A tentative framework for connecting long-term business and product planning with iterative & incremental software product development

For a company in the software product business, it is essential to understand how to connect business management and software development [17] and employ a solid, value-based approach in its decisionmaking. However, software engineering literature (SE) commonly addresses what should be done at the “floor level” and leaves the link to business and product management unaddressed [14]. Also, existing software development models mostly adhere to the viewpoint of individual development projects and thus fail to sufficiently address common product development concerns such as multi-project or project portfolio management [20]. The emerging value-based software engineering (VBSE) discipline is integrating explicit consideration for value into SE research [2]. Also, initiatives for integrating the perspectives of business and development have started to appear in the SE community (e.g. [17,22]). Springing from this background, this position paper has two goals: our primary goal is to contribute to the understanding on how to manage software product development by conceptualising the connection between long-term business, product and release planning and iterative and incremental software development. Our secondary goal is to complement the ongoing VBSE research by outlining the different levels where specific economic models and tools can contribute to managing software product development.