Dirk Riehle's Industry and Research Publications

Category: 2. Building Products

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.…

2018-05-23
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…

2018-05-18
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.…

2018-04-09
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…

2018-02-14
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…

2017-09-01
Inner source definition, benefits, and challenges [CSUR Journal]

Abstract Inner Source (IS) is the use of open source software development practices and the establishment of an open source-like culture within organizations. The organization may still develop proprietary software but internally opens up its development. A steady stream of scientific literature and practitioner reports indicates the interest in this research area. However, the research…

2016-12-12