EuroSPI 2000

Practical and innovation based software process improvement to prepare for the new millenium.

European Software Process Improvement SPI and Systems

Rated Newspaper Supported by EU Project

Intranet as a vehicle and a platform for Process Improvement

Roberto Delmiglio - Sergio Scotto di Vettimo
Siemens Information and Communication Networks S.p.A.
– Communication on Air – Mobile Radio, Milano - ITALY
Francesco Basili - Gualtiero Bazzana - Giannino Zontini
Onion S.p.A., Brescia - ITALY

Introduction

This paper describes the Intranet structure, applications, methods and tools in use at Siemens Information and Communication Networks SpA – Information and Communication Mobile - Communication on Air - Research and Development department (Siemens ICN ICM CA R); the Intranet project concerns with a lasting process improvement activity focused on the software development related with mobile telephony applications. The paper is organized around the following topics:

a general description of the Internet and Intranet technologies and applications;
the Software Process Improvement (SPI) activities within which the Intranet project has been developed;
a detailed description of the most important developed services for software process management and improvement and for project management;
a general appraisal of lessons learnt and future goals.

Internet and Intranet

The application and use of Internet standards and technology within an organization is termed Intranet. The Internet itself is difficult to describe. Some refers to it as regulated anarchy, but accurate. The Internet is best described as a non-proprietary standard for connecting information networks, “a network of networks”.
The Intranet is perhaps the greatest technology improvement for organizations since the direct dial telephone. In simple terms, the Intranet is the descriptive term being used for the implementation of Internet technologies within a corporate organization, rather than for external connection to the global Internet. This implementation is performed in such a way as to transparently deliver the immense informational resources of an organization to each individual’s desktop with minimal cost, time and effort. The main technology components of the Internet are:

Communications Protocol
The ability to connect and communicate between networks and individual desktop devices.
File Transfer
The ability to transfer files between point-to-point locations.
Mail
The ability to provide direct point-to-point communication between individuals or groups.
Web Browsing
The ability to provide access to information on a one to many basis, on demand.
Terminal Emulation
The ability to access existing infrastructure applications.
User Interfaces
The ability to deliver the increasing technical complexity to the desktop in a transparent, seamless and intuitive manner.

Internet technologies are actually extremely well suited for developing internal corporate information systems - the Intranets. In fact, Internet technologies are much more relevant and exploitable within a local LAN, right now, than over much slower, dial-up access routes associated with typical home-access to the Internet.

Within the early Intranet adopters, the application of this hot technology is being typically used as follows:

1. Publishing corporate documents
Along with oft-mentioned human resource guides, these documents can include newsletters, annual reports, maps, company facilities, price lists, product information literature, and any document which is of value within the corporate entity. This is one area where significant cost control can be achieved as well as much more efficient, timely and accurate communication across the entire corporate organization.

2. Access into searchable directories
Rapid access to corporate phone books and the like. This data can be mirrored at a Web site or, via CGI scripts, the Web server can serve as a gateway to back-end pre-existing or new applications. This means that, using the same standard access mechanisms, information can be made more widely available and in a simpler manner.

3. Corporate/Department/Individual pages
As cultures change within organizations to the point where even each department moves towards their own individual mission statements, the Internet technology provides the ideal medium to communicate current information to the Department or Individual. Powerful search engines provide the means for people to find the group or individual who has the answers to the continuous questions which arise in the normal day-to-day course of doing business.

4. Simple GroupWare applications
With HTML forms support, sites can provide sign-up sheets, surveys and simple scheduling. As the Intranet technologies continue to evolve, the press have been positioning the technologies as alternatives to major GroupWare applications (e.g. Lotus Notes) to such a point that this type of rhetoric only serves to cause confusion as to the appropriateness of each area of technology. As always, it is not black and white. The Intranet technology can be used to complement or as an alternative to such GroupWare products. It all becomes a matter of scale, cost, timescale, openness and taste.

5. Software distribution
Internal Administrators can use the Intranet to deliver software and up-dates ‘on-demand’ to users across the corporate network. This will continue to gain momentum as new technologies such as Java become more widely available from Sun, which will allow the creation and transparent distribution of objects on-demand rather than just data or applications.

6. Mail
Although email has been seen as being a ‘killer application’, its uses have tended to be limited and over-complicated. With the move to the use of Intranet mail products with standard and simple methods for attachment of documents, sound, vision and other multimedia between individuals, mail is about to be pushed further forward as a simple, de facto communications method. Mail is essentially individual to individual, or individual to small group, communication. With the emergence of Web technology, there are now better and more appropriate tools for one-to-many communication which historically is where mail systems have been over-burdened and over-burdening to the point of reducing their effectiveness.

7. User Interface
The Intranet technology is evolving so rapidly that the tools available, in particular HTML, can be used to dramatically change the way we interface with systems. There will be a significant debate, which will shortly hit the streets, which will question ‘Graphical User Interfaces (GUIs) vs. End User Comfortable Interfaces’ . At the beginning of the 90’s, the industry was deluged with the increases in productivity from GUI’s. However, no-one anticipated the converse loss of productivity by normal business users being able to access the wealth of functionality provided by Windows. The GUI has been defined by Microsoft as an iconic desktop. But, although this might be what technicians like - and like to believe it’s what users like - it is definitely not the interface that most business people are comfortable with. With HTML you can build an ‘End User Comfortable Interface’ which is only limited by the creator’s imagination. The beauty about using Intranet technologies for this is that it is so simple. Hitting a hyperlink from HTML does not necessarily take you to another page - it could ring an alarm, run a year end procedure or anything that a computer action can do. Microsoft’s Windows 3.x and Windows 95 created tremendous volumes of functionality, but individuals probably only need 5% of the total functionality. The other 95% causes support pain, headaches and disruption. Now, with the Intranet tools, you can paint reality in HTML and make an in-context and uniform front-end to all computer-based resources. In doing so, not only can you create interfaces that users can use and appreciate , you can also remove the 95% functionality and access to elements that specific users don’t need - getting rid of most of your headaches in one sweep.

Intranet technologies provide the tools, standards and new approaches for meeting the problems of today’s business world. The beauty about most of these technologies is that they are simple and, in their simple elegance, phenomenal power can be unleashed. Due to the fact that these technologies are still moving from adolescence to maturity, there are many rough edges. The route ahead, however, is being well-defined and the new generations of Intranet products designed specifically for corporate use will address these. Communication is the key to business success. Exploitation of the Intranet is the key to effective and efficient communications [1].

Intranet and Software Process Improvement

The Intranet project described in this paper is strongly involved within the Software Process Improvement (SPI) program that the Mobile Networks Research and Development department is undergoing since 1995, with the following high-level goals:

to optimise the predictability of schedules;
to further enhance product quality;
to raise the availability and usability of documentation;
to better the tool support;
to keep/ increase productivity levels.

Mobile Networks Research and Development department is strongly committed to Software Process Improvement that is felt as a major leverage to increase the company capabilities; this is motivated by: the high world-wide competitiveness in the target domain, the increasing complexity of the software embedded in the delivered products and systems, the fact that projects are developed on an international multi-site basis and the increasing requirements from customers that are more and more demanding on software process maturity and stability.

The SPI program started in May-June 1995 with a Software Process Assessment conducted by Siemens Central Research, Application Centre Software. The assessment highlighted a good maturity level for the software producing unit, given that SPI was already an established practice. The SPI Program is intended as a continuous effort, handled with a management-by-objective approach with milestones and quantitative results.

In order to ensure its success, the PI (Process Improvement) Project has been organized as:

a PI Steering Committee (referred in the following as "PISC"), chaired by the R&D Director and including all the managers reporting to him. The aim of this board is to define priorities, assign resources, solve problems and track the success of the initiative;
a PI Project Office (called "PIPO" and equivalent to a SEPG), composed of a few experts, having the goal of planning/ tracking the project, giving technical guidance and harmonizing/ deploying the outcomes of the Working Groups; the PIPO has also the duty to organize the so-called "accompanying actions", namely: training, dissemination and quantitative measurement.
a number of Working Groups, composed of technical representatives from the various projects involved and dealing with improvement actions.

Working groups are subdivided in two areas: the former with the goal to innovate that is to define/ enhance software engineering practices, the latter to deploy that is to apply defined practices, into development projects.
Within the Intranet the Software Process Improvement Program is fully described and managed in terms of its goals, organization, historic outline and current activities defined for each workgroup; all the related scientific publications and meetings minute are collected and available to any user (Fig. FB.1).

Fig. FB.1 Software Process Improvement: the Intranet page

The Intranet developed services represent a necessary vehicle to improve both the software process management, the software development process and the project management. Intranet is also used as a channel to deploy most of the improvement actions established by the Process Improvement Steering Committee.

The Intranet at Siemens ICN ICM CA R

The Intranet project goals defined for the Siemens ICN ICM CA R are:

to provide web based communication services to the Research and Development (R&D) staff;
to provide info about R&D activities and products;
to give a common reference on the Intranet for the whole R&D;
to provide the basis for the most common and useful services for R&D.

The set-up approach was first to specify roles and responsibilities within the project; a responsibility matrix has been defined for the following roles related with various parts of the Siemens ICN ICM CA R Intranet, namely:

Service developer: this responsibility is associated with the design/ development/ maintenance of added value Intranet services which imply programming rather than simple information publishing;

Info provider: this responsibility is associated with the provision of up-to-date information so that the WWW is always aligned with the current state of the art;

Reviewer: this responsibility is associated with the review of the contents proposed by the info provider, both from the point of view of its semantic correctness and of its suitability with respect to the purpose of the Intranet;

Publisher: this responsibility is associated with the management of information on the WWW server, so that it can be visible to the users.

Fig. FB.2 The Siemens ICN ICM CA R intranet home-page

Figure FB.2 shows the Siemens ICN ICM CA R Intranet home page; starting from the home page it is possible to reach all the services and available documentation in terms of company mission, vision and organization, products, services and links to the other corporate internet and intranet sites.
Referring to the services section, the Intranet offers links to several web-applications related to the following topics:

Configuration management section provides a web-client application for accessing the company configuration management environment;
Telecommunications Standards: a repository of all the documents that are related to the defined GSM and UMTS standards;
Training on line: this section makes available all the updated documentation used during the employees training sessions;
Technical documentation: provides a lot of information concerning tools, programming languages, operating systems, internet technologies, network management etc …
Mailing groups; a number of mailing lists has been defined in order to simplify sending E-mails to large groups of people. A user is able to request the creation of a new mailing list, to add or remove a user. Each list is composed of the Mail Alias field that contains the mailbox to click on in order to open a mail form to the group; the Description field that contains the explanation of the list; the Owner field that corresponds to the people to contact for updating the mailing list; the List field that can be clicked to get details of the people that currently belongs to the specified mailing list.
Support tools: starting from this page is possible to run several tools and utilities. The most important one will be described in the following.
Information, statistics and technical structure of the network.

Intranet Case Studies

MEDAL (MEasurement DAta Library)

MEDAL (MEasurement DAta Library) is a web-application that supports the software process management and improvement providing a repository for collection, analysis and reporting of quantitative data from software development projects. MEDAL manages all the software related quality indicators and detailed historical data about scheduling, lines of code, delta lines of code, planned and actual effort and faults (see Fig. FB.3).

Fig. FB.3 The MEDAL home page

A careful security management through usage profiles is established; depending on the given permissions a MEDAL user can access to the service using a normal web browser performing one of the following actions:

View the data
Input new data
Administrate the system and maintenance the data tables.

Using the historical frozen values related section it is possible to retrieve the frozen values of a specific indicator across the various Releases for which it is available. Graphic charts can be extracted for a specific Release as well as for all Releases; a special feature has been developed for Siemens Base Station (SBS) Project, providing also the possibility of a chart with evidence of values for all Network Elements; it can be produced by clicking on ALL after the first search has been completed.

The Software Quality Indicators can be analysed using two different modalities: in a Release oriented mode or an Indicator oriented mode.

The Release oriented mode allows the user to retrieve the values of all indicators pertaining to a specific Release of a Project, giving details of the monthly values; indicators which are collected at baselines, are reported only for the specific months in which an applicable milestone has been reached; graphic charts can be extracted for all indicators with evidence of Target and actual values.

The Indicators oriented mode allows the user to retrieve the values of a specified indicator for a Project, giving details of the monthly values (for applicable periods) in all the Releases for which the Indicator has been computed. Months are reported as absolute numbers starting from one, with indication of the first month for each Release. Also in this section graphic charts can be extracted for a specific Release as well as for all Releases.

As mentioned before, MEDAL is a repository for collecting, analysis and reporting of quantitative data from software development projects; some of the managed software related quality indicators are shown in the next figure.

Fig. FB.4 Historic Frozen value

SLIVER (Software deLIVERy)

The "SBS Software Delivery" environment (see Fig. FB.5) is an Intranet service thought with the aim to make easier the distribution of software loads to users. Using this service, users are able to build tapes, disks, and CD-ROM by themselves, at their sites, whenever they need, avoiding the distribution of physical devices by the Configuration Management group.

Typical users of this environment are development teams, Integration Lines, System Test and Customer Service departments at Siemens ICN S.p.A. and Siemens AG that need copies of the official software loads. They access the environment via a standard browser (Netscape Navigator or Microsoft Internet Explorer) and can obtain exactly the software needed. The service is granted under access control restrictions.

Via the Software Load Delivery environment, the user has access to the executable loads of the Base Station Sub-System. Depending on the selected network element, the user can download software on the desired media, install software directly from the Intranet on his/her workstation or upgrade the software installation.

Fig. FB.5 Software Load Delivery

It is possible todownload software on three different kinds of media:

tape: DAT tape in Unix tar format;
CD-ROM: recordable CD-ROM.
floppy disk: 1.44 MB (3.5" HD) DOS formatted floppy disks;

The Software Load Delivery environment is divided in three areas, corresponding to the baselines of the project life cycle: a section contains for each release the official loads delivered by Configuration Management mainly for customer service usage; another section is used to store every load delivered by Configuration Management mainly for system test usage; the last section is used to store the current work-in-progress load released by Configuration Management mainly for development groups and integration lines.

WATCH (Web Access To CM Hub)

The WATCH web-service provides easy access to the Siemens ICN ICM CA R Configuration Management (CM) environment enabling browsing facilities characterised by an intuitive user interface.

No need for knowledge of the CM tool commands, no need for knowledge of the CM structure, an easy access for users outside of Siemens ICN ICM CA R, and the platform/ editor independence realization are the high level goals reached by this tool.

The WATCH main features include:

Easy Query that enables the document retrieval from CM environment with an easy web interface;
An Advanced Search engine, in accordance with advanced selection criteria, lists the documents with indication of matching likelihood;
Code Patterns matching on source code for occurrences of variables, function, comments etc… makes WATCH a powerful tools as support to software reuse activities.

The work-flow foresees that a user, looking for existing documents satisfying simple, pre-defined criteria, receives in output a list of matching documents. Once the user has found out the document he/ she is interested to, selection happen by clicking on Open or Download button. For each displayed document the related Product, release, Item type and the title are provided.

Statistics reports, tracing the access made with respect to product, release, document type, user group action performed and type of search provide useful information on DB and Network loads.

As an example in the Fig. FB.6 the result of a basic search is shown. Referring to the Project BSC-LMT-TRAU, Release X.Y, WATCH shows that four items are available under the configuration management repository and classified as Feature Sheet Document.

Fig. FB.6 WATCH basic search result

On line training

A repository of all the training courses for new Siemens employees documentation is quickly accessible from the Intranet. Four main areas of interest have been singled out for training: the quality area, the development process area, the system level area and the technical area. For each area a set of training courses have been established.

Just as an example report the C Programming guidelines web section that contains all the company rules and recommendations, established at project level, that shall be followed by the programmers during the coding phase.

Fig. FB.7 The C Programming guidelines intranet page

The programmer, using this services, is able to easy retrieve the established rule for example the naming convention, file structuring, project specific definitions, code comments, file and function header fill templates, simply using its web browser. The users are also able to download the file and function header templates for an easy cut and paste within their own code.

Lessons learnt and future goals

Intranet services are very successful and their usage has become commonplace and popular within the technical staff, it should be clear that the service development requires specific skills and know-how, so it is important to keep a distinction between info providers and web-master. Intranet is becoming the unifying element among distributed sites and heterogeneous work environments.

Some of the lessons learnt are:

the importance of active usage of mailing list and of their updating;
document repository instead of mails with attachment;
usage of both NT and Unix servers: each one for their best features;
take care of impacts on network infrastructure;
importance of visibility levels and user authentication;
forms require work-flow management;
trade-off between central and bottom-up initiatives;
integration with corporate wide intranet portals.

In the future the Intranet evolution will occur in planned steps; further improvement of all available services is foreseen other than the provision of additional workflow management and the realisation of a powerful search engine.

Appendix A: authors short CV

Francesco Basili (fbasili@onion.it) received his degree as Electronic Engineer at University of L'Aquila in 1997. He has been working for ONION S.p.A. since 1998 in the consulting department focusing on Software Process Improvement activities. In this context he co-operates with customers (especially in the telecommunication domain) in the fields of software testing and quality assurance . His research interests include software process engineering, test automation, software reverse engineering and software reuse.

Gualtiero Bazzana (gb@onion.it): born in 1966, at university, he graduated with 110/110 and honour in Information Science at the University of Milan, in February 1989. His PhD won the special AICA award for topics related to quality in Information Technology. After working as software developer in a telecommunication company and as consultant/ manager in a consulting company he set-up ONION, where he is Partner/ Member of the Board and Business Management Director.

His activities cover two areas of interest: consulting - projects in software engineering for various industrial companies and research in the field of software quality and networking (especially in the Internet/ Intranet domain). He has co-ordinated several European Research Projects. Moreover, he has published a book: ("Software Metrics for Product Assessment", McGraw Hill, London, 1995, International Software Quality Assurance Series, ISBN 0-07-707923-X), contributed to 4 other books (in the last one he has been author of four chapters dedicated to Software Process Improvement; it has been published by IEEE Software) and published over 50 papers at international conferences on topics related to software quality and software testing.

Giannino Zontini (gz@onion.it) is 32 year old IT professional with 9 years of programming experience. Developed various packaged products in Oracle environment with particular reference to the ERP. Now specialising on Microsoft web technologies - ASP, DHTML, VBScript, JScript, XML, IIS, SQL Server etc.
In recent years he’s specialized in designing Internet and Intranet systems developing Web based applications and interfacing databases to the Web primarily using Active Server Pages technology. Currently working as a software consultant for Onion S.p.A focusing on providing E-Commerce Solutions through the integration of SAP R/3 to Internet.

Roberto Delmiglio (roberto.delmiglio@icn.siemens.it)
Sergio Scotto Di Vettimo (Sergio.ScottoDiVettimo@icn.siemens.it)

Appendix B: short companies profile

Siemens Information and Communication Networks SpA is a subsidiary of Siemens AG of Germany, a $74 billion (FY 98-99) global organization with 440,000 employees in 193 countries.

Siemens is a technical innovator, one out of every nine employees is assigned to research and development, a quality manufacturer of electronic products, from communications and information technology to healthcare, transportation, energy and power. Siemens Information and Communication Networks SpA designs, manufactures, markets and installs systems and equipment for public and private applications. In Italy and abroad it implements systems and networks on a turnkey basis.

Siemens Information and Communication Networks SpA is structured in five business areas: mobile networks, radio networks, optical fiber networks, multi-service networks and IP and Corporate Networks. The company is active, full-line, in every field of telecommunications.

The Mobile Networks Business Unit has the following mission:

to be a turn key mobile networks supplier;
to develop the business of mobile networks;
to be the competence centre for the whole Siemens group for Base Station Subsystems used within cellular networks and wireless access systems;
to support customers in all project implementation phases.

ONION S.p.A., founded in 1994, is a privately owned company based in Italy offering advanced services in the Information Technology domain; the company is specialised in the field of ICT, SW technologies, consulting and ERP systems, always trying to keep a strong link between technology and business goals.

ONION S.p.A. is the head company of the ONION Group (www.oniongroup.com) that also includes:

Proxima Ventura, specialised in E-business solutions
Vision Partners, specialised in Help Desk/ Call Centre Solutions
Marilland, acting as commercial focal point for the whole group

The goal of ONION Group is to be an excellence centre for high technology applied to business processes. In this context ONION strategy is to act as technology provider, system integrator and consulting provider for medium and large companies in Italy and abroad.

References

[1] “Intranets: the new engine for Corporate Productivity”, white paper - David E. Welch

All the other information have been extracted from technical documentation provided by Siemens Information and Communication Networks S.p.A

Partners in EuroSPI

Editors

ISCN LTD, ISCN GesmbH, Schieszstattgasse 4/24, 8010 Graz, and Coordination Office, Florence House, 1 Florence Villas, Bray, Ireland, office@iscn.at, office@iscn.com, office@iscn.ie, Editing Done: 19.7.2002