Application management requirements for embedded software: Licentiate thesis

The purpose of this licentiate thesis is to describe the actual maintenance and evolution processes of embedded software in two case organisations and to define preconditions for improving such processes. The problems and solutions developed can thus be used in improving the practical maintenance and evolution processes and in defining methods and tools to facilitate the work of software maintainers. This thesis summarises the methods and techniques used in defining the application management requirements and presents the results of the two case studies. Both organisations that were analysed develop and maintain real-time embedded software with close contacts to hardware development. The thesis presents a qualitative process analysis framework for analysing application management processes. The framework has been used in analysing the application management processes of the case companies. The results of two analyses are presented. As a conclusion, the results of the analyses are summarised and the analysis approach is evaluated by comparing it with a quantitative process analysis method called CMM and summarising the experiences from the case studies.