Improving Recurrent Software Development: A Contextualist Inquiry Into Release Cycle Management

• Main Author: Kamran, Syed M
• Format: Others
• Published: ScholarWorks @ Georgia State University 2014
• Subjects: SPI; Software Releases; Release Management; Software Development; Software Engineering
• Online Access: http://scholarworks.gsu.edu/bus_admin_diss/33; http://scholarworks.gsu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1035&context=bus_admin_diss

Software development is increasingly conducted in a recurrent fashion, where the same product or service is continuously being developed for the marketplace. Still, we lack detailed studies about this particular context of software development. Against this backdrop, this dissertation presents an action research study into Software Inc., a large multi-national software provider. The research addressed the challenges the company faced in managing releases and organizing software process improvement (SPI) to help recurrently develop and deliver a specific product, Secure-on-Request, to its customers and the wider marketplace. The initial problem situation was characterized by recent acquisition of additional software, complexity of service delivery, new engineering and product management teams, and low software development process maturity. Asking how release management can be organized and improved in the context of recurrent development of software, we draw on Pettigrew’s contextualist inquiry to focus on the ongoing interaction between the contents, context and process to organize and improve release cycle practices and outcomes. As a result, the dissertation offers two contributions. Practically, it contributes to the resolution of the problem situation at Software Inc. Theoretically, it introduces a new software engineering discipline, release cycle management (RCM), focused on recurrent delivery of software, including SPI as an integral part, and grounded in the specific experiences at Software Inc.