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Transitioning Towards Continuous Experimentation in a Large Software Product and Service Development Organisation – A Case Study

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Product-Focused Software Process Improvement (PROFES 2016)

Abstract

Context: Companies need capabilities to evaluate the customer value of software-intensive products and services. One way of systematically acquiring data on customer value is running continuous experiments as part of the overall development process. Objective: This paper investigates the first steps of transitioning towards continuous experimentation in a large company, including the challenges faced. Method: We conduct a single-case study using participant observation, interviews, and qualitative analysis of the collected data. Results: Results show that continuous experimentation was well received by the practitioners and practising experimentation helped them to enhance understanding of their product value and user needs. Although the complexities of a large multi-stakeholder business-to-business (B2B) environment presented several challenges such as inaccessible users, it was possible to address impediments and integrate an experiment in an ongoing development project. Conclusion: Developing the capability for continuous experimentation in large organisations is a learning process which can be supported by a systematic introduction approach with the guidance of experts. We gained experience by introducing the approach on a small scale in a large organisation, and one of the major steps for future work is to understand how this can be scaled up to the whole development organisation.

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Correspondence to Sezin Gizem Yaman .

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Yaman, S.G. et al. (2016). Transitioning Towards Continuous Experimentation in a Large Software Product and Service Development Organisation – A Case Study. In: Abrahamsson, P., Jedlitschka, A., Nguyen Duc, A., Felderer, M., Amasaki, S., Mikkonen, T. (eds) Product-Focused Software Process Improvement. PROFES 2016. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 10027. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-49094-6_22

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-49094-6_22

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-49093-9

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-49094-6

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