Business Development Efforts and Performance Improvements in SMEs Case Study of Business Development Projects Implemented in SME

Under the circumstances of the increasing market pressure, enterprises try to improve their competitive position by development efforts, and a business development project is one tool for that. There are not many answers to the question of how the development projects launched to improve the business performance in SMEs have succeeded. Theacademic interest in the business development project success has mainly focused on projects implemented in larger organisations rather than in SMEs. The previous studies on the business success of SMEs have mainly focused on new business ventures rather than on existing SMEs. However, nowadays a large number of business development projects are undertaken in existing SMEs, where they can pose a great challenge. This study focuses on business development success in SMEs thathave already established their business. The objective of the present study is to gain a deep understanding on business development project success in the SME-context and to identify the dimensions and factors affecting the project success. Further, the aim is to clarify how the business development projects implemented in SMEs have affected their performance. The empirical evidence is based on multiple case study. This study builds a framework for a generic theory of business development success in the SME-context, based on literature from the areas ofproject and change management, entrepreneurship and small business management, as well as performance measurement, and on empirical evidence from SMES. The framework consists of five success dimensions: entrepreneurial, project preparation, change management, project management and project success. The framework provides a systematic way for analysing the business development project and its impact on the performance and on the performing company. This case evidence indicates that successful business development projects have a balanced, high performance concerning all the dimensions. Good performance in one dimension is not enoughfor the project success, but it gives a good ground for the other dimensions. The other way round, poor performance in one success dimension affects the others, leading to poor performance of the project. In the SME-context the business development project success seems to be dependent on several interrelated dimensions and factors. Success in one area leads to success in other areas, and so creates an upward success spiral. Failure in one area seems to lead to failure in other areas, creating a downward failure spiral. The study indicates that the internal business development projects have affected the SMEs' performance widely also on areas and functions not initially targeted. The implications cover all thesuccess categories: the project efficiency, the impact on the customer, the business success and the future potentiality. With successful cases, the success tends to spread out to areas and functions not mentioned as the project goals, andwith unsuccessful cases the failure seems to spread out widely to the SMEs' other functions. This study also indicates that the most important key factors for successful business development project implementation are the strength of intention, business ability, knowledge, motivation and participation of the employees, as well as adequate and well-timed training provided to the employees.

Learning in Product Development Projects - Responding to challenges in global industrial company

Verkostoitunut kansainvälinen tuotekehitys on tärkeä osa menestystä nykypäivän muuttuvassa yritysmaailmassa. Toimintojen tehostamiseksi myös projektitoiminnot on sopeutettava kansainväliseen toimintaympäristöön. Kilpailukyvyn säilyttämiseksi projektitoimintoja on lisäksi jatkuvasti tehostettava. Yhtenäkeinona nähdään projektioppiminen, jota voidaan edistää monin eri tavoin. Tässätyössä keskitytään projektitiedonhallinnan kehittämisen tuomiin oppimismahdollisuuksiin. Kirjallisuudessa kerrotaan, että projektitiedon jakaminen ja sen hyödyntäminen seuraavissa projekteissa on eräs projektioppimisen edellytyksistä. Tämäon otettu keskeiseksi näkökulmaksi tässä tutkimuksessa. Lisäksi tutkimusalueen rajaamiseksi työ tarkastelee erityisesti projektioppimista kansainvälisten tuotekehitysprojektien välillä. Työn tavoitteena on esitellä keskeisiä projektioppimisen haasteita ja etsiä konkreettinen ratkaisu vastaamaan näihin haasteisiin. Tuotekehitystoiminnot ja kansainvälinen hajautettu projektiorganisaatio kohtaavat lisäksi erityisiä haasteita, kuten tiedon hajautuneisuus, projektihenkilöstön vaihtuvuus, tiedon luottamuksellisuus ja maantieteelliset haasteet (esim. aikavyöhykkeet ja toimipisteen sijainti). Nämä erityishaasteet on otettu huomioon ratkaisua etsittäessä. Haasteisiin päädyttiin vastaamaan tietotekniikkapohjaisella ratkaisulla, joka suunniteltiin erityisesti huomioiden esimerkkiorganisaation tarpeet ja haasteet. Työssä tarkastellaan suunnitellun ratkaisun vaikutusta projektioppimiseen ja kuinka se vastaa havaittuihin haasteisiin. Tuloksissa huomattiin, että projektioppimista tapahtui, vaikka oppimista oli vaikea suoranaisesti huomata tutkimusorganisaation jäsenten keskuudessa. Projektioppimista voidaan kuitenkin sanoa tapahtuvan, jos projektitieto on helposti koko projektiryhmän saatavilla ja se on hyvin järjesteltyä. Muun muassa nämä ehdot täyttyivät. Projektioppiminen nähdään yleisesti haastavana kehitysalueena esimerkkiorganisaatiossa. Suuri osa tietämyksestä on niin sanottua hiljaistatietoa, jota on hankala tai mahdoton saattaa kirjalliseen muotoon. Näin olleen tiedon siirtäminen jää suurelta osin henkilökohtaisen vuorovaikutuksen varaan. Siitä huolimatta projektioppimista on mahdollista kehittää erilaisin toimintamallein ja menetelmin. Kehitys vaatii kuitenkin resursseja, pitkäjänteisyyttä ja aikaa. Monet muutokset voivat vaatia myös organisaatiokulttuurin muutoksen ja vaikuttamista organisaation jäseniin. Motivaatio, positiiviset mielikuvat ja selkeät strategiset tavoitteet luovat vakaan pohjan projektioppimisen kehittämiselle.

Planning and control of internal development projects in a fast changing environment: Case study

Tutkimuksen tarkoituksena on kuvata ja ymmärtää kuinka sisäisiä kehityshankkeita voidaan hallita onnistuneesti kun toimitaan nopeasti muuttuvassa ympäristössä. Tutkimus kuvailee etenkin projekteille tärkeitä menestymistekijöitä, kuten suunnittelu, kontrollointi ja päätöksenteko. Tutkimus selvittää yleisimmät ongelma-alueet case-organisaation sisäisten kehityshankkeiden hallinnassa. Tutkimus on luonteeltaan laadullinen tutkimus, jossa tutkimusmenetelmänä on käytetty tapaustutkimusta. Empiirisessa osassa käsittellään case-organisaation sisäisiä informaatioteknologia-hankkeita (IT) ja uusien konseptien kehityshankkeita (NCD). iSisäisten kehityshankkeiden erilaisuuden ymmärtäminen oli tutkimuksen tärkein tulos. Tutkimuksen empiirinen osio osoitti sen, että epävarmuudella on erittäin suuri vaikutus projektihallintaan sekä projektin kontrollointiin. Case-organisaation IT-projektien onnistuminen riippuu organisaatiomuu-toksen onnistumisesta. Asiakkaisiin ja markkinoihin liittyvät epävarmuudet ovat vaikuttavimmat NCD projektien epävarmuuksista. Näillä epävarmuuk-sil­la on vaikutusta projektihallintaan jonka myötä NCD projektit juuttuvat useim­mi­ten noidankehiin tai ne lopetetaan jo aikaisessa vaiheessa.

Introducing Continuous Integration for C and C++ Software Development Projects on Linux Platform

Software integration is a stage in a software development process to assemble separate components to produce a single product. It is important to manage the risks involved and being able to integrate smoothly, because software cannot be released without integrating it first. Furthermore, it has been shown that the integration and testing phase can make up 40 % of the overall project costs. These issues can be mitigated by using a software engineering practice called continuous integration. This thesis work presents how continuous integration is introduced to the author's employer organisation. This includes studying how the continuous integration process works and creating the technical basis to start using the process on future projects. The implemented system supports software written in C and C++ programming languages on Linux platform, but the general concepts can be applied to any programming language and platform by selecting the appropriate tools. The results demonstrate in detail what issues need to be solved when the process is acquired in a corporate environment. Additionally, they provide an implementation and process description suitable to the organisation. The results show that continuous integration can reduce the risks involved in a software process and increase the quality of the product as well.

Evaluating the success of software development projects in Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus

The size and complexity of projects in the software development are growing very fast. At the same time, the proportion of successful projects is still quite low according to the previous research. Although almost every project's team knows main areas of responsibility which would help to finish project on time and on budget, this knowledge is rarely used in practice. So it is important to evaluate the success of existing software development projects and to suggest a method for evaluating success chances which can be used in the software development projects. The main aim of this study is to evaluate the success of projects in the selected geographical region (Russia-Ukraine-Belarus). The second aim is to compare existing models of success prediction and to determine their strengths and weaknesses. Research was done as an empirical study. A survey with structured forms and theme-based interviews were used as the data collection methods. The information gathering was done in two stages. At the first stage, project manager or someone with similar responsibilities answered the questions over Internet. At the second stage, the participant was interviewed; his or her answers were discussed and refined. It made possible to get accurate information about each project and to avoid errors. It was found out that there are many problems in the software development projects. These problems are widely known and were discussed in literature many times. The research showed that most of the projects have problems with schedule, requirements, architecture, quality, and budget. Comparison of two models of success prediction presented that The Standish Group overestimates problems in project. At the same time, McConnell's model can help to identify problems in time and avoid troubles in future. A framework for evaluating success chances in distributed projects was suggested. The framework is similar to The Standish Group model but it was customized for distributed projects.

Coaching agile methods in research and development projects

Agile coaching of a project team is one way to aid learning of the agile methods. The objective of this thesis is to present the agile coaching plan and to follow how complying the plan affects to the project teams. Furthermore, the agile methods are followed how they work in the projects. Two projects are used to help the research. From the thesis point of view, the task for the first project is to coach the project team and two new coaches. The task for the second project is also to coach the project team, but this time so that one of the new coaches acts as the coach. The agile methods Scrum process and Extreme programming are utilized by the projects. In the latter, the test driven development, continuous integration and pair programming are concentrated more precisely. The results of the work are based on the observations from the projects and the analysis derived from the observations. The results are divided to the effects of the coaching and to functionality of the agile methods in the projects. Because of the small sample set, the results are directional. The presented plan, to coach the agile methods, needs developing, but the results of the functionality of the agile methods are encouraging.

Product Development Management. Experiment for New Type of Project Management.

Tuotekehityksestä ja sen johtamisesta on tullut erittäin tärkeä osa tietoliikenneteollisuutta. Jatkuva teknologinen kehitys ja lyhentyneet tuotteiden elinkaaret ovat saaneet yritykset panostamaan tuotekehitysprosesseihin ja johtamiseen. Erityisesti nopeatempoiset ja lyhytkestoiset projektit onkin koettu ongelmallisiksi. Diplomityön tavoitteena oli tutkia teoriassa uusien tuotteiden tuotekehitystä, tuotekehitysprosesseja sekä projektijohtamista. Käytännön osuudessa oli tavoitteena kehittää kokeellinen tuotekehitysmalli nopeatempoisten ja lyhytkestoisten tuotekehitysprojektien tarpeisiin muuttuvissa ja epävarmoissa olosuhteissa. Tavoitteena oli myös käyttää ja analysoida kehitettyä kokeellista tuotekehitysmallia lyhytkestoisen tuotekehitysprojektin yhteydessä. Työn tuloksena saatiin ohjelmistotuote vaadituilla ominaisuuksilla vaaditussa ajassa ja todettiin projektissa käytetyn kokeellisen tuotekehitysmallin osoittautuneen toimivaksi. Jatkotutkimuksia tarvitaan selvittämään mallin sopivuutta ja sen kehityskohteita erilaisten tuotekehitysprojektien kohdalla.

Influence of software development process quality on product quality

Ohjelmistojen tärkeys nykypäivän yhteiskunnalle kasvaa jatkuvasti. Monia ohjelmistoprojekteja vaivaavat ongelmat aikataulussa pysymisestä, korkean tuottavuuden ylläpitämisestä ja riittävän korkeasta laadusta. Ohjelmistokehitysprosessien parantamisessa on naiden ongelmien minimoimiseksi tehty suuria investointeja. Investointien syynä on ollut olettamus ohjelmistokehityksen kapasiteetin suora riippuvuus tuotteen laadusta. Tämän tutkimuksen tarkoituksena oli tutkia Ohjelmistokehitysprosessien parantamisen mahdollisuuksia. Olemassaolevat ohjelmistokehityksen ja Ohjelmistokehitysprosessin parantamisen mallit, tekniikat ja metodologiat esiteltiin. Esiteltyjen mallien, tekniikoiden ja metodologioiden soveltuvuus analysoitiin ja suositus mallien käytöstä annettiin.

User-driven community-based service development

This final thesis project was carried out in the Industrial Management department of University of Applied Sciences Stadia for Forum Virium Helsinki. The purpose of this study was to answer to the question of how companies can use online customer community of co-creation in service development and what is the value gained from it. The paper combines a range of recently published theoretical works and ongoing customer community case development. The study aims to provide new information and action approaches to new service developers that may increase the success of the community building process. The paper also outlines the benefits of the use of online customer community and offers practical suggestions for maximizing the value gained from the community in service development projects. The concepts and suggestions introduced in the study appear to have notable new possibilities to the service development process but they have to be further tested empirically. This paper describes the online consumer community of co-creation to an important organizational process of innovation management suggesting that it possesses a great value to business. Online customer communities offer a potential of improving the success of new services or products enabling early, penetrable market entry and creating sustainable competitive advantage.

Improving Evaluation and Development Capability in Verification and Validation

Validation and verification operations encounter various challenges in product development process. Requirements for increasing the development cycle pace set new requests for component development process. Verification and validation usually represent the largest activities, up to 40 50 % of R&D resources utilized. This research studies validation and verification as part of case company's component development process. The target is to define framework that can be used in improvement of the validation and verification capability evaluation and development in display module development projects. Validation and verification definition and background is studied in this research. Additionally, theories such as project management, system, organisational learning and causality is studied. Framework and key findings of this research are presented. Feedback system according of the framework is defined and implemented to the case company. This research is divided to the theory and empirical parts. Theory part is conducted in literature review. Empirical part is done in case study. Constructive methode and design research methode are used in this research A framework for capability evaluation and development was defined and developed as result of this research. Key findings of this study were that double loop learning approach with validation and verification V+ model enables defining a feedback reporting solution. Additional results, some minor changes in validation and verification process were proposed. There are a few concerns expressed on the results on validity and reliability of this study. The most important one was the selected research method and the selected model itself. The final state can be normative, the researcher may set study results before the actual study and in the initial state, the researcher may describe expectations for the study. Finally reliability of this study, and validity of this work are studied.

Customized agile development process for embedded software development

Agile software development has grown in popularity starting from the agile manifesto declared in 2001. However there is a strong belief that the agile methods are not suitable for embedded, critical or real-time software development, even though multiple studies and cases show differently. This thesis will present a custom agile process that can be used in embedded software development. The reasons for presumed unfitness of agile methods in embedded software development have mainly based on the feeling of these methods providing no real control, no strict discipline and less rigor engineering practices. One starting point is to provide a light process with disciplined approach to the embedded software development. Agile software development has gained popularity due to the fact that there are still big issues in software development as a whole. Projects fail due to schedule slips, budget surpassing or failing to meet the business needs. This does not change when talking about embedded software development. These issues are still valid, with multiple new ones rising from the quite complex and hard domain the embedded software developers work in. These issues are another starting point for this thesis. The thesis is based heavily on Feature Driven Development, a software development methodology that can be seen as a runner up to the most popular agile methodologies. The FDD as such is quite process oriented and is lacking few practices considered commonly as extremely important in agile development methodologies. In order for FDD to gain acceptance in the software development community it needs to be modified and enhanced. This thesis presents an improved custom agile process that can be used in embedded software development projects with size varying from 10 to 500 persons. This process is based on Feature Driven Development and by suitable parts to Extreme Programming, Scrum and Agile Modeling. Finally this thesis will present how the new process responds to the common issues in the embedded software development. The process of creating the new process is evaluated at the retrospective and guidelines for such process creation work are introduced. These emphasize the agility also in the process development through early and frequent deliveries and the team work needed to create suitable process.

Towards increased productivity and quality in software development using agile, lean and collaborative approaches

Dagens programvaruindustri står inför alltmer komplicerade utmaningar i en värld där programvara är nästan allstädes närvarande i våra dagliga liv. Konsumenten vill ha produkter som är pålitliga, innovativa och rika i funktionalitet, men samtidigt också förmånliga. Utmaningen för oss inom IT-industrin är att skapa mer komplexa, innovativa lösningar till en lägre kostnad. Detta är en av orsakerna till att processförbättring som forskningsområde inte har minskat i betydelse. IT-proffs ställer sig frågan: “Hur håller vi våra löften till våra kunder, samtidigt som vi minimerar vår risk och ökar vår kvalitet och produktivitet?” Inom processförbättringsområdet finns det olika tillvägagångssätt. Traditionella processförbättringsmetoder för programvara som CMMI och SPICE fokuserar på kvalitets- och riskaspekten hos förbättringsprocessen. Mer lättviktiga metoder som t.ex. lättrörliga metoder (agile methods) och Lean-metoder fokuserar på att hålla löften och förbättra produktiviteten genom att minimera slöseri inom utvecklingsprocessen. Forskningen som presenteras i denna avhandling utfördes med ett specifikt mål framför ögonen: att förbättra kostnadseffektiviteten i arbetsmetoderna utan att kompromissa med kvaliteten. Den utmaningen attackerades från tre olika vinklar. För det första förbättras arbetsmetoderna genom att man introducerar lättrörliga metoder. För det andra bibehålls kvaliteten genom att man använder mätmetoder på produktnivå. För det tredje förbättras kunskapsspridningen inom stora företag genom metoder som sätter samarbete i centrum. Rörelsen bakom lättrörliga arbetsmetoder växte fram under 90-talet som en reaktion på de orealistiska krav som den tidigare förhärskande vattenfallsmetoden ställde på IT-branschen. Programutveckling är en kreativ process och skiljer sig från annan industri i det att den största delen av det dagliga arbetet går ut på att skapa något nytt som inte har funnits tidigare. Varje programutvecklare måste vara expert på sitt område och använder en stor del av sin arbetsdag till att skapa lösningar på problem som hon aldrig tidigare har löst. Trots att detta har varit ett välkänt faktum redan i många decennier, styrs ändå många programvaruprojekt som om de vore produktionslinjer i fabriker. Ett av målen för rörelsen bakom lättrörliga metoder är att lyfta fram just denna diskrepans mellan programutvecklingens innersta natur och sättet på vilket programvaruprojekt styrs. Lättrörliga arbetsmetoder har visat sig fungera väl i de sammanhang de skapades för, dvs. små, samlokaliserade team som jobbar i nära samarbete med en engagerad kund. I andra sammanhang, och speciellt i stora, geografiskt utspridda företag, är det mera utmanande att införa lättrörliga metoder. Vi har nalkats utmaningen genom att införa lättrörliga metoder med hjälp av pilotprojekt. Detta har två klara fördelar. För det första kan man inkrementellt samla kunskap om metoderna och deras samverkan med sammanhanget i fråga. På så sätt kan man lättare utveckla och anpassa metoderna till de specifika krav som sammanhanget ställer. För det andra kan man lättare överbrygga motstånd mot förändring genom att introducera kulturella förändringar varsamt och genom att målgruppen får direkt förstahandskontakt med de nya metoderna. Relevanta mätmetoder för produkter kan hjälpa programvaruutvecklingsteam att förbättra sina arbetsmetoder. När det gäller team som jobbar med lättrörliga och Lean-metoder kan en bra uppsättning mätmetoder vara avgörande för beslutsfattandet när man prioriterar listan över uppgifter som ska göras. Vårt fokus har legat på att stöda lättrörliga och Lean-team med interna produktmätmetoder för beslutsstöd gällande så kallad omfaktorering, dvs. kontinuerlig kvalitetsförbättring av programmets kod och design. Det kan vara svårt att ta ett beslut att omfaktorera, speciellt för lättrörliga och Lean-team, eftersom de förväntas kunna rättfärdiga sina prioriteter i termer av affärsvärde. Vi föreslår ett sätt att mäta designkvaliteten hos system som har utvecklats med hjälp av det så kallade modelldrivna paradigmet. Vi konstruerar även ett sätt att integrera denna mätmetod i lättrörliga och Lean-arbetsmetoder. En viktig del av alla processförbättringsinitiativ är att sprida kunskap om den nya programvaruprocessen. Detta gäller oavsett hurdan process man försöker introducera – vare sig processen är plandriven eller lättrörlig. Vi föreslår att metoder som baserar sig på samarbete när processen skapas och vidareutvecklas är ett bra sätt att stöda kunskapsspridning på. Vi ger en översikt över författarverktyg för processer på marknaden med det förslaget i åtanke.

Partnerships in sustainable urban development : experiences from Sweden and Finland

This thesis examines partnerships in sustainable urban development projects. Achievement of urban development requires the involvement of several parties. The cooperation of the actors of sustainable urban development is achieved by forming partnerships. The purpose of this study is to find solutions and best practices for the management of partnerships in sustainable residential development projects by examining partnerships and their success factors in sustainable urban development. The impact of the roles, responsibilities and interactions of actors taking part in the processes of creating sustainable urban development in outcomes of these development projects and thus on the overall success of accomplishing sustainable development raises the question of how to manage these collaborations. In order to be able to find the best ways of organizing sustainable urban development projects, it is crucial to have the knowledge of how the interactions between all the parties involved in the development can be managed successfully to give the best outcomes. The main research question of this study is: What are the characteristics of successful partnerships in sustainable urban development projects? In order to answer this question, the success factors in partnerships between actors of sustainable urban development are analyzed. In addition, challenges related to these partnerships are examined to get a more comprehensive view of the features of these collaborative ventures and the obstacles that have to be overcome to ensure the successfulness of cooperation. The research approach is multiple case study comprising four cases. The empirical data has been gathered through theme interviews from four different sustainable residential district projects in Sweden and Finland. A comparative analysis of the cases is performed, based on which seven success factors of partnerships in sustainable urban development supported by the prevailing theories are formulated. In addition, challenges faced by projects regarding the partnerships are discussed.

Service innovation development and knowledge integration practices - a comparative case study on KIBS sector

Academic research on services and innovations on services has significantly grown during recent years. So far research concerning management of knowledge intensive work on service development activities is very limited. The objective of this study was to examine knowledge integration practices that support service innovation development and to the best of knowledge such studies have not been previously published in academic literature. In the theoretical part of the study a review of state‐of‐the‐art literature was conducted, research gap was indicated and a framework for analysis was built. In the empirical part an explorative comparative multi‐case study was carried out in KIBS sector. Four companies were selected and four service development projects were inspected. The service development activities and knowledge integration practices were identified. The cases were carefully compared and results formed. The empirical results indicated that service innovation development is partly linear and partly incremental flow of activities where knowledge integration practices have important role supporting the planning and execution of tasks. Knowledge integration practices supporting planning and workshops are close interaction, interpretation, project planning and sequencing of work tasks. The identified knowledge integration practices supporting building service solution were careful role and competence management, routines and common knowledge. The main implication is that to manage knowledge intensive service innovation development a firm should carefully develop and choose relevant knowledge integration practices to support the service development activities.