available and there is a lot of supporting material for its
use.

To promote 29110, FiSMA plans to give a two day introduction course in the beginning of 2015. The participants will get insight to the standard and guidance for its deployment.

Further information: timo.varkoi@fisma.fi

EuroSPI 2014 discussed about measurement and innovation

EuroSPI 2014 conference was held in Luxembourg during the last week of June. Conference included five workshops and two conference days. EuroSPI conference is a good mix of academic and industrial papers, all together appr 50 presentations. Conference keynotes were about software testing, enterprise architecture and SPICE experiences.

FiSMA contributed in two topics: functional safety and measurement. Our presentations were based on our new ideas in Nuclear SPICE and NorthernSCOPE. Wide range of other topics was discussed in other conference papers, including change management, assurance thinking, improvement strategy and SPI in very small entities.

EuroSPI conference is changing itself, extending partnerships mainly in Asia. The Euro(Asia)SPI 2015 Conference will take place from 30. September - 2. October 2015 in Ankara, Turkey and will be hosted by the Turkish Standards Institution. Call for papers is currently open.

More information: Risto Nevalainen, FiSMA Senior Advisor, risto.nevalainen (at) fisma.fi

ISO/IEC 29110 for Games

Lappeenranta University of Technology has been researching games from the viewpoint of software engineering in a multi-year spanning project which has had 11 company partners from the industry. As a part of the project, work has began on adapting the software process model principles of the ISO/IEC 29110 Very Small Enterprise Life Cycle model to the game companies.

The resulting deployment package ”High Iteration Software Process Model” aims to combine the late change requests, challenges of the creative aspects and other peculiarities of the game development world with the process thinking of software engineering. The work is currently in draft, and will be publicly available later this year.

During the development, most up-to-date information can be asked via email from Jussi Kasurinen (D.Sc.) at address jussi.kasurinen@lut.fi. Dr. Kasurinen is the manager of the research projects involved, and the main author of the deployment pack itself.

Nuclear SPICE

FiSMA has been an active partner in Finnish national nuclear safety research program SAFIR 2014 for several years. Main responsibility has been to develop process assessment approaches for safety-critical systems and software in nuclear power domain. Now this work is nearly finished and the result is Nuclear SPICE model. It is an integrated set of SPICE (ISO/IEC 15504 and 330xx standard), selected nuclear domain safety standards and selected nuclear regulatory guides. Nuclear SPICE model has been validated in several pilot assessments with system suppliers for Finnish nuclear industry. Nuclear SPICE assessments can be applied to supplier qualification, project qualification, and product development qualification with strict safety-criticality.

FiSMA Association, Spinet Oy and Teollisuuden Voima Oy (a Finnish nuclear power company) will organize a 4-day Nuclear SPICE training during week 38 in Helsinki, Finland. Training days are 16-19.9.2014. Training will lead to Provisional Nuclear SPICE Assessor certificate, to act as a team member in internal or independent assessments.

For more information, please contact Risto Nevalainen, Senior Advisor in FiSMA, risto.nevalainen@fisma.fi.

Greetings from the XP-conference in Rome

The fifteenth international conference on agile software development (XP 2014) was arranged between 26th and 30th of May in the sunny city of Rome, Italy. The local venue was more than excellent for the purposes for the conference, and overall the general mood during the week was relaxed yet functional. The approach to the discussions over the new trends of agile development was fit for the subject; flash speeches intersecting the open space sessions and presentations. In addition to this, conference also had managed to squeeze several workshops and tutorials into the program, so that the visitors got more than just a theoretical sampling of the new ideas.

The agile development methods are refined and matured, this cannot be disputed. In fact, looking into the conference in retrospective says much about the content, we are beyond the basic things and going into the advanced and specialized domains. Several presentations discussed and focused on different techniques, models and games which are meant to ease the application of agile principles, and in general, the focus seem to have shifted towards managing agile processes and scaling agility towards larger projects, away from the traditional software development. This was also mentioned in the most poignant keynote of the conference, given by Robert C. Martin, who saw that the ’agile world is falling into the pit of certification’. According to him, the best hope to avoid this unwanted development is to go back to the basic values and principles of Extreme Programming, and start again from there.

As per usual, there was a strong Finnish presence in the conference, and this may not be complete coincidence, since the new venue for XP conference will be at Aalto University in Helsinki. Aalto will be hosting the conference on 25th to 29th of May in 2015; more information, call for papers and other interesting facts are available at http://www.xp2015.org/.

Person reporting from the conference was Tuomas Mäkilä, who is currently working on the AgiES research project, focusing on the application of agile methods in the development of embedded systems.

ISO/IEC 29119 Courses

During this Spring, the members of FiSMA have been returning back to school, since FiSMA has arranged a series of their well-received training courses on the international standards and their application. This time the selected standard was ISO/IEC 29119 Software Testing standard, which was dissected and disseminated during the two day courses, first held in February and due to large demand, repeated during the first week of June.

Overall, the course discussed the first four parts of the standards in detail, and additionally discussed the overall state of Finnish software testing and quality assurance in the industry, while also introducing the relevant related standards and assessment models. As usual, feedback on the course was that both implementations were liked and well-received.

For more information, and access to the course material can be requested from the FiSMA offices, see front page for details.