Dirk Riehle's Industry and Research Publications

Category: 2. Building Products

  • Who writes and prioritizes user stories?

    Who writes and prioritizes user stories?

    I updated this post after I realized that it is more about prioritizing user stories than it is about writing them well. In Scrum, a product owner writes user stories to capture requirements and prioritizes them in a product backlog as the upcoming work queue for developers. The main question on my mind is: Who…

  • Product manager vs. product owner

    Product manager vs. product owner

    Alistair Cockburn pointed us to an excellent article by Melissa Perri about the differences between a product manager and (Scrum) product owner. The article clarifies some confusion. I’d like to repeat and emphasize some points that have been omitted (and where I also disagree). Foremost, a product manager works on products for a market (i.e.…

  • But what if someone steals my inner source code?

    But what if someone steals my inner source code?

    During my talk at the inner source summit, I was asked about the following worry with establishing inner source at a company: But if we lay all source code open within the company, don’t we run the risk that a disgruntled employee has it too easy to steal all code and publish it on the…

  • The patch-flow method for measuring inner source collaboration [MSR 2018]

    The patch-flow method for measuring inner source collaboration [MSR 2018]

    Abstract: Inner source (IS) is the use of open source software development (SD) practices and the establishment of an open source-like culture within an organization. IS enables and requires developers to collaborate more than traditional SD methods such as plan-driven or agile development. To better understand IS, researchers and practitioners need to measure IS collaboration.…

  • Research questions on product management of open source in commercial products

    Research questions on product management of open source in commercial products

    I’m seeking advice on how to frame the research question for a research project (Ph.D. thesis) on software product management and open source. The simple heuristic “non-differentiating -> open source it, competitively differentating -> keep it closed” doesn’t cut it because of secondary effects like development efficiency resulting from open sourcing, market opportunities resulting from…

  • License clearance in software product governance [Book Chapter]

    License clearance in software product governance [Book Chapter]

    I recently participated in an NII Shonan workshop on open source ecosystems. As a follow-up, we are preparing a book of articles. I’m contributing a chapter on “license clearance in software product governance”. Obviously, open source plays an important role. Please find abstract and paper below. Abstract: Almost all software products today include open source…