Paper Info
Title
Building lean thinking in a telecom software development organization: strengths and challenges
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’.
Year
DOI
Venue
2013
10.1145/2486046.2486064
ICSSP
Keywords
Field
DocType
telecom software development organization,lean thinking,lean software development,agile software development
Lean laboratory,Scrum,Software engineering,Lean IT,Lean software development,Lean project management,Agile software development,Lean manufacturing,Engineering,Software development,Process management
Conference
ISBN
Citations 
PageRank 
978-1-4503-2062-7
7
0.47
References 
Authors
14
5
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Pilar Rodríguez117313.56
Kirsi Mikkonen2172.03
Pasi Kuvaja323624.82
Markku Oivo465081.11
Juan Garbajosa528031.62