Bottom-up Adoption of Continuous Delivery in a Stage-Gate Managed Software Organization

Eero Laukkanen; Timo Lehtinen; Juha Itkonen; Maria Paasivaara; Casper Lassenius

doi:10.1145/2961111.2962608

Bottom-up Adoption of Continuous Delivery in a Stage-Gate Managed Software Organization

Eero Laukkanen, Timo Lehtinen, Juha Itkonen, Maria Paasivaara, Casper Lassenius

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Conference article in proceedings › Scientific › peer-review

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Abstract

Context: Continuous delivery (CD) is a development practice for decreasing the time-to-market by keeping software releasable all the time. Adopting CD within a stage-gate managed development process might be useful, although scientific evidence of such adoption is not available. In a stage-gate process, new releases pass through stages and gates protect low-quality output from progressing. Large organizations with stage-gate processes are often hierarchical and the adoption can be either top-down, driven by the management, or bottom-up, driven by the development unit. Goal: We investigate the perceived problems of bottom-up CD adoption in a large global software development unit at Nokia Networks. Our goal is to understand how the stage-gate development process used by the unit affects the adoption. Method: The overall research approach is a qualitative single case study on one of the several geographical sites of the development unit. We organized two 2-hour workshops with altogether 15 participants to discover how the stage-gate process affected the adoption. Results: The stage-gate development process caused tight schedules for development and process overhead because of the gate requirements. Moreover, the process required using multiple version control branches for different stages in the process, which increased development complexity and caused additional branch overhead. Together, tight schedule , process overhead and branch overhead caused the lack of time to adopt CD. In addition, the use of multiple branches limited the available hardware resources and caused delayed integration. Conclusions: Adopting CD in a development organization that needs to conform to a stage-gate development process is challenging. Practitioners should either gain support from the management to relax the required process or reduce their expectations on what can be achieved while conforming to the process. To simplify the development process, the use of multiple version control branches could be replaced with feature toggles.

Original language	English
Title of host publication	Proceedings of the ACM/IEEE 10th International Symposium on Empirical Software Engineering and Measurement
Publisher	ACM
Number of pages	10
ISBN (Electronic)	978-1-4503-4427-2
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1145/2961111.2962608
Publication status	Published - 2016
MoE publication type	A4 Conference publication
Event	International Symposium on Empirical Software Engineering and Measurement - Ciudad Real, Spain Duration: 8 Sept 2016 → 9 Sept 2016 Conference number: 10 http://esem-conferences.org/

Publication series

Name	Proceedings of the ACM/IEEE International Symposium on Empirical Software Engineering and Measurement
Publisher	IEEE Computer Society Press
ISSN (Print)	1938-6451
ISSN (Electronic)	1949-3789

Conference

Conference	International Symposium on Empirical Software Engineering and Measurement
Abbreviated title	ESEM
Country/Territory	Spain
City	Ciudad Real
Period	08/09/2016 → 09/09/2016
Internet address	http://esem-conferences.org/

Keywords

continuous delivery
stage-gate process
case study

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a45-laukkanenFinal published version, 11.1 MBLicence: CC BY

http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=2962608Licence: CC BY

Cite this

Laukkanen, E., Lehtinen, T., Itkonen, J., Paasivaara, M., & Lassenius, C. (2016). Bottom-up Adoption of Continuous Delivery in a Stage-Gate Managed Software Organization. In Proceedings of the ACM/IEEE 10th International Symposium on Empirical Software Engineering and Measurement Article 45 (Proceedings of the ACM/IEEE International Symposium on Empirical Software Engineering and Measurement). ACM. https://doi.org/10.1145/2961111.2962608

Laukkanen, Eero ; Lehtinen, Timo ; Itkonen, Juha et al. / Bottom-up Adoption of Continuous Delivery in a Stage-Gate Managed Software Organization. Proceedings of the ACM/IEEE 10th International Symposium on Empirical Software Engineering and Measurement. ACM, 2016. (Proceedings of the ACM/IEEE International Symposium on Empirical Software Engineering and Measurement).

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abstract = "Context: Continuous delivery (CD) is a development practice for decreasing the time-to-market by keeping software releasable all the time. Adopting CD within a stage-gate managed development process might be useful, although scientific evidence of such adoption is not available. In a stage-gate process, new releases pass through stages and gates protect low-quality output from progressing. Large organizations with stage-gate processes are often hierarchical and the adoption can be either top-down, driven by the management, or bottom-up, driven by the development unit. Goal: We investigate the perceived problems of bottom-up CD adoption in a large global software development unit at Nokia Networks. Our goal is to understand how the stage-gate development process used by the unit affects the adoption. Method: The overall research approach is a qualitative single case study on one of the several geographical sites of the development unit. We organized two 2-hour workshops with altogether 15 participants to discover how the stage-gate process affected the adoption. Results: The stage-gate development process caused tight schedules for development and process overhead because of the gate requirements. Moreover, the process required using multiple version control branches for different stages in the process, which increased development complexity and caused additional branch overhead. Together, tight schedule , process overhead and branch overhead caused the lack of time to adopt CD. In addition, the use of multiple branches limited the available hardware resources and caused delayed integration. Conclusions: Adopting CD in a development organization that needs to conform to a stage-gate development process is challenging. Practitioners should either gain support from the management to relax the required process or reduce their expectations on what can be achieved while conforming to the process. To simplify the development process, the use of multiple version control branches could be replaced with feature toggles.",

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booktitle = "Proceedings of the ACM/IEEE 10th International Symposium on Empirical Software Engineering and Measurement",

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Laukkanen, E, Lehtinen, T, Itkonen, J, Paasivaara, M & Lassenius, C 2016, Bottom-up Adoption of Continuous Delivery in a Stage-Gate Managed Software Organization. in Proceedings of the ACM/IEEE 10th International Symposium on Empirical Software Engineering and Measurement., 45, Proceedings of the ACM/IEEE International Symposium on Empirical Software Engineering and Measurement, ACM, International Symposium on Empirical Software Engineering and Measurement, Ciudad Real, Spain, 08/09/2016. https://doi.org/10.1145/2961111.2962608

Bottom-up Adoption of Continuous Delivery in a Stage-Gate Managed Software Organization. / Laukkanen, Eero; Lehtinen, Timo; Itkonen, Juha et al.
Proceedings of the ACM/IEEE 10th International Symposium on Empirical Software Engineering and Measurement. ACM, 2016. 45 (Proceedings of the ACM/IEEE International Symposium on Empirical Software Engineering and Measurement).

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Conference article in proceedings › Scientific › peer-review

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AU - Itkonen, Juha

AU - Paasivaara, Maria

AU - Lassenius, Casper

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N2 - Context: Continuous delivery (CD) is a development practice for decreasing the time-to-market by keeping software releasable all the time. Adopting CD within a stage-gate managed development process might be useful, although scientific evidence of such adoption is not available. In a stage-gate process, new releases pass through stages and gates protect low-quality output from progressing. Large organizations with stage-gate processes are often hierarchical and the adoption can be either top-down, driven by the management, or bottom-up, driven by the development unit. Goal: We investigate the perceived problems of bottom-up CD adoption in a large global software development unit at Nokia Networks. Our goal is to understand how the stage-gate development process used by the unit affects the adoption. Method: The overall research approach is a qualitative single case study on one of the several geographical sites of the development unit. We organized two 2-hour workshops with altogether 15 participants to discover how the stage-gate process affected the adoption. Results: The stage-gate development process caused tight schedules for development and process overhead because of the gate requirements. Moreover, the process required using multiple version control branches for different stages in the process, which increased development complexity and caused additional branch overhead. Together, tight schedule , process overhead and branch overhead caused the lack of time to adopt CD. In addition, the use of multiple branches limited the available hardware resources and caused delayed integration. Conclusions: Adopting CD in a development organization that needs to conform to a stage-gate development process is challenging. Practitioners should either gain support from the management to relax the required process or reduce their expectations on what can be achieved while conforming to the process. To simplify the development process, the use of multiple version control branches could be replaced with feature toggles.

AB - Context: Continuous delivery (CD) is a development practice for decreasing the time-to-market by keeping software releasable all the time. Adopting CD within a stage-gate managed development process might be useful, although scientific evidence of such adoption is not available. In a stage-gate process, new releases pass through stages and gates protect low-quality output from progressing. Large organizations with stage-gate processes are often hierarchical and the adoption can be either top-down, driven by the management, or bottom-up, driven by the development unit. Goal: We investigate the perceived problems of bottom-up CD adoption in a large global software development unit at Nokia Networks. Our goal is to understand how the stage-gate development process used by the unit affects the adoption. Method: The overall research approach is a qualitative single case study on one of the several geographical sites of the development unit. We organized two 2-hour workshops with altogether 15 participants to discover how the stage-gate process affected the adoption. Results: The stage-gate development process caused tight schedules for development and process overhead because of the gate requirements. Moreover, the process required using multiple version control branches for different stages in the process, which increased development complexity and caused additional branch overhead. Together, tight schedule , process overhead and branch overhead caused the lack of time to adopt CD. In addition, the use of multiple branches limited the available hardware resources and caused delayed integration. Conclusions: Adopting CD in a development organization that needs to conform to a stage-gate development process is challenging. Practitioners should either gain support from the management to relax the required process or reduce their expectations on what can be achieved while conforming to the process. To simplify the development process, the use of multiple version control branches could be replaced with feature toggles.

KW - continuous delivery

KW - stage-gate process

KW - case study

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M3 - Conference article in proceedings

T3 - Proceedings of the ACM/IEEE International Symposium on Empirical Software Engineering and Measurement

BT - Proceedings of the ACM/IEEE 10th International Symposium on Empirical Software Engineering and Measurement

PB - ACM

T2 - International Symposium on Empirical Software Engineering and Measurement

Y2 - 8 September 2016 through 9 September 2016

ER -

Laukkanen E, Lehtinen T, Itkonen J, Paasivaara M , Lassenius C. Bottom-up Adoption of Continuous Delivery in a Stage-Gate Managed Software Organization. In Proceedings of the ACM/IEEE 10th International Symposium on Empirical Software Engineering and Measurement. ACM. 2016. 45. (Proceedings of the ACM/IEEE International Symposium on Empirical Software Engineering and Measurement). doi: 10.1145/2961111.2962608

Bottom-up Adoption of Continuous Delivery in a Stage-Gate Managed Software Organization

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