The development organization consists of tens of developer teams who develop software for embedded carrier grade telecommunication devices.
The focus of the analysis is on tool’s applicability to the organization’s ways of working. The ways of working are based on the Lean and agile software development principles. The tool’s usability is also addressed by the thesis author, but no systematic usability tests were conducted.
The analyzed development tool is designed for many-core DSP development. Ericsson has observed that the DSP development speed has slowed down drastically after the introduction of many-core DSP processor architectures. Thus, the goal of the tool is to fasten the many-core DSP code development by raising the abstraction level of the software artifact.
The telecommunications industry and its nature are explained to present the problem scenario and the demanding industry requirements for the tool. The Lean manufacturing and Lean software development are introduced to give an understanding of the culture embraced within the organization.
The software development processes used in the organization are based on the theories of agile software development. The agile development is introduced with its principles and how they are actually used. The development method for the whole organization follows loosely Scrum, which is scaled on enterprise level. Most of the teams are also using Scrum to support to their task planning and continuous improvement, by executing Scrum meetings such as the daily scrum and retrospectives.
The organization structure is explained with the tool’s different stakeholders, which consists mostly of developer teams. The currently used development environment with the most important tools is presented.
During the case study many effects on way of working were identified, both the negative and the positive. Mostly the negative issues were related to the usability of the tool. One issue identified is the possible long term risk in the modeling tool adaptation. Once an application is designed with the modeling tool, the organization becomes dependent to the tool. Changing the development tool for the application afterwards would be a major effort.
Jarno Kyykkä (Univeristy of Helsinki): Applicability of a model based development environment for many-core DSP programming in a large-scale Lean and agile R&D organization
https://www.cloudsoftwareprogram.org/theses-and-articles/i/28724/1570/thesis-applicability-of-a-model-based-development-environment-for-many-core-dsp-programming-in-a-large-scale-lean-and-ag
Cloud Software Finland is a four year (2010-2014) Tivit-program, which focuses on developing the different areas of cloud services. The program is funded by Tekes.
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