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Lean Thinking Applied to System Architecting
Publication Type:
Doctoral Thesis
Publisher:
Mälardalen University
Abstract
Software-intensive systems are increasingly part of new products, which leads to significant business impact. This is especially true for the
automotive industry where a majority of new innovations are realized
through the use of software. The architecture of the software-intensive
system will enable value creation when working properly or, in the worst
case, prevent value creation.
Lean Thinking is about focusing on the increase of customer value and on
the people who add value. This thesis investigates how system architecting is
performed in industry and how it can be improved through the use of Lean
Thinking. The architecting process does not create immediate value to the
end customer, but instead creates the architecture on which value, in terms of
product features and functionality, can be developed. A Lean tool used to
improve the value creation within a process is Value Stream Mapping
(VSM). We present a method based on VSM which is adapted to enable
analysis of the architecting process in order to identify improvements.
A study of architecting at two companies shows what effect differences such
as a strong line organization or a strong project organization have on the
architecting process. It also shows the consequences technical choices and
business strategy have on the architecting process. In order to improve the
understanding of how architecting is performed, a study was carried out,
including interviewing architects at six different well-known international
companies. The study presents the practices that were found to be most
successful. The context of the different companies as well as the architecting
practices are compared and analyzed.
The early design decisions made when developing software-intensive
systems are crucial to the outcome of development projects. In order to
improve the decision-making process a method based on Real Options was
developed. The method improves the customer focus of critical design
decisions by taking the value of flexibility into account.
This thesis provides a toolbox of knowledge on how Lean Thinking can be
applied to system architecting and also presents how architecting is
performed in industry today.
Bibtex
@phdthesis{Gustavsson2030,
author = {H{\aa}kan Gustavsson},
title = {Lean Thinking Applied to System Architecting},
number = {95},
month = {February},
year = {2011},
school = {M{\"a}lardalen University},
url = {http://www.es.mdu.se/publications/2030-}
}