tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-69734133448498149492024-03-18T19:59:21.494-07:00Automotive TechnologyAutomotive Technology is a repository of information about the technology automotive industry. An Industry portal, developed and dedicated to Automotive Industry, Automotive Technology serves as the platform of choice for suppliers and buyers belonging to different layers.bejohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00657944362483652986noreply@blogger.comBlogger25125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6973413344849814949.post-6083730276839501742012-06-12T01:53:00.000-07:002012-06-18T01:56:16.994-07:00Is software engineering research relevant?I try do be a software engineering researcher. If I scrutinise myself I am an engineer, not a researcher, and a systems engineer on top of that (but with a clear focus on software-intensive systems).While trying to finish my thesis I often question if I investigate relevant problems from an industrial perspective, which I believe is the only valid perspective in software engineering, everything Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6973413344849814949.post-79726298485350963632012-06-05T00:36:00.000-07:002012-06-18T01:56:16.994-07:00What can be copyrighted?Since taking the course on Ethics and Intellectual Property at Chalmers I have become increasinlgy interested in how copyright and patent laws affect software development. United States of America have different patent laws compared to western Europe, usually more obliging of what can be patented, but the legal rulings in the former concern also software used in the latter.Just a few days ago theUnknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6973413344849814949.post-73040165596618480392012-05-25T06:00:00.000-07:002012-06-18T01:56:16.994-07:00XP 2012Here are some random notes taken during the 13th International Conference on Agile Software Development in Malmö, Sweden.This conference has a heavier presence of professionals compared to many academic conferences. To simplify I would say that presentations in academic conferences are heavy with content, but on irrelevant topics, while presentations form professional are on relevant topics but Unknownnoreply@blogger.comMässgatan 6, Hyllie, Malmö, Sweden55.5663927 12.976510955.565831700000004 12.975276899999999 55.5669537 12.9777449tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6973413344849814949.post-70275105917672703332012-05-24T00:04:00.000-07:002012-06-18T01:56:16.994-07:00Where does a good S/W design come fromOne of the 12 principles behind the agile manifesto saysThe best architectures, requirements, and designs emerge from self-organizing teams. I have seen cases where I think some teams interpret this as good architecture emerges by itself as long as you follow good practices, e.g. XP, TDD, Scrum, etc. Caveat: I haven’t asked them…This does not happen in reality. I have experienced colleagues who Unknownnoreply@blogger.comMässgatan 6, Hyllie, Malmö, Sverige55.565994830620625 12.97600150108337455.565433830620627 12.974767501083374 55.566555830620622 12.977235501083374tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6973413344849814949.post-76826446448702439062012-05-23T01:05:00.000-07:002012-06-18T01:56:16.994-07:00Is there any use of the V-model?I’m at the 13th International Conference on Agile Software Development in Malmö Sweden. As usual when I listen to presentations these tend to trigger new liner of thoughts instead of pondering the details of what was said. I guess this is a flaw in how I internalise knowledge from others.Not surprising, nobody here mentioned the V-model. Too bad,since I think it is one of the most important Unknownnoreply@blogger.comMässgatan 6, Hyllie, Malmö, Sverige55.566164697608968 12.97588348388671955.563920197608965 12.970947983886719 55.568409197608972 12.980818983886719tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6973413344849814949.post-39833605424507194582012-04-01T05:30:00.000-07:002012-06-18T01:56:16.994-07:00Working hoursI am glad I don’t work in the US. This article confirms my personal experience that is is not productive to work long hours and still sustain creativity.Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6973413344849814949.post-27464703460451054332012-03-27T04:50:00.000-07:002012-06-18T01:56:16.994-07:00Objectives or activities?Volvo Cars sets objectives for the company each year. Same as I guess almost every other company. Every department is then required to break down these objectives. One thing I notice is that often there is confusion between what is an objective and what is the activity to achieve the objective.Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6973413344849814949.post-46674534698633072892012-03-27T00:23:00.000-07:002012-06-18T01:56:16.994-07:00Concrete vs. abstract and detail vs. overview...There often seems to be confusion about two concepts relevant to representing design information, including models.First there is the scale of abstract versus concrete. Second there is the concept of overview versus details.If one looks at how a design progresses over time, regardless if one follows a waterfall or agile process, one moves both from abstract to concrete and from overview to Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6973413344849814949.post-70461791109019138042012-03-23T05:28:00.000-07:002012-06-18T01:56:16.995-07:00TestingI have to admit that I know too little about software testing in practice to be a well-rounded software developer. That does not mean that I am adverse to testing, on the contrary I think that many architecture focus on properties discernible by the end user and not the developers where testers are a key developer role.So I am curios if there are any patterns on how to design a testable Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6973413344849814949.post-31470894716822134592012-03-12T06:38:00.000-07:002012-06-18T01:56:16.995-07:00Quality starts with meOutside the main dining hall at Volvo Cars R&D headquarters there is some information about ongoing quality work under the heading "Quality starts with me". A quick google search shows this sentence is not something unique to Volvo Cars, but it got me thinking.To start with: For software (or any product I guess) quality can be seen from to viewpoints:Free from defectsAppropriate according to Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6973413344849814949.post-47436971262443621002012-01-26T05:29:00.000-08:002012-06-18T01:56:16.995-07:00Writing user storiesThe blog is updated very seldom nowadays. It is not because I have lost interst, it is just that I write scientific articles with an unprecedented speed in parallel with doing improvement work at Volvo.I just wanted to put in a reminder of how you define a user story (e.g. for use in a Scrum backlog), shamelessly stolen from a presentation by Dean Leffingwell:As a <role>I can <activity&Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6973413344849814949.post-33140425232249788332011-12-23T05:33:00.000-08:002012-06-18T01:56:16.995-07:00Lean in retailingGekås Ullared is the biggest retail store in Sweden, with a turnover of 3.4 billion SEK (about $450 million USD). They are renowned for their low prices, though their business idea is to facilitate a shopping experience (i.e. the customers shall feel they made a great deal). Note that they only have a single store in the middle of nowhere with 1100 employees, I'm not talking about a chain of Unknownnoreply@blogger.comPersgårdsvägen 3, 310 60 Ullared, Sweden57.134725586205221 12.71521568298339857.133648586205219 12.712748182983399 57.135802586205223 12.717683182983398tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6973413344849814949.post-73506055126320625002011-12-17T00:53:00.000-08:002012-06-18T01:56:16.995-07:00Keeping it in one’s headA friend of mine recommended this text on why programmers work at night. Entertaining but still true.But the blog post referenced another interesting text written by Paul Graham about the necessity of holding a program in one’s head to be an outstanding programmer. I couldn’t agree more with that he says. I also agree with the corollaries that it is detrimental to treat developers as Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6973413344849814949.post-43716974658685751792011-11-21T02:04:00.000-08:002012-06-18T01:56:16.995-07:00More on-line lectures on software architectureI was discussing with one of my colleagues at the department if there were any introductory or summary presentations on-line about software architecture. I have already listed some on-line lectures about software archtiecture in the blog, but a quick search revelad some interesting ones:An Introduction to Software Architecture and the Risk-Centric Model by George Fairbanks. George is a an Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6973413344849814949.post-52588784145594696812011-11-18T07:11:00.000-08:002012-06-18T01:56:16.995-07:00MeeGo is out, what is in?There has been some turmoil in the world of infotainment platforms. Intel has left Meego and have partnered with Samsung in Tizen. This just a few months after Meego 1.2 vas deemed GENIVI compliant. I have no idea if Tizen aims to be GENIVI compliant as well. But there are already some commercial platforms that are GENIVI compliant.I have been involved in the Open Infotainment Labs, a Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6973413344849814949.post-75765858861358868682011-11-13T23:55:00.000-08:002012-06-18T01:56:16.995-07:00AUTOSAR as open sourceThis might be the coolest thing I have seen so far: There exist an open source distributions of AUTOSAR!And it's local to us here in Gothenburg, should I be embarassed for not hearing about this earlier?Caveat: Note that if you intend to use AUTOSAR in a business setting you need to fulfill the conditions according to the AUTOSAR consortium.After some e-mail exchange I now know that the openUnknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6973413344849814949.post-85627638261083914762011-10-26T00:25:00.000-07:002012-06-18T01:56:16.995-07:00Set-based architectureI listened to a presentation from Durward K. Sobek II about set-based concurrent engineering, which is a development paradigm(?) from lean development (more precisely from Toyota Product Development System). The original principle, as I understand it, is that a designer should work with a set of design proposals towards manufacturing and in the dialogue between what is desirable (form engineeringUnknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6973413344849814949.post-18536057688123069382011-10-06T01:35:00.000-07:002012-06-18T01:56:16.996-07:00Choke on cinnamon buns?I wrote in a previous blog post about that I get upset about bad programming. I stumbled upon a prime example of bad programming from the excellent website Jävla skitsystem on that it was not possible to buy 20 identical cinnamon buns at 7-eleven at the same time because it crashes the cashier system and it would take 15 minutes to reboot.I don't know what is most stupid? That there is an actual Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6973413344849814949.post-67354937954215110542011-10-04T00:28:00.000-07:002012-06-18T01:56:16.996-07:00First International Software Technology Exchange WorkshopSwedsoft arranges a workshop in Stockholm on Wednesday 23 Novemeber. It is dedicated to transfer academic results to industry. Sounds really interesting.First International Software Technology Exchange Workshop 2011Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6973413344849814949.post-34760961635563681782011-09-27T22:29:00.000-07:002012-06-18T01:56:16.996-07:00The angry programmer?My wife thinks I should start another blog named "Ulriks programming nightmares". Or maybe just add another topic of this blog where I mention examples of programmed systems that aren't good. Or to be more precise, where the programmer was too lazy to do a good job, which really gets me going. Unfortunately I get upset when I see it among the students which is a bit harsh, they are here to learn Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6973413344849814949.post-14490323341694789552011-09-27T12:54:00.000-07:002012-06-18T01:56:16.996-07:00DocumentationWhen it comes to documentation I am firm believer in the quote of Antoine de Saint-Exupery: “A designer knows he has achieved perfection not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.” As I see it there are a few main purposes of producing documentation: To convey understanding - This shows my quite liberal view of documentation since I consider drawings on aUnknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6973413344849814949.post-23865458879790831252011-09-20T01:17:00.000-07:002012-06-18T01:56:16.996-07:00When to decide?I have recently experienced several occasions where people want to decide things as early as possible in a project. This seems to be based on previous experiences that this was difficult in the last project and we want to eliminate things to worry about late in the project since there will be new things to worry about then anyway. So why not solve the major problems you are aware about anyway?I&Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6973413344849814949.post-42858290622166596592011-06-30T04:45:00.000-07:002012-06-18T01:56:16.996-07:00WICSA 2011I was at WICSA last week. I am a lousy trendspotter, but here is what I have seen as “trends” so far: There seems to be several efforts, especially on the tool side, that focuses on capturing and navigating architectural information. Is this a sign that architecture information is getting bigger and bigger and is distributed among different sources/artefacts? I thought one of the tangible Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6973413344849814949.post-84792294974013047402011-06-21T04:42:00.000-07:002012-06-18T01:56:16.996-07:00Reference architecture, what is it?I am at WICSA 2011 and the words “reference architecture” come up now and then in discussions. I am not sure I like the definition in Wikipedia, I think relies too much that you already have knowledge or experience of a reference architecture.One simile (parable?) would be to a building code, a set or rules that underlie the actual architecture and construction of a house. The architect is Unknownnoreply@blogger.comBoulder, Colorado, USA40.0149856 -105.2705455999999939.9497446 -105.33232609999999 40.0802266 -105.2087651tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6973413344849814949.post-14739995250712058862011-05-25T12:50:00.000-07:002012-06-18T01:56:16.996-07:00Architectural views in practiceMy research is not really focused on identifying the “best” architectural views for in-vehicle software. But as a side effect to the studies I am presently doing I got to think about three views that could actually make a difference in how well large projects succeeds (or fails). I have thought about the need of addiitonal views, but cannot think of an immediate need of more.Integration is alwaysUnknownnoreply@blogger.com