Scale and Responsiveness in Large-Scale Software Development

Journal article, 2014

In large-scale software development, there is typically a conflict between being responsive to individual customers, while at the same time achieving scale in terms of delivering a high number of features to a large customer base. Most often, organizations focus on scale and individual customer requests are viewed as problematic since they add complexity to product variation and version control. Here, we explore the use of customer-specific teams as a means to address this conflict. First, we verify the use of customer-specific teams as successful for improving customer responsiveness, customer satisfaction and feature quality through a case study at Ericsson. Second, we identify three approaches for how to organize feature development, and recommendations on how software development companies can efficiently use these to improve their practices. Third, we observe new business opportunities that arise when using customer-specific teams.