Serverless computing is an umbrella paradigm that encompasses multiple service categories, including Function-as-a-Service (FaaS) and Backend-as-a-Service (BaaS). It has reshaped cloud application development by abstracting infrastructure management tasks such as provisioning, scaling, and operational maintenance from developers, thereby enabling greater focus on application logic. To realize these benefits, organizations need to select among various FaaS platforms such as AWS Lambda, Google Cloud Functions, Azure Functions, and Apache OpenWhisk to develop their serverless applications. Nevertheless, the increasing number of available FaaS platforms and their heterogeneous characteristics (e.g., timeout constraints, cold-start behavior, memory and package size limits, and event-source integration) make platform selection complex and knowledge-intensive for the decision makers. The main objective of this study is to support decision-makers in selecting appropriate FaaS platforms by designing an effective and systematic decision model. The model aims to simplify the selection process, reduce time and effort, and provide deeper insights into platform suitability based on specific organizational requirements. We employed a mixed-method research design to develop a decision model for the FaaS platforms selection problem. The model contains a mapping of 219 features across 16 FaaS platforms. The model was evaluated through five real-world case studies conducted at different software development companies. It suggests and prioritizes more than one FaaS platform based on the participants’ requirements. The case study participants reported that the model offered valuable insights and significantly simplified the selection process by reducing the time and costs associated with the decision-making process. We observe in the empirical evidence that decision-makers can make more rational, efficient, and effective decisions with the decision model. Additionally, the model provides reusable insights that can support future research, such as developing new frameworks and solutions for emerging challenges in serverless computing.

Context: Serverless computing has revolutionized cloud computing by enabling organizations to streamline workflows, dynamically scale operations, and eliminate the need to manage the underlying infrastructure. These promises led organizations to migrate their applications to serverless. However, the migration process is inherently complex, demanding significant architectural modifications and organizational restructuring. While existing research largely emphasizes the technical aspects of serverless computing such as improving cold start, it often overlooks the socio-technical and decision-making dimensions. Objective: This study aims to identify and map the decision-making processes involved in serverless migration along technical, and organizational dimensions. Method: Using the Socio-Technical Grounded Theory (STGT), we analyzed 22 migration cases through 25 interviews with practitioners and insights from 31 blog posts. This approach offered a thorough and nuanced insight into stakeholder decision-making throughout the migration process. Results: The study identifies 29 key decision points categorized into procedural and outcome decisions. These include assessing technical feasibility, executing the technical migration to serverless, and restructuring organizational processes to support the transition. Conclusions: The proposed decision-making framework provides practical guidance for organizations undertaking serverless migrations by integrating technical and human-centric perspectives. It emphasizes fostering stakeholder alignment, adopting iterative decision-making practices, and enhancing organizational adaptability. The framework provides practitioners with a structured roadmap for successful transitions to serverless adoption by bridging these socio-technical dimensions.

In the era of 6G, developing and managing software requires cutting-edge software engineering (SE) theories and practices tailored for such complexity across a vast number of connected edge devices. Our project aims to lead the development of sustainable methods and energy-efficient orchestration models specifically for edge environments, enhancing architectural support driven by AI for contemporary edge-to-cloud continuum computing. This initiative seeks to position Finland at the forefront of the 6G landscape, focusing on sophisticated edge orchestration and robust software architectures to optimize the performance and scalability of edge networks. Collaborating with leading Finnish universities and companies, the project emphasizes deep industry-academia collaboration and international expertise to address critical challenges in edge orchestration and software architecture, aiming to drive significant advancements in software productivity and market impact.

Abstract Software industry is continuously exploring better ways to develop applications. A new phenomenon to achieve this is cloud‐based global software development (CGSD), which refers to the adoption of cloud computing services by organizations to support global software development projects. The CGSD approach affects the strategic and operational aspects of the way projects are managed. The objective of the study is to identify the success factors which contribute to management of CGSD projects. We carried out a multivocal literature review (MLR) to identify the success factors from the state‐of‐the‐art and the state‐of‐the‐practice in project management of CGSD projects. We identified 32 success factors that contribute to the management of CGSD projects. The findings of MLR indicate that time to market, continuous development, financial restructuring, and scalability are the most critical success factors for CGSD. Moreover, the findings of the study show that there is a positive correlation between the success factors reported in both formal literature and industry based gray literature. The findings of this study can assist the practitioners to develop the strategies needed for effective project management of CGSD projects.

Development and Operations (DevOps) is a methodology that aims to establish collaboration between programmers and operators to automate the continuous delivery of new software to reduce the development life cycle and produce quality software. Development, Security, and Operations (DevSecOps) is developing the DevOps concept, which integrates security methods into a DevOps process. DevSecOps is a software development process where security is built in to ensure application confidentiality, integrity, and availability. This paper aims to identify and prioritize the challenges associated with implementing the DevSecOps process. We performed a multivocal literature review (MLR) and conducted a questionnaire-based survey to identify challenges associated with DevSecOps-based projects. Moreover, interpretive structure modeling (ISM) was applied to study the relationships among the core categories of the challenges. Finally, we used the fuzzy technique for order preference by similarity to an ideal solution (TOPSIS) to prioritize the identified challenges associated with DevSecOps projects. We identified 18 challenges for the DevSecOps process and mapped them to 10 core categories. The ISM results indicate that the “standards” category has the most decisive influence on the other nine core categories of the identified challenges. Moreover, the fuzzy TOPSIS indicates that “lack of secure coding standards,” “lack of automated testing tools for security in DevOps,” and “ignorance in static testing for security due to lack of knowledge” are the highest priority challenges for the DevSecOps paradigm. Organizations using DevOps should consider the identified challenges in developing secure software.

Enterprise systems are developed and tailored in large, long-term projects, sometimes spanning for decades, whereby a network of parties comprising customer and developer organizations, subcontractors, and consultants work together to deliver a successful system. This collaboration is complex; the network and the operating environment are in a constant flux, which creates conflict and challenging situations. Collaboration and ways of working evolve through various crises, internal and external incidents, and project phases. This means that project management practices, communication patterns, contracts, and ultimately personal relationships change. This longitudinal, qualitative, single case study analyzes a 20-year-old enterprise systems development project, whereby different incidents and crises initiated changes to collaboration practices and the drivers for collaboration. We identified four collaboration modes — contract mode, cooperation mode, personified mode, and process mode — each of which was the main driver in different development circumstances. As a key contribution, we propose the seed of a mid-range theory that provides heuristics for responding to different types of crises that might occur while developing large-scale systems.

Pricing is an essential element of software business strategy and tactics. Informed pricing decision-making requires the involvement of different stakeholders and comprehensive data analysis. Achieving both appears to be challenging, and pricing remains one of the most under-managed processes in the software business. Simultaneously, a coherent SaaS pricing body of knowledge and verified solutions to assist SaaS providers while designing and implementing pricing are missing. There is a lack of integration among different research areas focused on SaaS pricing and, more importantly, between academia and industry. The primary aim of this paper is to clarify this misconception by classifying, thematically analyzing, and putting in correspondent academic state-of-the-art and industrial state-of-the-practice of SaaS pricing. A multivocal literature review (MLR) approach was used for the study, exploring both “white” literature as well as “grey” literature. The body of literature of 387 bibliography items was collected using a formal protocol. Of these, 57 were white literature items, and 330 were grey. A multistage content analysis process was implemented to classify the rich literature body across multiple dimensions with further mapping, synthesis, and reporting. A taxonomy of pricing-related concepts was created. It classifies SaaS pricing aspects, affecting factors, and challenges facing SaaS providers. The findings and interpretations are summarized to emphasize the major research themes and practical challenges of SaaS pricing practices’ transformation and provide further research guidelines in this area. SaaS pricing is a maturing and prominent area of research that requires further investigation. The conducted MLR formed a clear picture of SaaS pricing research and practice and identified different SaaS pricing aspects and affecting factors. The study will enable both scholars and practitioners to assess the current state-of-the-art in research and practice.

Internet of Things (IoT) refers to the interconnection of physical objects via the Internet. It utilizes complex back-end systems that need different capabilities depending on the requirements of the system. IoT has already been used in various applications, such as agriculture, smart home, health, automobiles, and smart grids. There are many IoT platforms, each of them capable of providing specific services for such applications. Finding the best match between application and platform is, however, a hard task as it is difficult to understand the implications of small differences between platforms. This article builds on previous work that has identified 21 important factors of an IoT platform, which were verified by the Delphi method. We demonstrate here how these factors can be used to discriminate between five well-known IoT platforms, which are arbitrarily chosen based on their market share. These results illustrate how the proposed approach provides an objective methodology that can be used to select the most suitable IoT platform for different business applications based on their particular requirements.

Technical debt (TD) is a metaphor for taking shortcuts or workarounds in technical decisions to gain short-term benefit in time-to-market and earlier software release. In this study, one large software development organization is investigated to gather empirical evidence related to the concept of technical debt management (TDM). We used the exploratory case study method to collect and analyze empirical data in the case organization by interviewing a total of 25 persons in eight software development teams. We were able to identify teams where the current strategy for TDM was only to fix TD when necessary, when it started to cause too much trouble for development. We also identified teams where the management had a systematic strategy to identify, measure and monitor TD during the development process. It seems that TDM can be associated with a similar maturity concept as software development in general. Development teams may raise their maturity by increasing their awareness and applying more advanced processes, techniques and tools in TDM. TDM is an essential part of sustainable software development, and companies have to find right approaches to deal with TD to produce healthy software that can be developed and maintained in the future.

The paper focuses on the challenge of generating theoretical support for software development, especially when human software developers are involved in the software development process. We outline a model, “Coat Hanger”, for theorizing about development practices. The model focuses on the intended rationale for the actual realization and resulting impacts of using particular practices in varying contexts. To illustrate the use of the model, we have studied recent practice-oriented articles in the journal Science of Computer Programming. A survey of articles in the journal between 2010 and 2013 showed that out of 371 articles, only four studied software development in professional organizations with actual software practitioners as informants. The Coat Hanger model was then used to identify the theoretical strengths and weaknesses of these four practice descriptions. The analysis is used as the basis to declare the potential of our model as a conceptual aid for more structured theorizing about software development practices. The contribution of the model is the introduction of a concretization of how theorizing can be done through reflection-in-action, instead of regarding research on software practices plainly from the prevailing viewpoint of technical rationality.

Context: Software projects often have four objectives; to produce the required functionality, in budget and in schedule, with acceptable quality. That statement may be true for most of the ordinary software development projects, but are these objectives enough for game development, where creativity and artistic aspects have a major role? Goal: We analyze how game developing organizations test their products, what are their main test objectives and how they perceive themselves in the software business. Method: We interviewed seven game development teams from different companies and studied how they test their products with grounded theory approach. Results: Our results suggest that game developers focus on soft values such as game content or user experience, instead of more traditional objectives such as reliability or efficiency. Conclusions: Game developers have similar, but not fully comparable to software industry, set of priorities in their software testing and quality assurance approaches.

The aim of this empirical study was to elucidate organizational and customer related challenges that affect the software testing process in software developing companies and how these challenges affect software quality construction. Using the grounded theory research method, we studied eleven software companies operating in different domains such as banking, space satellites, health care and energy. Seven main findings are presented: First, the low involvement of testers in the planning phase of the software development life cycle (SDLC) led to underestimation of the scope of testing and resources required. Second, there was poor buy-in for testing from project managers, which led to insufficient involvement of testers in some SDLC activities. Third, the risk-taking behaviour of project managers led them to skip important tests. Fourth, vertical organizational structures and modes of operation within the companies limited the mandate and visibility of testing and quality assurance units in development projects. Fifth, oversights in budgeting and contracts between customers and the software developing companies limited the extent of testing. Sixth, resources management, which was related to poor use of available systems, created a communication gap between teams and conflict in requirements interpretation; and seventh, customers' willingness to co-operate in after-sales testing limited the extent and efficiency of such testing and thus affected software quality.

Context: Development of software is a complex process with several stakeholders and their varying practices. The game industry has also additional requirements such as artistic presentation, an interesting story and high quality sound effects that further complicate the process. Objective: The objective of this paper is to understand what kind of requirements and expectations are attached to the technical infrastructure of game development in practice. Method: This study observed and qualitatively analyzed seven game-developing organizations, from recent startups to established organizations to allow comparison of their use of technical infrastructure. Results: Based on our study, the game organizations, regardless of their size, are generally pleased with the tools they apply. The selections of the applied tools are based on their ability to test concepts and build prototypes to help design. Conclusion: In general, the game development organizations expect their tools to allow adaptability to changes during the development process. The case companies did not seem to have many problems with their current technical infrastructure, and ability to test different solutions was considered very important feature.

This industrial experience paper presents the results of a survey with an open-ended question designed to clarify how product management practitioners understand the term product management. The survey was conducted through a public LinkedIn group for a period of nine months. During this timeframe it received 201 responses. The responses were analyzed qualitatively to identify the essential components and properties of product management from the practitioners' viewpoint. In comparison with the existing product management frameworks and definitions, the responses showed a tendency to mix product management and product marketing. Although the respondents had difficulties in naming all product management activities, we identified six that represent the core activities of product managers in the industry. The findings have implications for the evolution of product management frameworks to address the interests of a wider range of product managers and the development of common understanding on the necessary skill sets for the education and recruitment of product managers.

Software projects have four main objectives; produce required functionalities, with acceptable quality, in budget and in schedule. Usually these objectives are implemented by setting requirements for the software projects, and working towards achieving these requirements as well as possible. So how is the intended quality handled in this process of pursuing project goals? The objective of this study is to explore how organizations understand software quality and identify factors which seem to affect the quality outcome of the development process. The study applies two research approaches; a survey with 31 organizations and in-depth interviews with 36 software professional from 12 organizations for identifying concepts that affect quality. The study confirms that the quality in software organization is a complex, interconnected entity, and the definitions of desired and perceived quality fluctuate between different process stakeholders. Overall, in many cases the software organizations have identified the desired quality, but are not communicating it properly.

Cloud computing is causing a paradigm shift in the provision and use of computing services, away from the traditional desktop form to online services. This implies that the manner in which these computing services are tested should also change. This paper discusses the research issues that cloud computing imposes on software testing. These issues were gathered during interviews with industry practitioners from eleven software organizations. The interviews were analyzed using qualitative grounded theory method. Findings of the study were compared with existing literature. The research issues were categorized according to application, management, legal and financial issues. By addressing these issues, researchers can offer reliable recommendation for practitioners in the industry.

The objective of this qualitative study was to observe and empirically study how software organizations decide on which test cases to select for their software projects. As the software test processes are limited in resources such as time or money, a selection process usually exists for tested features. In this study we conducted a survey on 31 software-producing organizations, and interviewed 36 software professionals from 12 focus organizations to gain a better insight into testing practices. Our findings indicated that the basic approaches to test case selection are usually oriented towards two possible objectives. One is the risk-based selection, where the aim is to focus testing on those parts that are too expensive to fix after launch. The other is design-based selection, where the focus is on ensuring that the software is capable of completing the core operations it was designed to do. These results can then be used to develop testing organizations and to identify better practices for test case selection.

In this paper, we studied the differences in testing activities between software organizations which apply agile development methods and organizations which take the traditional plan-driven approach. Our focus was on the concepts which allow the software organization to successfully apply agile development methods or plan-driven methods. We also observed the test process enhancements and hindrances, which originate in the selected development method. We interviewed 12 organizations, which were selected to represent different polar types of software production. The interviews were tape-recorded and transcribed for further analysis. The study yielded hypotheses which were derived by applying the qualitative grounded theory method. The results indicated that in practice, agile methods can improve the position of testing through the early involvement of testing activities in development, and also have a positive influence on end-product satisfaction. By applying these results, organizations can improve their processes and avoid pitfalls when transitioning to agile methods.

This study presents a simple student self-assessment tool that can be used to motivate learning and to follow a student's progress. The tool is a survey questionnaire that uses Bloom's Revised Taxonomy as the base for its scale. The results show that students can place their knowledge along the taxonomy-based scale quite well, and they feel that it could help their learning. It also provides the teacher with a more objective basis for measuring the level of knowledge gained than the general scales. The scale is designed for a programming course, but with modifications it can be used in other classes too.

The objective of this qualitative study was to explore and understand the problems of software testing in practice and find improvement proposals for these issues. The study focused on organizational units that develop and test technical software for automation or telecommunication domains, for which a survey of testing practices was conducted and 26 organizations were interviewed. From this sample, five organizations were further selected for an in-depth grounded theory case study. The analysis yielded hypotheses indicating that a software project design should promote testability as architectural attribute and apply specialized personnel to enhance testing implementation. Testing tools should also be selected based on usability and configurability criteria. These results of this study can be used in developing the efficiency of software testing and in development of the testing strategy for organization.

This study explores the factors that affect the use of software testing automation in different types of organizations. A case study was conducted in five organizations that develop and test technical software for the automation or telecommunication domains. The data was collected from interviews with managers, testers, and developers in each organization. The grounded theory was used as the data analysis method. According to the results, the factors which emphasize the wide use of testing automation include that the tested products are generic and independent of third-party systems. Low human involvement in testing, steady underlying technology, and reusability support the use of testing automation.

This study questions the traditional view of software architecture as a specification that needs only be understood by software architects and engineers. Based on an intensive study of three software-producing organizations, we identify multiple metaphors (‘Blueprint,’ ‘Literature,’ ‘Language’ and ‘Decision’) that stakeholders use to understand the term software architecture, which in turn, allows them to effectively participate in its creation and use. Our results point to new research directions that may better encompass a broader view of software architecture.

This article describes the architecture development process in an international ICT company, which is building a comprehensive e-business system for its customers. The implementation includes the integration of data and legacy systems from independent business units and the construction of a uniform Web-based customer interface. We followed the early process of architecture analysis and definition over a year. The research focuses on the creation of e-business architecture and observes that instead of guided by a prescribed method, the architecture emerges through somewhat non-deliberate actions obliged by the situation and its constraints, conflicts, compromises, and political decisions. The interview-based qualitative data is analyzed using grounded theory and a coherent story explaining the situation and its forces is extracted. Conclusions are drawn from the observations and possibilities and weaknesses of the support that UML and RUP provide for the process are pointed out.

The objective of this qualitative study was to understand the complex practice of software testing, and based on this understanding, to develop hypotheses on testing organizations and knowledge management. The population of the study consisted of organizational units (OUs) that develop and test technical software for automation or telecommunication domains. First, a survey of testing practices was conducted and 26 OUs were interviewed. From this sample, five OUs were further selected for an in-depth case study. The study used grounded theory as its research method and the data was collected from 41 theme-based interviews. The analysis yielded hypotheses that included that the business orientation of an OU affects testing organization, knowledge management strategy, and outsourcing of testing. Further, identifying and avoiding barriers and using enablers improve knowledge transfer between development and testing. The results of this study can be used in developing the testing organization and the knowledge management strategy of an OU.

This paper explores the Requirement Engineering (RE) activities in two software product development organizations. Both companies have in recent years extended their product offering outside of their home market. In this paper, we wish to answer what RErelated challenges companies have faced in their journey of introducing their software products in new market areas and what have the companies done in their response to their new RE-related challenges. We believe that the results of this paper are important for practitioners and researchers alike. While increasing the academic understanding on the role of internationalization in market-driven requirements engineering, the paper also helps practitioners to anticipate some of the challenges that they may meet in their internationalization efforts. We have discovered that there may be inconsistencies between the nature of the challenges companies are facing and the strategies companies have taken to respond to the challenges. In addition, many of our findings are human interaction related indicating that the social aspects may still be an undervalued topic in RE research.