Contributions to Systems Software and Service Process Improvement and Innovation Based on Recent Advances

Abstract

This special issue comprises a selected set of high quality and extended articles of the 29th Systems, Software and Services Process Improvement (EuroSPI) Conference, held in 2022 in Salzburg, Austria.

Conferences were held in Dublin (Ireland) in 1994, in Vienna (Austria) in 1995, in Brighton (UK) in 1996, in Budapest (Hungary) in 1997, in Gothenburg (Sweden) in 1998, in Pori (Finland) in 1999, in Copenhagen (Denmark) in 2000, in Limerick (Ireland) in 2001, in Nuremberg (Germany) in 2002, in Graz (Austria) in 2003, in Trondheim (Norway) in 2004, in Budapest (Hungary) in 2005, in Joensuu (Finland) in 2006, in Potsdam (Germany) in 2007, in Dublin (Ireland) in 2008, in Alcala (Spain) in 2009, in Grenoble (France) in 2010, in Roskilde (Denmark) in 2011, in Vienna (Austria) in 2012, in Dundalk (Ireland) in 2013, in Luxembourg in 2014, in Ankara (Turkey) in 2015, in Graz (Austria) in 2016, in Ostrava (Czech Republic) in 2017, in Bilbao (Spain) in 2018, in Edinburgh (UK) in 2019, in Düsseldorf (Germany) in 2020, in Krems (Austria) in 2021, and in Salzburg (Austria) in 2022.

EuroSPI had a cooperation with the EU Blueprint for Automotive project DRIVES [1] (2018–2022) where leading Automotive industry discusses and presents skills for the Europe 2030 strategy in the automotive sector. In 2022, the ASA (Automotive Skills Alliance) has been formed in Brussels which continues with the DRIVES results, and EuroSPI is a partner in the ASA.

EuroSPI has a cooperation with the EU Blueprint for Batteries project ALBATTS (2020–2023) where leading European industry discusses and establishes a skills agenda to build a European battery production capability for the electrification of European e-mobility.

EuroSPI has a cooperation with the EU project FLAMENCO [2] (2023–2024) where for the Working Group 3.6 for IT in Automotive, the certification and training services for job roles in European automotive industry will be developed.

EuroSPI has established the SPI Manifesto (SPI = Systems, Software and Services Process Improvement [3]), a set of social media groups including a selection of presentations and key notes freely available on YouTube and access to job role-based qualification through the European Certification and Qualification Association (www.ecqa.org).

A typical characterization of EuroSPI is reflected in a statement made by a company: “… the biggest value of EuroSPI lies in its function as a European knowledge and experience exchange mechanism for SPI and innovation.”

Since its beginning in 1994 in Dublin, the EuroSPI initiative continuously develops the term SPI including more and more fields that contribute. During the years, new communities (Cybersecurity, Internet of Things, Agile, etc …) joined and the term EuroSPI² became European System, Software, Service, Safety, and Security Process, Product, Programming Improvement, Innovation, and Infrastructure. So in fact, it became EuroS⁵P³I³.

EuroSPI 2022 took place in Salzburg, Austria. Six of the set of papers presented in the conference were selected by the editors for expansion in this special issue. The choice of the different manuscripts was made with consideration of the comments provided by the reviewers, and the final set was chosen based on the novelty and contribution of the papers. The editors present the selected manuscripts and discuss their content in what follows.

The paper “Trustworthy and Collaborative Traceability Management: Experts' Feedback on a Blockchain-enabled Framework” by Demi, Sánchez-Gordón, Kristiensen and Larrucea presents a study based on the use of blockchain technology to register and track software artifacts of any type and size, in a decentralized, yet secure manner. The study, by means of a set of semi-structured interviews, is aimed at identifying challenges, benefits, and potential improvements of a previous framework and blockchain prototype by means of feedback collected from a set of software engineering experts. The findings suggest an overall favorable outlook by Experts regarding the blockchain-enabled requirements traceability framework and prototype. While the presence of blockchain technologies in software engineering is nowadays beginning to mature [4], the application of these technologies in requirements engineering is more scarce (see [5-7]). In this paper, adoption factors are taken into account to improve framework usability and contribution.

In “Product and Service Quality Risks – a survey about evolution and application in different business domains to facilitate Quality Engineering” by Alexander Poth, the author examines the literature regarding quality risk approaches identifying mature and general product and service risk approaches that are applicable in a variety of contexts. In the manuscript, Poth proposes an approach, describing its methodical evolution and how it can be integrated into development procedures, including soft-skills development such as employee awareness and systematic training within organizations. A case study in the Group IT of the Volkswagen AG is presented. Quality engineering is key in software process improvement initiatives [8], and this importance is even higher when initiatives focus on the sociocultural dimension of improvement duties [9, 10]. In the paper by Poth, the author underlines the importance of the development of employee awareness and systematic training within organizations.

“Promoting Social and Human Factors through a Gamified Automotive Software Development Environment” is authored by Gloria Piedad Gasca-Hurtado, Mirna Muñoz, and Samer Sameh. This paper presents an analysis from the point of view of developing software-controlled systems in automobiles. Authors employ a deductive approach to examine the design aspects of a strategy created and implemented in a software development automotive environment. One of the most significant findings of this study is the strategy's capacity to promote social and human factors, which encompasses motivation, commitment, team cohesion, emotional intelligence, and autonomy. It is recommended that the aforementioned considerations be taken into account in order to enhance the productivity of the teams in question. Gamification has been quite popular in Software Engineering education and training [11-13]; the presence of gamification initiatives in software industry is less frequent (e.g., [14]). In this paper, authors focus on the use of Gamification approaches in Automotive Software Development.

Alexander Poth and Pegah Momen from Volkswagen AG are the authors of the paper entitled “Sustainable Software Engineering – a contribution puzzle of different teams in large IT organizations”. In this industrial paper, authors identify and evaluate the contributions of typical teams in relation to their role in the development of sustainable software engineering solutions. The evaluation encompasses the full software engineering lifecycle, including demand analysis, architectural design, user interface design, implementation, operation, and usage. As organizations cover nowadays a broader focus than just software, the term “sustainable IT engineering” better reflects the scope of the organization's sustainability objectives. The proposed approaches are presented as instantiations within the Volkswagen Group IT. Started back in 2015 in the Karlskrona Manifesto [15], in recent times, the topic has evolved to expand in different dimensions such as ecological, technical, economic, social, and individual [16]. This paper is a prolongation of a set of initiatives on Sustainable Software Engineering focusing the endeavors in the case of the manuscript on key functions and processes and their instantiation within IT organizations.

In the paper “The PIM.3 Process Improvement Process – Part of the iNTACS Certified Process Expert Training”, Richard Messnarz, Vesna Djordjevic, Viktor Grémen, Winifred Menezes, Ahmed Alborae, Rainer Dreves, So Norimatsu, Thomas Wegner, and Bernhard Sechser document the results of the PIM.3 (Process Improvement Management) working group in INTACS (International Assessor Certification Schema) supported by the VDA-QMC (Verband der Deutschen Automobilindustrie/German Automotive Association – Quality Management Center). The new INTACS training is being launched by October 1, 2024 and rolled out worldwide. The process expert training is an integrated part of it, and the PIM.3 process training represents a session of the process expert training. This paper publishes the results of the PIM.3 process improvement management team of the INTACS working group for developing the process expert course.

The final paper is “Towards an Ontology for Process Compliance with the (Machinery) Legislations” and is authored by Barbara Gallina, Gergo László Steierhoffer, Thomas Young Olesen, Eszter Parajdi, and Mike Aarup. In this work, Gallina et al. focus on knowledge management for process compliance and propose a preliminary structured ontology. The objective of this ontology is to achieve a comprehensive understanding of the cognitive complexity inherent in the compliance problem, particularly in instances where knowledge-driven organizational structures, which may be geographically distributed and/or characterized by significant heterogeneity, are involved in communication. Compliance is one of the hot topics in almost all industries, and software industry is not an exemption [17]. In the case of “Towards an Ontology for Process Compliance with the (Machinery) Legislations”, authors focus on aspects like cognitive complexity tackling the problem by means of the design of an Ontology.