Customer stimulation in lean software development

The process of developing software is a complex undertaking involving multiple stakeholders. While the intentions of these parties might vary to some extent, the ultimate goal can be seen as a satisfactory product. Lean and agile software development practices strive toward this and they place customer contentment as one of the highest aims of the process. An important aspect of any development process is the act of innovation. Without it, nothing progresses and the whole process is unnecessary. As a target domain expert, the customer is an important part of effective innovation. Problems arise, however, when the customer is not actively taking part in the activities. Lack of familiarity with software development can easily cause such issues. Unfortunately, the amount of research conducted on product innovation is unimpressive. This makes it difficult to formulate a recommended approach on stimulating the customer and encouraging a more active participation. Ultimately, a small set of high-level guidelines were identified from the available literary resources for inducing innovation. To conclude, this thesis presents the findings made during the development of a small web application and compares them to the aforementioned literature findings. While the guidelines seem to provide promising results, further empirical research is needed to attain more significant conclusions.

Ketterän ohjelmistokehittämisen hyödyntäminen käyttöliittymäkehityksessä asiakkaiden todellisen tarpeen ymmärtämiseksi

Työn tavoitteena oli toimintatutkimuksen kautta tutkia ketterän ohjelmistokehityksen keinoin toteutetun käyttöliittymäkehityksen kykyä vastata asiakkaiden todellisiin tarpeisiin. Työssä haettiin tapaustutkimusyritykselle olemassa olevan työkalun uuden version käyttöliittymän toteutusvaihtoehtoja ja toteutettiin korkean tarkkuuden prototyyppejä näitä hyödyntäen. Ketterän ohjelmistokehityksen arvot ja periaatteet soveltuivat kehitysprosessissa käytettäviksi erinomaisesti. Iteratiivinen lähestymistapa kehitykseen ja läheinen yhteistyö tapaustutkimusyrityksen ja kandidaatintyöntekijän kanssa mahdollistivat yrityksen odotusten täyttämisen. Työkalun käyttöliittymä saatettiin tasolle, joka mahdollistaa jatkokehittämisen aloituksen. Kattavamman testauttamisen sisällyttäminen kehitysprosessiin olisi edesauttanut vielä paremman lopputuloksen saavuttamista.

Embedding sustainability into the new computer science curriculum for English schools

The primary goals of this study are to: embed sustainable concepts of energy consumption into certain part of existing Computer Science curriculum for English schools; investigate how to motivate 7-to-11 years old kids to learn these concepts; promote responsive ICT (Information and Communications Technology) use by these kids in their daily life; raise their awareness of today’s ecological challenges. Sustainability-related ICT lessons developed aim to provoke computational thinking and creativity to foster understanding of environmental impact of ICT and positive environmental impact of small changes in user energy consumption behaviour. The importance of including sustainability into the Computer Science curriculum is due to the fact that ICT is both a solution and one of the causes of current world ecological problems. This research follows Agile software development methodology. In order to achieve the aforementioned goals, sustainability requirements, curriculum requirements and technical requirements are firstly analysed. Secondly, the web-based user interface is designed. In parallel, a set of three online lessons (video, slideshow and game) is created for the website GreenICTKids.com taking into account several green design patterns. Finally, the evaluation phase involves the collection of adults’ and kids’ feedback on the following: user interface; contents; user interaction; impacts on the kids’ sustainability awareness and on the kids’ behaviour with technologies. In conclusion, a list of research outcomes is as follows: 92% of the adults learnt more about energy consumption; 80% of the kids are motivated to learn about energy consumption and found the website easy to use; 100% of the kids understood the contents and liked website’s visual aspect; 100% of the kids will try to apply in their daily life what they learnt through the online lessons.