Software product management discipline helps in managing software products from its beginning to support. It covers strategic issues of managing products including technical and business roadmapping, resource planning as well as strategic and tactical planning. In this qualitative study, we interviewed six organizations to understand how software product management is implemented in the organizations. Based on our observations, we conclude that organizations understand importance of product management processes and want to improve them but these processes are still immature. The companies need guidelines and models in product management to avoid the problems identified during the study.
Authors:
Andrey Maglyas
Postgraduate, Department of Information Technology, Lappeenranta University of Technology
Andrey Maglyas is a postgraduate student in the Department of Information Technology, Lappeenranta University of Technology, Finland. He has a Ms.C. (Tech) in Software Engineering from Lappeenranta University of Technology and Ms.C. (Tech) in Management of Information Systems and Resources from Saint-Petersburg State Electrotechnical University, Russia. His interests include software product management, process improvements and management methodologies. Contact him at andrey.maglyas@lut.fi
Uolevi Nikula
Associate professor, Lappeenranta University of Technology
Uolevi Nikula is an associate professor at Lappeenranta University of Technology, Finland. His research interests cover organizational and technology change, software process improvement, and requirements engineering. He has Doctor and Licentiate degrees in engineering from Lappeenranta University of Technology from 2004 and 2002 respectively. After completing his Master’s degree he spent over five years in industry as a software developer, senior software developer, and project manager before returning to the academia.
Kari Smolander
Software Engineering Professor, Department of Information Technology, Lappeenranta University of Technology
Kari Smolander is Professor of Software Engineering in the Department of Information Technology, Lappeenranta University of Technology, Finland. He has a PhD (2003) in Computer Science from Lappeenranta University of Technology and a Licentiate (1993) and Master (1988) degree from University of Jyväskylä, Finland.
In addition to his long teaching experience, he has worked several years in industry and in 1990’s he was the main architect in the development of MetaEdit CASE tool. He has more than 70 refereed research papers in international journals and conferences. His current research interests include architectural aspects of systems development and organizational view of software development.