According to W. Edwards Deming, American companies require nothing less than a transformation of management style and of governmental relations with industry. In Out of the Crisis, originally published in 1982, Deming offers a theory of management based on his famous 14 Points for Management. Management's failure to plan for the future, he claims, brings about loss of market, which brings about loss of jobs. Management must be judged not only by the quarterly dividend, but by innovative plans to stay in business, protect investment, ensure future dividends, and provide more jobs through improved product and service. In simple, direct language, he explains the principles of management transformation and how to apply them.

Out of the Crisis

Cultivating Communities of Practice: A Guide to Managing Knowledge

Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences

This paper proposes the term method engineering for the research field of the construction of information systems development methods and tools. Some research issues in method engineering are identified. One major research topic in method engineering is discussed in depth: situational methods, i.e. the configuration of a project approach that is tuned to the project at hand. A language and support tool for the engineering of situational methods are discussed.

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Method engineering: engineering of information systems development methods and tools

With the advent of Grid and application technologies, scientists and engineers are building more and more complex applications to manage and process large data sets, and execute scientific experiments on distributed resources. Such application scenarios require means for composing and executing complex workflows. Therefore, many efforts have been made towards the development of workflow management systems for Grid computing. In this paper, we propose a taxonomy that characterizes and classifies various approaches for building and executing workflows on Grids. We also survey several representative Grid workflow systems developed by various projects world-wide to demonstrate the comprehensiveness of the taxonomy. The taxonomy not only highlights the design and engineering similarities and differences of state-of-the-art in Grid workflow systems, but also identifies the areas that need further research.

A Taxonomy of Workflow Management Systems for Grid Computing

Existing CASE tools are often rigid and do not support the users' native methodologies. To alleviate this, more flexible and customisable tools called CASE shells are emerging. However, the customisation of those tools is still cumbersome and error-prone, and demands several configuration files that follow a rigid syntax of some metamodelling language(s). In order to make the customisation easier, we propose a graphical metamodelling editor, MetaEdit, with which the conceptual structures of the user methodology can be modelled easily using an easy-to-grasp graphical notation. With MetaEdit, methodology models can be constructed with less effort and the configuration files for the CASE shell can be created (semi)automatically. The tool is flexible i.e. its symbols and metamodel are user-definable. In consequence it can be used as a simple CASE shell. MetaEdit is based on the Object-Property-Role-Relationship (OPRR) data model. The paper presents the principles on which the editor is built, describes its operation, and discusses its relations to other research on metamodelling.

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MetaEdit: a flexible graphical environment for methodology modelling

A widely held understanding of coordination in software development is that it focuses on coordinating development activities to achieve a common goal. Our study, a case study in an international ICT company, suggests that in multi-site environment, it is not enough to coordinate development activities to achieve a common goal. Rather, more emphasis should be put on coordinating interdependencies between activities. Shifting the interest from activities (and subsystems) toward system-level dependencies requires software architects and developers to have a common understanding of the software architecture. Our findings reflect coordination challenges in multi-site environment with geographically dispersed teams. On the basis of the findings, we claim that architecture could be used to coordinate distributed development. However, this requires that the chief architect is capable of maintaining the integrity of the architecture and of communicating it. Furthermore, we list some requirements for a development methodology that uses architecture to support the coordination. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

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Architecture as a coordination tool in multi‐site software development

As open source development's acceptance has increased, many companies have incorporated it into heterogeneous development, which creates products by combining software that's from many sources and built with many different processes. To be effective, heterogeneous development must bridge the gap between industrial and open source software (OSS) development practices. One aspect of this approach is inner-source development, which aims to deploy key aspects of OSS development within a limited scope - for example, a division, a company, or even a consortium. So, industrial software development must be extended with knowledge of how to cooperate in open source and inner-source communities. To compete successfully, software-intensive companies will need to adopt new forms of collaborative development involving open source software.

Commodification of Industrial Software: A Case for Open Source

Open Source Software development is seen as a panacea by many companies. The promise of community-style development, innovation and cost savings drive the wider adoption of OSS in companies. However, it is still difficult to institutionalize the open and agile culture of sharing innovation especially into larger departmentalized organizations. The aim of this research paper is to investigate the characteristics of one successful OSS development implementation approach limited inside a company (Inner source). Based on our data, we argue that there are possibilities for employing OSS as a new kind of development process within a company and leveraging thus the innovation potential inside the company.

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Pentti Marttiin

Papers

MetaEdit: a flexible graphical environment for methodology modelling

Architecture as a coordination tool in multi‐site software development

Commodification of Industrial Software: A Case for Open Source

Applying Open Source Development Practices Inside a Company

A comparative review of CASE shells: a preliminary framework and research outcomes