Context: Software Process Improvement uses lean principles for eliminating wastes in the software development process. Waste is defined as anything that does not add value to the customer and product. The seven traditional wastes in software engineering are partially done work, extra process, extra features, waiting, motion, task switching and defects. Using the lean principles and practices, the wastes can be reduced or eliminated. It is important to know the lean practices that are widely used in software development and to know the practices, which captures the seven wastes. From the literature, the ability of waste reduction is theoretically discussed [2], but practically only little empirical evidence is available on ‘which practice is best capable in reducing specific kinds of waste.’ Objectives: Many software development organizations have adopted lean practices and agile practices for eliminating wastes of different kinds. Therefore, this study focuses on evaluating the effectiveness of lean practices in their ability to reduce the seven types of wastes associated with Lean Software Engineering. Methodology: The methodology that is used in this study is systematic literature review and industrial survey. In order to achieve the objective on evaluating the lean practices and agile practices in their ability to reduce the seven types of wastes that have more attention in research, a systematic literature review is conducted. Thereafter, to capture the effectiveness of lean practices in waste removal, a survey is designed to capture the perception of practitioners. Results: The systematic literature review has identified 53 relevant studies to the research topic. From these primary studies, the lean practices/principles, hybrid agile and lean practices, and the efficiency of agile practices in eliminating the seven wastes were identified. In addition to that, wastes that are captured by using lean practices; hybrid lean and agile practices were also identified. The reason for considering agile practices is that, agile and lean have similarities in eliminating the wastes and creating value to the customer [2][3]. Through the systematic literature review, it can be observed that researchers have not investigated all the seven wastes captured by lean practices. Thereafter, survey is the main contribution to this research where, the responses of 55 respondents from different countries were recorded. Most of the respondents are from India with 42% of the responses. We have asked the role of every respondent in their companies, and 19 respondents are Team leaders, 16 respondents are project managers and remaining people perform various other roles in software development. 38 respondents are from large-scale industry, which constitutes the majority part of the survey. The main contribution of the survey is identifying the ability of lean practices in eliminating different wastes. The respondents were asked to provide their level of agreement related to the effectiveness of each lean practices and agile practice in waste removal. A comparison between the results of SLR and survey reveals that there is a lot of variance in the perception of researchers and practitioners regarding the lean practices in eliminating wastes. Survey captures more wastes than SLR. From the results of survey, it was also identified that using the lean practices i.e. Kanban and VSM can eliminate most of the wastes. Kanban (41) and VSM (33) are mostly used and more efficient in industries. Conclusions: To conclude, the obtained results from this study will be quite useful for the real-time execution of lean practices. Team leaders, project managers, and organizations can adopt lean by choosing lean practices in accordance to the wastes that have to be eliminated from their software development process. This study has also identified the benefits and limitations of lean practices implemented in industry. This study helps researchers in providing necessary information that is very useful for further research in lean practices. The combinations of lean practices were also presented, which in terms one lean practice can compensate another in capturing all the seven wastes. In the survey, the additional wastes were identified when compared to SLR and this complements the literature. There is a considerable reach gap between the state of art and state of practice. It has been identified that VSM and Kanban practices have much attention in the literature. The remaining practices like Kotter and Kaizen are less concentrated in most of the research literature. From the literature, it is evident that none of the practices is capable of eliminating all the seven wastes in software development. VSM is capable of capturing wastes like waiting, extra process and motion. In addition, Kanban captures and eliminates wastes like partially done work, defects, task switching and extra features. With respect to the survey, Kanban and VSM practices are efficient in eliminating wastes. When the practitioners consider hybrid lean and agile practices, the combination of Kanban and Scrum, Scrum and VSM are efficient in eliminating wastes. The practitioners can consider the benefits of lean practices that are identified in this research. / V S S N R Ram Nanduri vssnrram@gmail.com

Varje år går stora mängder resurser förlorade på misslyckade IT-system vilket bidrar till ett stort intresse för kostnadseffektiva tekniker. En sådan teknik kallas Cloud Computing och har funnits i ett flertal år. Cloud Computing kan potentiellt sänka kostnader relaterade till ITprojekt, såsom exempelvis kostnader rörande underhåll av serverhårdvara. Function as a Service (FaaS) är ett av de senaste tillskotten till Cloud Computing. Något som blir alltmer problematiskt är att identifiera vilken typ av Cloud Computing som bäst lämpar sig för ett företag eller projekt. Denna studie ämnar därför svara på följande frågor; vilket värde tillför FaaS till utvecklare vid utvecklande av applikationer, hur skiljer sig FaaS från IaaS rörande implementation och vilka är potentiella motiv bakom nyttjande av FaaS. Genom att svara på dessa frågor ämnar studien agera vägledande vid val av Cloud Computing-tjänst. Vid analys av FaaS har LEAN Software Development (LSD) applicerats för att identifiera var FaaS reducerar och potentiellt adderar slöseri vid mjukvaruutveckling nyttjande tekniken. En fallstudie genomfördes vid ett litet företag, mindre än 50 anställda, som experimenterar med Amazon Web Services implementation av FaaS, Lambda. Slutsatsen av studien är att trots att samtliga aspekter av LSD inte är applicerbara på alla företag och projekt motiverar Lambdas fördelaktiga betalmodell företag att själva utforska tekniken. / Every year a tremendous amount of resources is lost on failed IT-Systems. It is therefore of interest to explore potential cost-saving technologies. One such technology that has been around for many years is Cloud Computing. Cloud Computing can potentially lower costs of IT-projects by, for example, eliminating the need to maintain server hardware. One of the more recent additions to the Cloud Computing assortment is Function as a Service (FaaS). What is becoming increasingly problematic about the assortment of Cloud Computing services is to know which service is best suitable for a company or project. This study therefore aims to examine FaaS to answer the questions; what value does FaaS add to the developers when developing applications, what differs in implementing FaaS from IaaS, and what are potential motives behind the usage of FaaS, thereby provide guidance when choosing Cloud Computing service. To analyze the results the LEAN Software Development (LSD) model has been used to identify where FaaS reduces and potentially adds waste in software development. A casestudy of a small organization, less than 50 employees, that are experimenting with the usage of Amazon Web Services implementation of FaaS, Lambda, has been made. The conclusion of the study is that even though all the aspects of LSD is not applicable to all companies or projects, the payment model of Lambda makes it advantageous for organizations to try it out for themselves.

The study reveals improvement areas in terms of lead time and quality in a traditionalsoftware development process of a large manufacturing-oriented organization, andidentifies four obstacles to the application of a Lean software development frameworkin order to achieve such improvements. The data from interviews are matched tofour predefined categories. These categories are evaluated using value streammapping and a framework of seven common improvement areas in softwaredevelopment. A large project and task tracking system indicate that lead time is a realproblem in the process. The most significant improvement area is wait time forchange approval meetings. A second prominent improvement area is the large amountof approval handshakes. At least a few of these handshakes are always approved, thusadding unnecessary lead time to the process. The four most imminent obstacles in adopting lean software development areidentified through estimating the efficiency of two in-house derivations of Scrum andKanban. The first obstacle is deep vertical but narrow horizontal expertise amongdevelopers. With some systems, there’s only one developer who knows how tomaintain the product. This makes it impossible to work as a team which is animperative principle of lean. A second obstacle is how the teams are arrangedorganizationally. They have a functional setup over three departments and threemanagers, which to some extent create a silo mentality, rendering cooperationdifficult. A third obstacle is how the teams are arranged geographically. Split over twolocations, manufacturing and headquarters, they have different customers, objectivesand a plain unfamiliarity with another that has reduced the will and opportunity tocommunicate and coordinate. A fourth obstacle is the inherent conflict between theprescriptive activities of ITIL, optimized for IT operational services,  and theadaptability of agile methodologies, optimized for rapid change and empiricaldecisions. ITIL fulfills a sometimes uncalled for need to get all changes approvedthrough several layers of management. The study concludes that Lean software development is in conflict with manytraditional values of a manufacturing organization. Although lean may be prevalent inother parts of the organization, this does not necessarily include the IT function. ITstill seems to have hard time grasping the lean concepts of flow, waste and value.

Context. Process improvement using lean software development uses measures to answer information needs. Measures are important in process improvement as they identify whether improvements have been made or further improvements are needed. Objectives. This study aims to identify the measures proposed in literature for lean software development and structure them according to ISO/IEC 15939. Methods. The research methodology consists of systematic mapping and uses thematic analysis. Results. Lean software development literature has become more frequently published from 1996 to 2013. The most common research types were evaluation research and experience reports. Themes were identified in measures resulting in the identification of 22 base measures, 13 derived measures and 14 indicators in total. Identified measures were then structured using a proposed meta-model adapted from ISO/IEC 15939. Using the proposed meta-model twelve models of measures were instantiated. Conclusions. Gaps exist in the lean principles for deferring commitment and respecting people. Structuring measures in models presents opportunities to identify shared dependencies in measures. Lean software development research guidelines were defined. Further research into the comparison of indicators, the industrial use of measures and the representation of models of measures is needed.

Abstract ------------- Background ---------------- Like other businesses, the failures and problems faced by the software development industry over the time have motivated experts to look for software process improvement to create quality software rapidly, repeatedly, and reliably. Objective ------------ The purpose of this study is to evaluate if and how Lean thinking and principles primarily associated with auto manufacturing industry can be applied to software development lifecycle for Software Process Improvement (SPI). The secondary aim is to analyze how BPR can be integrated with Lean software development for process improvement. Method ---------- A derived Lean-BPR adoption pattern model is used as a theoretical framework for this thesis. The seven Lean software development principles along with four-step BPR process are selected as process improvement patterns, which effects the KPIs of a software organization. This research study incorporates both Qualitative and Quantitative methods and data to analyze the objectives of this study. The methodological framework of Plan-Do-Check-Act is used in the case study to implement process re-engineering incorporating Lean and BPR principles. The impact of adopting the Lean and BPR principles is assessed in terms of cost, productivity, quality of products and resource management. Results ---------- Application of Lean and BPR principles for software process improvement in the organization under study resulted in 79% improvement in test coverage, 60% reduction in time for test execution and analysis and 44% reduction in cost for fixing defects that were being passed to customer in past. Conclusion ------------- Based on case study results, it can be concluded that Lean, a bottom up approach, characterized by empowerment of employees to analyze and improve their own working process can be effectively combined with IT centric traditionally top down BPR approach for improving KPI’s and software processes. / +45 40968458

Abstract Software engineering is advancing according to market needs. Consequently, software development methods that initially caused controversies such as Agile, and more recently Lean, are increasingly being adopted by the software industry. Particularly, Lean Software Development, which was initially regarded as one of the Agile methods, is acquiring an identity of its own as a means to scale Agile. However, Lean thinking is still open to interpretation in the domain of software development, which differs fundamentally from the manufacturing domain where Lean originally emerged. Specific issues such as the essence of Lean Software Development, the compatibility of Lean and Agile and the best combination of them are not properly understood. This dissertation addresses Lean thinking and its combination with Agile in the field of software development, by providing empirical evidence on how software-intensive organisations use them in practice. The research was performed in four phases. First, the relevant literature was analysed to identify research opportunities. Second, a survey strategy was used to investigate status and trends in the adoption of Agile and Lean. The third phase explored in detail how Agile and Lean are combined in practice, by conducting case studies on two large-scale, industry-leading companies that were transforming their processes from Agile Software Development into Lean Software Development. Finally, in the fourth phase, the results of the previous research phases were synthetized to draw conclusions and outline implications. The results of the study confirmed the interest of practitioners in using a combination of Agile and Lean. Unlike in manufacturing, the borders of Agile and Lean are not clearly defined in the software domain. The results provided evidence of numerous compatibilities between Agile and Lean in software development. Generally, the use of Agile methods at a prescriptive level is guided by Lean principles. However, Lean thinking also brings new practical elements to software development processes, such as Kanban, work-in-progress limits, a ‘pull’ and ‘less waste’-oriented culture and an extended emphasis on transparency and collaborative development. The results showed the fundamental importance of practices that enable quick feedback, fast learning and adaptation. / Tiivistelmä Ohjelmistotuotanto kehittyy markkinoiden tarpeiden mukaisesti. Aiemmin kiisteltyjä ketteriä menetelmiä, ja nykyään myös Lean-menetelmiä sovelletaan yhä useammin ohjelmistoteollisuudessa. Lean-menetelmiin perustuva Lean-ohjelmistokehitys erottuu selkeämmin välineenä laajentaa ketterien menetelmien käyttöä. Lean on yhä monitulkintainen ohjelmistotuotannossa, joka poikkeaa teollisuustuotannosta, josta Lean on peräisin. Lean-ohjelmistokehitystä, Lean- ja ketterien menetelmien yhteensopivuutta ja niiden parasta yhdistelmää ei vielä ymmärretä riittävän hyvin. Tämä väitöskirja käsittelee Lean-menetelmien yhdistämistä ketteriin menetelmiin ohjelmistotuotannossa. Tutkimus esittää kokemusperäistä tietoa, kuinka näitä menetelmiä käytetään ohjelmisto-alan organisaatioissa. Tutkimus oli nelivaiheinen. Aluksi tutkimusmahdollisuudet kartoitettiin tutkimalla aiheeseen liittyvää kirjallisuutta. Seuraavaksi tutkittiin kyselytutkimuksen avulla Lean- ja ketterien menetelmien käyttämisen nykytilaa ja kehitystä. Kolmannessa vaiheessa tapaustutkimuksilla selvitettiin Lean- ja ketterien menetelmien yhdistämistä käytännössä. Tapaustutkimuksia tehtiin kahdessa suuressa yrityksessä, jotka olivat muuttamassa prosessejaan ketteristä menetelmistä kohti Lean-ohjelmistokehitystä. Lopuksi aiemmat tutkimusvaiheet yhdistettiin johtopäätöksiä ja vaikutusten hahmottamista varten. Tutkimuksen tulokset vahvistavat Lean- ja ketterien menetelmien yhdistämisen kiinnostavan ohjelmistotuotannonharjoittajia. Lean- ja ketterien menetelmien rajat eivät ole selkeästi määriteltyjä ohjelmistotuotannossa. Tulokset tukevat käsitystä Lean- ja ketterien menetelmien yhteensopivuudesta. Lean ohjaa yleisellä tasolla ketterien menetelmien käyttöä. Lean tuo kuitenkin myös uusia elementtejä ohjelmistotuotantoon, kuten Kanban-menetelmän, keskeneräisen työn rajoittamisen, kysyntään perustuvan ’pull’-menetelmän ja turhan työn vähentämistä tavoittelevan ’less-waste’-työkulttuurin. Lean-ajattelu myös lisää painotusta läpinäkyvyyteen ja yhteistyöhön.