Release readiness indicator for mature agile and lean software development projects

Abstract

Large companies like Ericsson increasingly often adopt the principles of Agile and Lean software development and develop large software products in iterative manner - in order to quickly respond to customer needs. In this paper we present the main indicator which is sufficient for a mature software development organization in order to predict the time in weeks to release the product. In our research project we collaborated closely with a large Agile+Lean software development project at Ericsson in Sweden. This large and mature software development project and organization has found this main indicator - release readiness - to be so important that it was used as a key performance indicator and is used in controlling the development of the product and improving organizational performance. The indicator was developed and validated in an action research project at one of the units of Ericsson AB in Sweden in one of its largest projects. © 2012 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.