transitioning towards continuous experimentation in a large software product and service ...
TRANSCRIPT
Sezin Gizem Yaman1, Fabian Fagerholm1, Myriam Munezero1, Jürgen Münch1,2, Mika Aaltola3, Christina Palmu3, Tomi Männistö1
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Transitioning Towards Continuous Experimentation in a Large Software Product and Service
Development Organisation – A Case Study
Continuous experimentation is a software development approach
where research and development activities are driven by constantly
conducting experiments with product value*.
* Rissanen, O., Münch, J.: Continuous Experimentation in the B2B Domain: A Case Study.* Fagerholm,F.,Guinea,A.S.,Mäenpää,H., Münch, J.: The RIGHT model for Continuous Experimentation.
HOWEVER,guidence is lacking on how development teams in large organisations
with complex business partnership networds can transition towards continious experimentaiton.
As our aim was to observe the introduction of continuous experimentation in a company, we conducted an actual experiment round with a real product.
Transition
Small teams
Small-scale experiments Experimentation
TargetCollaborationInitial circumstances
The experiment Persistence
Initial Circumstances
Multiple stakeholders- Select a focus
Evolving product- Allocate few resources
Need to limit the risks- Start small
Small teamsSmall-scale experiments
Champions
Brainstorming on possible experiments
Simplistic UI experiment as a start
[It’s better to] start experimenting with something small. [...] It’s more important to start now. Practice will make it perfect.” (Technical coach)
Identifying an experimentation target
Utilise existing resources
Numerous discussions
Prioritize and analyse the feature
Designing and executing the experiment
Pilot run
Rerun the experiment
Expert advice
Emphasize “learning”
“Fix the experiment [the] best way you can and run it again. You can learn so much with each experiment.” (Technical coach)
Collaborating with experts
Avoid mistakes, biases
Faster start
Iterative learning
Persistence
Learn from the failures
Keep practising
Scale up
“One should not dwell on temporary failures, but keep practicing.” (The teams)
Transition Small teams
Small-scale experiments
Experimentation Target
Collaboration
Initial circumstances
The experiment
Persistence
“Experimentation made it clear to the teams that there is no need to debate between opinions and assumptions as you
can quickly test them with an experiment.” (Technical coach)
Reference
Sezin Gizem Yaman, Fabian Fagerholm, Myriam Munzero, Jürgen Münch, Mika Aaltola, Christina Palmu, Tomi Männistö. Transitioning Towards Continuous Experimentation in a Large Software Product and Service Development Organization – A Case Study. In Proceedings of the 17th International Conference on Product-Focused Software Process Improvement (PROFES 2016), LNCS. Springer-Verlag, 2016.
Get the article here: http://bit.ly/corporateexperimentation
www.cs.helsinki.fi/en/people/yamanwww.cs.helsinki.fi/group/ese/
Sezin Yaman
University of HelsinkiEmpirical Software Engineering Helsinki Research Group
Discussion:
What other ways a software company can transition towards continuous experimentation?