Browsing by Author "Lehtinen, Timo O.A."

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Development and evaluation of a lightweight root cause analysis method in software project retrospectives
(2014) Lehtinen, Timo O.A.
School of Science | Doctoral dissertation (article-based)
Software projects are famous for their problems. The most common problems include low software quality and schedule and cost overruns. According to the theory of causality, prob-lems escalate from the causal relationships of mutually exclusive events. The consequences of the problems motivate software companies to improve their work practices. Improvement of work practices is based on the detection of occurred problems and the ana-lyses of their underlying causes. "Retrospective" is a term that refers to post-project activities where the occurred problems are considered in order to make improvements. Software project retrospectives include the detection of the occurred problems, reasoning their causes, and developing corrective actions. There are many retrospective methods that follow these three phases. Root cause analysis (RCA) is a structured investigation of problems to detect their under-lying causes. This dissertation considers the applicability of RCA in the retrospectives of small- and medium-sized software product organizations. The research focuses on three research problems. The first problem is to explain how to conduct RCA in collocated and distributed software project retrospectives. The second problem is to study whether RCA is perceived as efficient and easy to use. The third problem is to consider whether the outcome of RCA indica-tes how the causes of project failures are interconnected. In this dissertation, an RCA method (ARCA) is developed. Thereafter, it is evaluated in a to-tal of six industrial cases and in one controlled student experiment. Additionally, a software tool, called ARCA-tool, for improving the ARCA method is developed. The tool is evaluated in two industrial cases. The ARCA method includes four steps: target problem detection, root cause detection, corrective action innovation, and documentation of results. It requires ap-proximately five hours of team work. A total of 97 participants evaluated the ARCA method and it was used in a total of 19 software project retrospectives. One of the key contributions of this dissertation is the ARCA method, which is applicable to collocated and distributed retrospectives with the assistance of ARCA-tool. Another key cont-ribution is the empirical evaluation of the ARCA method. The method is perceived as useful, easy to use, and cost-efficient for detecting the causes of software project problems and deve-loping corrective actions. Furthermore, the method helps to understand what happened, whe-re it happened, and why it happened. It reveals interconnections between software process areas, which is important for process-improvement activities.
Diagrams or structural lists in software project retrospectives - An experimental comparison
(2015) Lehtinen, Timo O.A.; Mäntylä, Mika V.; Itkonen, Juha; Vanhanen, Jari
A1 Alkuperäisartikkeli tieteellisessä aikakauslehdessä
Root cause analysis (RCA) is a recommended practice in retrospectives and cause–effect diagram (CED) is a commonly recommended technique for RCA. Our objective is to evaluate whether CED improves the outcome and perceived utility of RCA. We conducted a controlled experiment with 11 student software project teams by using a single factor paired design resulting in a total of 22 experimental units. Two visualization techniques of underlying causes were compared: CED and a structural list of causes. We used the output of RCA, questionnaires, and group interviews to compare the two techniques. In our results, CED increased the total number of detected causes. CED also increased the links between causes, thus, suggesting more structured analysis of problems. Furthermore, the participants perceived that CED improved organizing and outlining the detected causes. The implication of our results is that using CED in the RCA of retrospectives is recommended, yet, not mandatory as the groups also performed well with the structural list. In addition to increased number of detected causes, CED is visually more attractive and preferred by retrospective participants, even though it is somewhat harder to read and requires specific software tools.
Software engineering problems and their relationship to perceived learning and customer satisfaction on a software capstone project
(2018-03-01) Vanhanen, Jari; Lehtinen, Timo O.A.; Lassenius, Casper
A1 Alkuperäisartikkeli tieteellisessä aikakauslehdessä
In educational projects, having students encounter problems is desirable, if it increases learning. However, in capstone projects with industrial customers, negative effects problems can have on customer satisfaction must be considered. We conducted a survey in a capstone project course in order to study problems, learning and customer satisfaction related to eleven software engineering topics. On the average, students working in the managerial roles learned quite a lot about each topic, and the developers learned moderately, but the degree of learning varied a lot among the teams, and among the team members. The most extensively encountered problems were related to testing, task management, effort estimation and technology skills. The developers contributed quite a lot to solving problems with technology skills, but only moderately or less with other topics, whereas the managers contributed quite a lot with most of the topics. Contributing to solving problems increased learning moderately for most of the topics. The increases were highest with maintaining motivation and technology skills. Encountering problems with task management, customer expectations and customer communication affected customer satisfaction very negatively. When considering both learning and customer satisfaction, the best topics to encounter problems in were effort estimation, testing, and technology skills.