Finnish R&D breakthrough radically improves software industry profitability

VTT, Technical Research Centre of Finland, announced a new product development technology for the software industry. By using VTT’s new agile methods, savings of as much as 70 per cent can be gained in the development of new software products. The method developed by VTT is being introduced in several Finnish and European companies.

VTT has developed an agile method called Mobile-D, the results of which have been transferred to industry at a fast pace. In the pilots for the software industry, Mobile-D has saved as much as 70 per cent of the costs of the product and the time of entry into the market.

Agile methods are ways of working that make software production more efficient and develop the software to better meet the real needs of the customer.

Agile processes have conquered the software sector in the past couple of years. The most important new factor in the method is the new way of thinking that cuts through the whole organisation, and where agile values, principles and practice meet seamlessly. Clearly the software sector has not been able to do anything like this before, according to research professor Pekka Abrahamsson. For example, enabling and supporting innovation throughout the organisation is one agile principle, in support of which a number of agile methods can be found.

Profitability and controllability also occupy a more central role than previously. The new methods enable a significantly more flexible and efficient product development process, because methods allow making changes to the software at each stage of the process. This is necessary as the world is changing at a fast pace and customers’ needs are changing with it.

New agile methods, which can make the product development of embedded software and the features of the products more efficient, are developed under VTT’s leadership in a European project of nine countries and twenty-two organisations. In addition to VTT, Nokia Oyj, F-Secure Oyj and Hantro Products Oy are involved in Finland. Embedded systems include technology from telecommunications, automotive and avionics industries as well as applications for households, which combine several technologies, such as electronics, software and computer technology.

VTT will organize an international XP2006 conference (http://www.xp2006.org) in Oulu in June, which is among the largest in the field of agile processes and where the results of the research into and application of agile methods will be introduced.