Productization
Transforming from developing customer-specific software to product
software
Peter Artz, Inge van de Weerd, Sjaak Brinkkemper & Joost Fieggen
22-06-2010
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Agenda
- Research trigger
- Related literature
- Research question
- Productization process
Stages
- Productization approach
- Validation
- Conclusion
- Discussion & future research
- Questions
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Research trigger 1/2
Software companies
- Usually start with developing customer-specific software
- Eventually they recognize a need to start creating a product for a market
Transform
- Such transformation is difficult to carry out
- Involves the change of a great number of internal processes
- Requires an other approach for marketing and sales
- The organization needs change from customer-driven to market-driven approach
Available literature
- Barely any literature available on how to perform such a shift
- Improving product management processes (Software Process Improvement)
- Differences between customized and standardized software development
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Research trigger 2/2
Software Product Management (SPM)
- Is getting more and more attention
- Companies recognize the importance and benefits
- Widely and extensively studied topic
Inspiring example organizations:
- Microsoft
- SAP
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Related literature
- Reference framework for SPM (Weerd et al. 2006)
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Research background
MP Objects
- Software vendor for supply chain systems
- Located in Rotterdam and New York
- Small sized company
- 60 customers and around 1250 users
Software
- One big customer
- Now they want to enter a market
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Research question
Main research question:
- How can organizations transform from developing customer-specific software to
product software?
Focus:
On software product management domain
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Productization Process
Definition:
The transformation process from customer-specific software development to a
standard software product
Trigger for transformation:
6a:
Customizable
product
- Internal trigger to change to a software product.
1:
Independent
projects
2:
Reuse across
projects
3:
Product
recognition
4:
Product
basis
5:
Product
platform
6b:
Standard
product
Customized
software
Standardized
software
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Stage 1: Independent projects
• Projects are executed independently
• Projects differ in budget, technology, and functionality
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Stage 2: Reuse across projects
• Focus on feature reuse across projects
• More custom than standard features
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Stage 3: Product recognition
• Shared features between projects
• More standard than custom features
• Customer specific maintenance
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Stage 4: Product basis
• Generic product basis
• Customer specific maintenance
• Customer requests are handled as market requirements
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Stage 5: Product platform
• Focus on generic product platform
• Requirements gathering based on market trends
• Event-based customized releases per customer
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Productization Process 6a and 6b
Two end stages:
For some software there is a need for customization in order to integrate
software in a customer-specific situation
“Degree of productization”
(Hietala et al., 2004)
- Product market
- Concepts
- Benefits
- Positioning
- Selling
- Marketing
Degree of standardization
adopted from Hoch et al., 1999
Stage 6a: Customizable product
• One standard product with customized layered part
• Structured releases
• Customizable software product
• Software business aiming at selling services
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Stage 6b: Standard product
• One generic product for all customers and build for a specific market
• Structured releases
• Configurable software product
• Software business aiming at selling licenses
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Case study – Productization approach 1/3
In which stage should we start?
Should we focus on stage 6a or 6b?
6a:
Customizable
product
1:
Independent
projects
2:
Reuse across
projects
3:
Product
recognition
4:
Product
basis
5:
Product
platform
6b:
Standard
product
Customized
software
Standardized
software
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Case study – Productization approach 2/3
Determining initial position
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Case study – Productization approach 3/3
Gap analysis & identification of recommendations
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Validation approach
Expert interviews
- Interviewed five experts from Dutch organizations
- Evaluation of acceptance and recognition
Survey
- Filled in by eight participants of a course on SPM
- Wide variety of Dutch organizations
- Examine the structure for static qualities (complexity and readability)
Case study
- Business case at MP Objects
- Evaluation of applicability and usability of the productization process in a business
environment
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Conclusion
Main research question:
How can organizations transform from developing customer-specific software to
product software?
Productization process
- Describes the from developing customer-specific software to product software
- It can assist organizations in becoming a product software business
- The adoption of the reference framework for SPM
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Discussion & future research
More validation for the productization process
- More (long term) case studies need to be carried out
- Future validation is required to determine the validity and applicability of the stages
Other areas which change during such transformation
- The change in marketing & sales
Open Source software
- Study how open source software influences the productization process
adopted from Xu & Brinkkemper, 2005
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Questions
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Productization
Transforming from developing customer-specific software to product
software
Thank you for your attention!
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References
Hevner, A. R., March, S. T., Park, J., & Ram, S. (2004). Design science in information systems research. MIS Quarterly: Management Information
Systems, 28(1), pp. 75-105.
Bekkers, W., Weerd, I. v., Brinkkemper, S., & Mahieu, A. (2008). The Influence of Situational Factors in Software Product Management: An Empirical
Study, Proceedings of the 2008 Second International Workshop on Software Product Management, pp. 41-48.
Weerd, I. v., Brinkkemper, S., Nieuwenhuis, R., Versendaal, J., & Bijlsma, L. (2006a). On the Creation of a Reference Framework for Software Product
Management: Validation and Tool Support. Proceedings of the 1st International Workshop on Product Management, Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minnesota,
USA, pp. 312-315.
Weerd, I. van de, Brinkkemper, S. (2007). Meta-modeling for situational analysis and design methods. To appear in the Handbook of Research on
Modern Systems Analysis and Design Technologies and Applications, Idea Group Publishing, USA: Hershey.
Weerd, I. v., Bekkers, W., & Brinkkemper, S. (2009). “Developing a Maturity Matrix for Software Product Management”, Technical report: UU-CS-200915. The Netherlands: University Utrecht.
Xu, L., & Brinkkemper, S. (2005). Concepts of product software: Paving the road for urgently needed research, Proceedings of the 1st International
Workshop on Philosophical Foundations of Information Systems Engineering (LNCS), Springer: Berlin, pp. 523-528.
Vaishnavi, V., & Kuechler, B. (2007). Design Research in Information Systems. Retrieved May 7, 2009, from: AISWorld Net,
http://home.aisnet.org/displaycommon.cfm?an=1&subarticlenbr=279
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