This chapter draws attention to the question of determining the conditions when free/open source software development may represent a significant alternative to modern software engineering techniques for developing large-scale software systems. F/OSSD often entails shorter development times that can produce higher quality systems, and incur lower costs than may be realized through developing systems according SE techniques. Understanding why and how this may arise is the focus of this chapter. It presents, analyzes, and compares data collected from different F/OSSD projects, including an in-depth case study, to help develop such an understanding. The goal of this chapter is to determine the circumstances and conditions when F/OSSD represents a viable alternative to SE for the development of complex software systems. In particular, the chapter seeks to contrast differences observed in the arrangement and tooling of their respective software development practices, production resources, technical regimes, and community practices in which they are embedded. This in turn may then help identify how the practice and principles of SE might be improved.

The outsourced software development process has traditionally relied on a requirements-driven black-box approach for transferring knowledge of customer needs to vendors. When this approach is feasible, the need for the customer and the vendor to deeply understand each others ’ knowledge domain is limited. We describe this as symmetric division of knowledge. However, asymmetric overlaps in knowledge are necessary at the vendor-customer boundary in projects involving conceptual or process newness. In this study, we examine the conditions under which overlaps in knowledge at the vendor-customer boundary are necessary for enhancing the development process in outsourcing relationships. We develop and test a model using data collected in a large-scale field study of 209 software projects in 209 software development organizations belonging to three of the largest global software consortia. The study makes three contributions: (1) we empirically demonstrate that it is more important for a vendor to possess a higher level of business knowledge in conceptually new projects and for the customer to have a higher level of technical knowledge when the project involves process newness, (2) we assess the effectiveness of various integrating mechanisms, and (3) we show that there are potential downsides to blindly increasing vendor-customer overlaps in knowledge beyond those that have traditionally characterized software development.

Interest in open source software has emerged in many different research communities. Much of this interest has focused attention primarily onto the products of open software development (source code), and secondarily onto the processes and productive units that facilitate such development. My research is focused to understanding the processes, practices, and communities that give rise to open source software. My research group is studying (a) the role of software informalisms (vs. formalisms and standards found in software engineering), (b) the emergence and articulation of open software requirements, (c) the forms and constituencies of the social worlds of open software, and (d) other processes and practices across multiple open software development communities [Scacchi 2001b, 2002]. I am prepared to discuss early results, work in progress, and the need for further research on all of these topics at the workshop. However, the remainder of this position paper identifies what I believe are areas, topics, or basic questions requiring further research in the arena of open source software development. These follow in an unordered manner. Understanding the quality of open source software from a socio-technical perspective What is the best, most effective way to determine the quality of open source software products

In this paper, I draw attention to the question of determining how open source software development may represent a significant alternative to modern software engineering techniques for developing large-scale software systems. OSSD often entails shorter time frames, producing higher quality systems, and incurring lower costs than may be realized through developing systems according SE techniques. Understanding why and how this may arise is the focus of this paper.

Deploying an appropriate software process can improve the effectiveness of software engineering. Still, small companies find it hard to allocate resources to software process improvement and tailor existing process models for their needs. In this paper we present a tentative framework for managing software product development in small companies. The framework combines business and process management through four cycles of control: (1) Strategic release management provides the interface between business management and product development. (2) Release project management handles the development of individual product versions. (3) Iteration management deals with the incremental development of product functionality within release projects, and (4) Mini-milestones are used to get an indication of system status during development.

Architecture and design intent are critical elements in the development and evolution of software systems. They are critical in two ways. First, there must be a shared understanding of them to adequately and effectively build and evolve our systems. Second, this shared understanding is needed to coordinate the various developers and teams of developers, especially in evolving our systems. The lack of access to internal implementation details makes the issue of architecture and design intent even more critical in COTS and component based systems. We explore the issues involved in supporting the reification and use of architecture and design intent, discuss a selection of approaches, and present some ideas we have about its use in both planned and agile contexts. 1.

Free and open source software has had a major impact on the computer industry since the late 1990s and has changed the way software is perceived, developed and deployed in many areas. Free and open source software, or FOSS, is typically developed in a collaborative fashion and the majority of contributors are volunteers. Even though this collaborative form of develop-ment has produced a significant body of software, the development process is often described as unstructured and unorganized. This dissertation studies the FOSS phenomenon from a quality perspective and investigates where im-provements to the development process are possible. In particular, the focus is on release management since this is concerned with the delivery of a high quality product to end-users. This research has identified considerable interest amongst the FOSS commu-nity in a novel release management strategy, time based releases. In contrast to traditional development which is feature-driven, time based releases use time rather than features as the criterion for the creation of a new release. Releases

Working papers are in draft form. This working paper is distributed for purposes of comment and discussion only. It may not be reproduced without permission of the copyright holder. Copies of working papers are available from the author. Many studies highlight the challenges facing incumbent firms in responding effectively to major technological transitions. While some authors argue that these challenges can be overcome by firms possessing what have been called “dynamic capabilities, ” little work has described in detail the critical resources that these capabilities leverage, or the processes through which these resources accumulate and evolve. This paper explores these issues through an in-depth exploratory case study of one firm that has demonstrated consistently strong performance in an industry that is highly dynamic and uncertain. The focus for our study is Microsoft, the leading firm in the software industry. We motivate our focus on Microsoft by providing evidence that the firm’s product performance has been consistently strong over a period of time in which there have been several major technological transitions – one indicator that a firm possesses dynamic

Given the crucial role of process modeling in product development (PD) project management research and practice, and the variety of models proposed in the literature, a survey of the PD process modeling literature is timely and valuable. In this work, we focus on the activity network-based process models that support PD project management and present a comprehensive survey of the literature published in the last decade. To organize our survey, we use a framework based on the

Abstract – In today’s dynamic marketplace, companies are under strong pressure to introduce new products for long-term survival with their competitors. Besides, every company cannot cope up progressively or immediately with the market requirements due to knowledge dynamics being experienced in competitive milieu. Increased competition and reduced product life cycles put force upon companies to develop new products faster. In response to this pressing need there should be some new approach compatible in flexible circumstances. This paper presents a solution based on the Stage-Gate system, which is closely linked with virtual team approach. Virtual teams can provide a platform to advance the knowledge-base in a company and thus to reduce time-to-market. This article introduces conceptual product development architecture under a virtual-team umbrella. The paper describes all the major aspects of new product development (NPD), NPD process and its relationship with virtual team, Stage-Gate system and finally presents a modified Stage-Gate system. It also provides the guidelines for the successful implementation of virtual team in new products development.