Article

Building lean thinking in a telecom software development organization: strengths and challenges

Authors:

Pilar Rodríguez,

Kirsi Mikkonen,

Juan GarbajosaAuthors Info & Claims

ICSSP '13: Proceedings of the 2013 International Conference on Software and System Process

Pages 98 - 107

https://doi.org/10.1145/2486046.2486064

Published: 18 May 2013 Publication History

Abstract

The potential shown by Lean in different domains has aroused interest in the software industry. However, it remains unclear how Lean can be effectively applied in a domain such as software development that is fundamentally different from manufacturing. This study explores how Lean principles are implemented in software development companies and the challenges that arise when applying Lean Software Development. For that, a case study was conducted at Ericsson R&D Finland, which successfully adopted Scrum in 2009 and subsequently started a comprehensible transition to Lean in 2010. Focus groups were conducted with company representatives to help devise a questionnaire supporting the creation of a Lean mindset in the company (Team Amplifier). Afterwards, the questionnaire was used in 16 teams based in Finland, Hungary and China to evaluate the status of the transformation. By using Lean thinking, Ericsson R&D Finland has made important improvements to the quality of its products, customer satisfaction and transparency within the organization. Moreover, build times have been reduced over ten times and the number of commits per day has increased roughly five times.The study makes two main contributions to research. First, the main factors that have enabled Ericsson R&D’s achievements are analysed. Elements such as ‘network of product owners’, ‘continuous integration’, ‘work in progress limits’ and ‘communities of practice’ have been identified as being of fundamental importance. Second, three categories of challenges in using Lean Software Development were identified: ‘achieving flow’, ‘transparency’ and ‘creating a learning culture’.

References

[1]

Anderson, D. 2010. Kanban – Successful Evolutionary Change for Your Technology Business. Blue Hole Press.

[2]

Brandao de Souza, L. 2009. Trends and approaches in lean healthcare. Leadership in Health Services. 22, 2, 121-139. DOI=http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/17511870910953788.

[3]

Bremer, B. and Dawson, D. 2003. Can anything stop Toyota? Business Week, 117 (Nov. 17).

[4]

Cloud Software program (2010-2013). Finland. http://www.cloudsoftwareprogram.org/

[5]

Conference on Lean Enterprise Software and Systems (last one organized in Tallin, http://less2012.org/ ).

[6]

Conboy, K., 2009. Agility from first principles: reconstructing the concept of agility in information systems development. Inform. Syst. Res. 20, 3, 329–354.

Digital Library

[7]

Dingsøyr, T., Brede Moe, N., Nerur, S., and Balijepally, V. 2012. Special issue: agile development. The Journal of Systems and Software. 85, 6 (June 2012), 1213-1452.

Digital Library

[8]

Dybå, T., and Dingsøyr, T. 2008. Empirical studies of agile software development: A systematic review. Information and Software Technology, 50, 9–10 (August 2008), 833- 859. ISSN 0950-5849. 10.1016/j.infsof.2008.01.006.

Digital Library

[9]

Ebert, C., Abrahamsson, A., and Oza, N. 2012. Special issue in Lean Software Development. IEEE Magazine. 29, 5 (Sept.-Oct. 2012). ISSN: 0740-7459.

Digital Library

[10]

Ebert, C., Abrahamsson, A., and Oza, N. 2012. Lean Software Development. IEEE Software, 29, 5 (Sept.-Oct. 2012), 22-25. DOI=

Digital Library

[11]

Engblom, C. 2011. From Waterfall to Lean and Agile within Ericsson. Keynote at 6th IEEE International Conference on Global Software Engineering, ICGSE 2011 (Helsinki, Finland, August 15-18th, 2011)

[12]

Hallikainen, M. 2011. Experiences on Agile Seating, Facilities and Solutions: Multisite Environment. In Proceedings of the 2011 IEEE Sixth International Conference on Global Software Engineering (ICGSE '11). IEEE Computer Society, Washington, DC, USA, 119-123. DOI=10.1109/ICGSE.2011.20

Digital Library

[13]

Karvonen, T., Rodriguez, P., Kuvaja, P., Mikkonen, K., and Oivo, M. 2012. Adapting the Lean Enterprise Self-Assessment Tool for the Software Development Domain. Software Engineering and Advanced Applications (SEAA), 2012 38th EUROMICRO Conference on. 266-273 5-8 Sept.

Digital Library

[14]

Kontio, J., Bragge, J., and Lehtola, L. 2008. The focus group method as an empirical tool in software engineering. In: F. Shull et al. (eds.), Guide to advanced empirical software engineering. Springer, 93-116.

[15]

Larman, C., and Vodde, B. 2009. Scaling Lean & Agile Development. Addison-Wesley.

[16]

Lean Software and Systems Conference series http://www.leanssc.org/conferences/.

[17]

Mandic, V., Oivo, M., Rodriguez, P., Kuvaja, P., Kaikkonen H., and Turhan B. 2010. What is flowing in Lean Software Development? In Proceedings of the 1st International Conference on Lean Enterprise Software and Systems (LESS),72-84.

[18]

Mehta, M., Anderson, D. and Raffo, D. 2008. Providing Value to Customers in Software Development Through Lean Principles. Software Process Improvement and Practice, 13, 1 (January 2008), 101-109.

Digital Library

[19]

Middleton, P., and Sutton, J. 2005. Lean Software Strategies. Productivity Press.

[20]

Mikkonen, K., Seikola, M., Jouppila, A. and Engblom, C. 2012. How we learn to stop worrying and live with the uncertainties. Technical report. Available at https://www.cloudsoftwareprogram.org/results/deliverables -and-other-reports/i/27891/1941/ericsson-journey-ofchange (date last accessed 11 January, 2013)

[21]

Ohno, T. 1988. Toyota Production System: Beyond Large-Scale Production. Productivity Press, Cambridge, MA.

[22]

Petersen, K., and Wohlin, C. 2011 Measuring the flow in lean software development. Software: Practice and Experience, 41, 9 (August 2011), 975-996.

Digital Library

[23]

Poppendieck, M., and Cusumano, M.A. 2012. Lean Software Development: A Tutorial. Software, IEEE. 29, 5, 26-32, Sept.-Oct. 2012

Digital Library

[24]

Poppendieck, M., and Poppendieck, T. 2003. Lean Software Development: An Agile Toolkit. Addison Wesley Professional.

Digital Library

[25]

Rodríguez, P., Markkula, J., Turula, K., and Oivo, M. 2012. Survey on Agile and Lean Usage in Finnish Software Industry. In Proceedings of the ACM-IEEE international symposium on Empirical software engineering and measurement (ESEM '12). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 139-148.

Digital Library

[26]

Runeson, P., and Höst, M. 2009. Guidelines for conducting and reporting case study research in software engineering, Empir Software Eng, 14,131-164.

Digital Library

[27]

Seikola, M., Loisa, H.M., and Jagos, A. 2011. Kanban Implementation in a Telecom Product Maintenance. In Proceedings of the 2011 37th EUROMICRO Conference on Software Engineering and Advanced Applications (SEAA '11). IEEE Computer Society, Washington, DC, USA, 321- 329. DOI=10.1109/SEAA.2011.56

Digital Library

[28]

Shah, R., and Ward, P.T., 2007. Defining and developing measures of lean production. Journal of Operations Management 25, 4, 785–805.

Digital Library

[29]

Staats, B., Brunner, D. and Upton, D. 2011. Lean principles, learning, and knowledge work: Evidence from a software services provider. Journal of Operations Management, 29, 5 (July 201), 376-390.

Digital Library

[30]

Tokatli, N. 2007. Global sourcing: insights from the global clothing industry—the case of Zara, a fast fashion retailer. Journal of Economic Geography, 8, 1, 21-38.

[31]

Wang, X., Conboy, K., and Cawley, O. 2012. “Leagile” software development: An experience report analysis of the application of lean approaches in agile software development, J. Syst. Software, 85, 6, 1287-1299.

Digital Library

[32]

Womack J.P., Jones D.T., and Roos D. (1990) The Machine that Changed the World: The Story of Lean Production. New York: HarperPerennial.

[33]

Womack, J. P., and Jones, D.T. 2003. Lean Thinking: Banish waste and create wealth in your corporation. Revised and updated. Free Press, New York, USA.

Cited By

Yadav RYadav VMittal MJain RYadav J(2023)The impact of Leagile software development on operational performanceInternational Journal of Lean Six Sigma10.1108/IJLSS-06-2021-011115:2(347-371)Online publication date: 23-Jun-2023
https://doi.org/10.1108/IJLSS-06-2021-0111
Wu QZhai XLiu XWu CLou FZhang H(2022)Performance Tuning via Lean Measurements for Acceleration of Network Functions VirtualizationIEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking10.1109/TNET.2022.319368631:1(366-379)Online publication date: 29-Jul-2022
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1109/TNET.2022.3193686
Sundelin AGonzalez-huerta JWnuk KGorschek T(2021)Towards an Anatomy of Software CraftsmanshipACM Transactions on Software Engineering and Methodology10.1145/346850431:1(1-49)Online publication date: 28-Sep-2021
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3468504
Show More Cited By

Index Terms

Building lean thinking in a telecom software development organization: strengths and challenges
1. Social and professional topics
  1. Professional topics
    1. Management of computing and information systems
      1. Project and people management
2. Software and its engineering
  1. Software creation and management
    1. Designing software
    2. Software development process management
  2. Software notations and tools
    1. Software configuration management and version control systems

Recommendations

Combining Lean Thinking and Agile Methods for Software Development: A Case Study of a Finnish Provider of Wireless Embedded Systems Detailed
HICSS '14: Proceedings of the 2014 47th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences

Lean Software Development has attracted a great deal of attention during last years. However, it remains unclear how Lean is implemented in a domain that fundamentally differs from the automotive industry in which it originated. This study provides ...
The Combination of Agile and Lean in Software Development: An Experience Report Analysis
AGILE '11: Proceedings of the 2011 Agile Conference

There has been a noticeable focus shift from agile methods such as extreme Programming (XP) and Scrum to lean software development in the last several years, which is indicated as â from agile to leanâ . However, the reality may not be as simple or ...
"Leagile" software development

In recent years there has been a noticeable shift in attention from those who use agile software development toward lean software development, often labelled as a shift "from agile to lean". However, the reality may not be as simple or linear as this ...

Comments

Please enable JavaScript to view thecomments powered by Disqus.

Information & Contributors

Information

Published In

cover image ACM Other conferences

ICSSP '13: Proceedings of the 2013 International Conference on Software and System Process

May 2013

180 pages

ISBN:9781450320627

DOI:10.1145/2486046

General Chair:
Jürgen Münch,
Program Chairs:
Jo Ann Lan,
He Zhang

Copyright © 2013 ACM.

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

Publisher

Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 18 May 2013

Permissions

Request permissions for this article.

Request Permissions

Check for updates

Author Tags

Qualifiers

Article

Conference

ICSSP '13

ICSSP '13: International Conference on Software and System Process

May 18 - 19, 2013

CA, San Francisco, USA

Contributors

Other Metrics

View Article Metrics

Bibliometrics & Citations

Bibliometrics

Article Metrics

12
Total Citations
View Citations
851
Total Downloads

Downloads (Last 12 months)25
Downloads (Last 6 weeks)1

Reflects downloads up to 25 Nov 2024

Other Metrics

View Author Metrics

Citations

Cited By

Yadav RYadav VMittal MJain RYadav J(2023)The impact of Leagile software development on operational performanceInternational Journal of Lean Six Sigma10.1108/IJLSS-06-2021-011115:2(347-371)Online publication date: 23-Jun-2023
https://doi.org/10.1108/IJLSS-06-2021-0111
Wu QZhai XLiu XWu CLou FZhang H(2022)Performance Tuning via Lean Measurements for Acceleration of Network Functions VirtualizationIEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking10.1109/TNET.2022.319368631:1(366-379)Online publication date: 29-Jul-2022
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1109/TNET.2022.3193686
Sundelin AGonzalez-huerta JWnuk KGorschek T(2021)Towards an Anatomy of Software CraftsmanshipACM Transactions on Software Engineering and Methodology10.1145/346850431:1(1-49)Online publication date: 28-Sep-2021
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3468504
Rodriguez PMendes ETurhan B(2020)Key Stakeholders’ Value Propositions for Feature Selection in Software-Intensive Products: An Industrial Case StudyIEEE Transactions on Software Engineering10.1109/TSE.2018.287803146:12(1340-1363)Online publication date: 1-Dec-2020
https://doi.org/10.1109/TSE.2018.2878031
Yadav RMittal MJain R(2019)Lean practices in software development projects: A literature review1ST INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON ADVANCES IN MECHANICAL ENGINEERING AND NANOTECHNOLOGY (ICAMEN 2019)10.1063/1.5123966(030044)Online publication date: 2019
https://doi.org/10.1063/1.5123966
Uludag OKleehaus MCaprano CMatthes F(2018)Identifying and Structuring Challenges in Large-Scale Agile Development Based on a Structured Literature Review2018 IEEE 22nd International Enterprise Distributed Object Computing Conference (EDOC)10.1109/EDOC.2018.00032(191-197)Online publication date: Oct-2018
https://doi.org/10.1109/EDOC.2018.00032
Paasivaara MBehm BLassenius CHallikainen M(2018)Large-scale agile transformation at EricssonEmpirical Software Engineering10.1007/s10664-017-9555-823:5(2550-2596)Online publication date: 1-Oct-2018
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1007/s10664-017-9555-8
Lenberg PWallgren Tengberg LFeldt R(2017)An initial analysis of software engineers' attitudes towards organizational changeEmpirical Software Engineering10.1007/s10664-016-9482-022:4(2179-2205)Online publication date: 1-Aug-2017
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1007/s10664-016-9482-0
de Mello RTravassos GGenero MJedlitschka AJørgensen MScanniello GSampath SCaivano DPort D(2016)Surveys in Software EngineeringProceedings of the 10th ACM/IEEE International Symposium on Empirical Software Engineering and Measurement10.1145/2961111.2962632(1-6)Online publication date: 8-Sep-2016
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2961111.2962632
Tripathi NRodríguez PAhmad MOivo M(2015)Scaling Kanban for Software Development in a Multisite Organization: Challenges and Potential SolutionsAgile Processes in Software Engineering and Extreme Programming10.1007/978-3-319-18612-2_15(178-190)Online publication date: 16-May-2015
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-18612-2_15
Show More Cited By

View Options

Login options

Check if you have access through your login credentials or your institution to get full access on this article.

Full Access

Get this Publication

View options

PDF

View or Download as a PDF file.

eReader

View online with eReader.

Media

Figures

Other

Tables

View Table of Contents