How has Japan become a major economic power, a world leader in the automotive and electronics industries? What is the secret of their success? The consensus has been that, though the Japanese are not particularly innovative, they are exceptionally skilful at imitation, at improving products that already exist. But now two leading Japanese business experts, Ikujiro Nonaka and Hiro Takeuchi, turn this conventional wisdom on its head: Japanese firms are successful, they contend, precisely because they are innovative, because they create new knowledge and use it to produce successful products and technologies. Examining case studies drawn from such firms as Honda, Canon, Matsushita, NEC, 3M, GE, and the U.S. Marines, this book reveals how Japanese companies translate tacit to explicit knowledge and use it to produce new processes, products, and services.

The knowledge-creating company : how Japanese companies create the dynamics of innovation

From the Book:
“Clean code that works” is Ron Jeffries’ pithy phrase. The goal is clean code that works, and for a whole bunch of reasons:
Clean code that works is a predictable way to develop. You know when you are finished, without having to worry about a long bug trail.Clean code that works gives you a chance to learn all the lessons that the code has to teach you. If you only ever slap together the first thing you think of, you never have time to think of a second, better, thing. Clean code that works improves the lives of users of our software.Clean code that works lets your teammates count on you, and you on them.Writing clean code that works feels good.But how do you get to clean code that works? Many forces drive you away from clean code, and even code that works. Without taking too much counsel of our fears, here’s what we do—drive development with automated tests, a style of development called “Test-Driven Development” (TDD for short). 
In Test-Driven Development, you:
Write new code only if you first have a failing automated test.Eliminate duplication.

Two simple rules, but they generate complex individual and group behavior. Some of the technical implications are:You must design organically, with running code providing feedback between decisionsYou must write your own tests, since you can’t wait twenty times a day for someone else to write a testYour development environment must provide rapid response to small changesYour designs must consist of many highly cohesive, loosely coupled components, just to make testing easy

The two rules imply an order to the tasks ofprogramming:
1. Red—write a little test that doesn’t work, perhaps doesn’t even compile at first
2. Green—make the test work quickly, committing whatever sins necessary in the process
3. Refactor—eliminate all the duplication created in just getting the test to work


Red/green/refactor. The TDD’s mantra.

Assuming for the moment that such a style is possible, it might be possible to dramatically reduce the defect density of code and make the subject of work crystal clear to all involved. If so, writing only code demanded by failing tests also has social implications:
If the defect density can be reduced enough, QA can shift from reactive to pro-active workIf the number of nasty surprises can be reduced enough, project managers can estimate accurately enough to involve real customers in daily developmentIf the topics of technical conversations can be made clear enough, programmers can work in minute-by-minute collaboration instead of daily or weekly collaborationAgain, if the defect density can be reduced enough, we can have shippable software with new functionality every day, leading to new business relationships with customers


So, the concept is simple, but what’s my motivation? Why would a programmer take on the additional work of writing automated tests? Why would a programmer work in tiny little steps when their mind is capable of great soaring swoops of design? Courage.
Courage
Test-driven development is a way of managing fear during programming. I don’t mean fear in a bad way, pow widdle prwogwammew needs a pacifiew, but fear in the legitimate, this-is-a-hard-problem-and-I-can’t-see-the-end-from-the-beginning sense. If pain is nature’s way of saying “Stop!”, fear is nature’s way of saying “Be careful.” Being careful is good, but fear has a host of other effects:
Makes you tentativeMakes you want to communicate lessMakes you shy from feedbackMakes you grumpy

None of these effects are helpful when programming, especially when programming something hard. So, how can you face a difficult situation and:
Instead of being tentative, begin learning concretely as quickly as possible.Instead of clamming up, communicate more clearly.Instead of avoiding feedback, search out helpful, concrete feedback.(You’ll have to work on grumpiness on your own.) 

Imagine programming as turning a crank to pull a bucket of water from a well. When the bucket is small, a free-spinning crank is fine. When the bucket is big and full of water, you’re going to get tired before the bucket is all the way up. You need a ratchet mechanism to enable you to rest between bouts of cranking. The heavier the bucket, the closer the teeth need to be on the ratchet.

The tests in test-driven development are the teeth of the ratchet. Once you get one test working, you know it is working, now and forever. You are one step closer to having everything working than you were when the test was broken. Now get the next one working, and the next, and the next. By analogy, the tougher the programming problem, the less ground should be covered by each test.

Readers of Extreme Programming Explained will notice a difference in tone between XP and TDD. TDD isn’t an absolute like Extreme Programming. XP says, “Here are things you must be able to do to be prepared to evolve further.” TDD is a little fuzzier. TDD is an awareness of the gap between decision and feedback during programming, and techniques to control that gap. “What if I do a paper design for a week, then test-drive the code? Is that TDD?” Sure, it’s TDD. You were aware of the gap between decision and feedback and you controlled the gap deliberately.

That said, most people who learn TDD find their programming practice changed for good. “Test Infected” is the phrase Erich Gamma coined to describe this shift. You might find yourself writing more tests earlier, and working in smaller steps than you ever dreamed would be sensible. On the other hand, some programmers learn TDD and go back to their earlier practices, reserving TDD for special occasions when ordinary programming isn’t making progress.

There are certainly programming tasks that can’t be driven solely by tests (or at least, not yet). Security software and concurrency, for example, are two topics where TDD is not sufficient to mechanically demonstrate that the goals of the software have been met. Security relies on essentially defect-free code, true, but also on human judgement about the methods used to secure the software. Subtle concurrency problems can’t be reliably duplicated by running the code.

Once you are finished reading this book, you should be ready to:
Start simplyWrite automated testsRefactor to add design decisions one at a time

This book is organized into three sections.
An example of writing typical model code using TDD. The example is one I got from Ward Cunningham years ago, and have used many times since, multi-currency arithmetic. In it you will learn to write tests before code and grow a design organically.An example of testing more complicated logic, including reflection and exceptions, by developing a framework for automated testing. This example also serves to introduce you to the xUnit architecture that is at the heart of many programmer-oriented testing tools. In the second example you will learn to work in even smaller steps than in the first example, including the kind of self-referential hooha beloved of computer scientists.Patterns for TDD. Included are patterns for the deciding what tests to write, how to write tests using xUnit, and a greatest hits selection of the design patterns and refactorings used in the examples.

I wrote the examples imagining a pair programming session. If you like looking at the map before wandering around, you may want to go straight to the patterns in Section 3 and use the examples as illustrations. If you prefer just wandering around and then looking at the map to see where you’ve been, try reading the examples through and refering to the patterns when you want more detail about a technique, then using the patterns as a reference.

Several reviewers have commented they got the most out of the examples when they started up a programming environment and entered the code and ran the tests as they read.

A note about the examples. Both examples, multi-currency calculation and a testing framework, appear simple. There are (and I have seen) complicated, ugly, messy ways of solving the same problems. I could have chosen one of those complicated, ugly, messy solutions to give the book an air of “reality.” However, my goal, and I hope your goal, is to write clean code that works. Before teeing off on the examples as being too simple, spend 15 seconds imagining a programming world in which all code was this clear and direct, where there were no complicated solutions, only apparently complicated problems begging for careful thought. TDD is a practice that can help you lead yourself to exactly that careful thought.

Test Driven Development: By Example

The Visual Display of Quantitative Information

Cultivating Communities of Practice: A Guide to Managing Knowledge

Eric Ries was born in September 1978. He graduated from Yale University and moved to silicon Valley in the beginning of the millennium. He pioneered the philosophy of Lean Startup, based on his experience with multiple startups, primary being IMVU which he co-founded along with Will Harvey in 2004. Eric Ries originated his Lean Startup philosophy after getting inspired from the Japanese Philosophy of Lean Manufacturing.

The Lean Startup:How Today's Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses

While Agile methods were originally introduced for small, tightly coupled teams, leaner ways of working are becoming a practical method to run entire enterprises. As the emphasis of user experience work has inherently been on the early phases before starting the development, it also needs to be adapted to the Agile way of working. To improve the current practices in Agile user experience work, we determined the present state of a multi-continental software development organization that already had a functioning user experience team. In this paper, we describe the most prevalent issues regarding the interaction of user experience design and software development activities, and suggest improvements to fix those. Most of the observed problems were related to communication issues and to the service mode of the user experience team. The user experience team was operating between management and development organizations trying to adapt to the dissimilar practices of both the disciplines.

/pdf/agile-user-experience-development-in-a-large-software-44fizw2541.pdf

Agile user experience development in a large software organization: good expertise but limited impact

DevOps and continuous development are getting popular in the software industry. Adopting these modern approaches in regulatory environments, such as medical device software, is not straightforward because of the demand for regulatory compliance. While DevOps relies on continuous deployment and integration, regulated environments require strict audits and approvals before releases. Therefore, the use of modern development approaches in regulatory environments is rare, as is the research on the topic. However, as software is more and more predominant in medical devices, modern software development approaches become attractive. This paper discusses the fit of DevOps for regulated medical device software development. We examine two related standards, IEC 62304 and IEC 82304-1, for obstacles and benefits of using DevOps for medical device software development. We found these standards to set obstacles for continuous delivery and integration. Respectively, development tools can help fulfilling the requirements of traceability and documentation of these standards.

DevOps in regulated software development: case medical devices

Startups operate with small resources in time pressure. Thus, building minimal product versions to test and validate ideas has emerged as a way to avoid wasteful creation of complicated products which may be proven unsuccessful in the markets. Often, design of these early product versions needs to be done fast and with little advance information from end-users. In this paper we introduce the Minimum Viable User eXperience (MVUX) that aims at providing users a good enough user experience already in the early, minimal versions of the product. MVUX enables communication of the envisioned product value, gathering of meaningful feedback, and it can promote positive word of mouth. To understand what MVUX consists of, we conducted an interview study with 17 entrepreneurs from 12 small startups. The main elements of MVUX recognized are Attractiveness, Approachability, Professionalism, and Selling the Idea. We present the structured framework and elements’ contributing qualities.

/pdf/minimum-viable-user-experience-a-framework-for-supporting-4xg2dj7bv6.pdf

Minimum Viable User EXperience: A Framework for Supporting Product Design in Startups

Context Regulatory authorities require proofs from critical systems manufacturers that the software in their products is developed in accordance to prescribed development practices before accepting the product to the markets. This is challenging when using DevOps, where continuous integration and deployment are the default practices, which are not a good match with the regulatory software development standards. Objective We aim to bring DevOps and regulated software development closer to each other. First, we want to make it easier for developers to develop regulated software with tools and practices they are familiar with. Second, we want to allow regulatory authorities to build confidence on solutions provided by manufacturers by defining a mapping between DevOps and regulatory software development. Method We performed a literature survey and created research suggestions using exploratory research. Results Tighter integration between development tools, requirements management, version control and deployment pipeline would simplify the creation of regulatory compliant development practices. Conclusions Regulations could be improved for more agile and incremental method in quality approval, the final step before the actual deployment of the software. Improved development practices and tool integration, created in cooperation by tool vendors, system providers, and regulatory authorities, could support developers who are not comfortable with fixed, and rigid practices of regulated software development.

Regulated software meets DevOps

Many companies have been conducting their software development activities using Agile methods for years; however, in many cases the management and sales processes of these companies are still run in a more traditional way. This can cause clashes between development and management; and especially in terms of user experience specialists, who are often operating in between these organizations.This paper describes the present state of user experience work in development and sales processes in a large, globally-operating IT service company. The data were gathered via an online survey (with 67 respondents) and 17 theme interviews. The study indicates that although the user experience approach is well established inside the organization, the impact of this approach is limited by mismatching sales and management practices and processes, which are, in many cases, working in more traditional ways. In specific, the business model in sales was seen to hinder user experience work.

Kati Kuusinen

Papers

Agile user experience development in a large software organization: good expertise but limited impact

DevOps in regulated software development: case medical devices

Minimum Viable User EXperience: A Framework for Supporting Product Design in Startups

Regulated software meets DevOps

How to make agile UX work more efficient: management and sales perspectives