What are my key research interests recently?

The blend of Agile - Innovation Agile way of developing software has been becoming quite popular mainly due to its iterative approach and faster production cycles. However, the key research challenges in Agile are adoption of agile methods in the large scale and multi-geography environment. Also, the business and organizational sides of agile development have been largely ignored. Agile methods, originally started as software development methods, are more often used as software project management methods. This has indeed call for more research opportunities in this subject. I head VTT’s key project on agile research, FLEXI. FLEXI is a pan-European research project with more than thirty academic and industry partners and worth 25+ million euros in size. Recently I have been looking at organizational innovation issues in relation to agile methods. Lean thinking Current economic recession and its shift to next cycle of economic growth will draw huge attention from new business philosophies in Europe and the USA. One of them, the lean methods, is strongly emerging as the bellwether for achieving high productivity, reduced waste, reduced cost, and faster market reach with the people values at the core. Software embedded systems, particularly in telecom, automotive and consumer products will also see sea-change in the development, influenced and realized by adoption of lean practices. HP with its engineering substance and management research competitiveness is poised to utilize this opportunity for next generation research in lean software development and provide cutting-edge service to its end customers, companies and the society.

My interest in Lean grew out of collaborative work with the visiting professor Kurt Schneider (University of Hannover) at VTT in 2007. I have also initiated collaboration with MIT’s Lean Advancement Initiative. I am particularly interested in driving lean culture, understanding the lean philosophy and using lean to scale up Agile transformation. I am also pursuing Lean Green Belt Certification program from Irish Institute of Industrial Engineers.



Green IT (business perspectives)
While it is estimated that ICT systems are accountable for approximately 2 percent of global carbon emissions, they can have significant impact on the reduction of the other 98%. And not to forget that ICT-led footprint is poised to increase exponentially as more and more systems become software intensive. The green IT initiatives currently seem to concentrate on hardware: data centres, networks, work stations as well as personal computers are all under scrutiny in order to achieve ways to develop and manufacture more energy-efficient and environment-friendly products. This is certainly an appreciable move towards greener world. However, when considering the big picture of Green IT, the role of software has been hardly addressed. There is immense opportunity for HP to develop niche products and services on this timely and important area.

I developed my research interests in Green IT during my collaboration with Professor Brian Donnellan at National University of Ireland Galway. I am interested in researching engineering, adoption, infrastructure and productization issues of Green technologies. From business view point, I am interested in developing robust and implementable Green Capability and Empowerment framework like CMMI in software.

Virtual Community Network Service
Virtual community oriented networks (CNS) are becoming ‘de-facto’ way, whether its mobile-based social networking, establishing brand value, understanding user preferences or extracting purchasing patterns of community from the web based virtual communication. Web2.0, SaaS and similar concepts are important milestones for further development. However, going beyond state-of-the-art, it is emerging that community, in all kinds of services that are software-enabled or virtual, will hold key role in strategizing next growth wave of high-tech industry.

I started working on this topic during my collaboration with Professor Dave Messerschmitt (University of California, Berkeley). We have identified key themes of SaaS and Web2.0 related CNS themes and also impact on value stream.

SPI Business value
Software companies who want to improve software process capabilities (SPCs) need a systematic method to make informed investment decisions on software process improvement (SPI) initiatives. Such decisions should aim at creating maximum stakeholder values. Existing software process assessment models such as CMMI and SPICE give an overview on relevant SPCs but do not help in aligning the investment decisions on SPI initiatives with stakeholder values. This echoes in my research experiences with the Finnish software companies.

I have, in cooperation with Prof. Biffl from Vienna University of Technology, addressed this problem. We present a method with tool support that help companies align stakeholder values with SPCs and SPI initiatives. The proposed method has been developed based on the well-established “Quality Function Deployment” (QFD) approach. We report on experiences from applying the method and tool support in project workshops with SPI specialists and a Finnish software company. The experience with the proposed method suggests that it particularly helps to reduce the risk of misalignment by identifying those SPI initiatives that are most beneficial to stakeholders