Dirk Riehle's Industry and Research Publications

Category: 2. Building Products

If Fitbit sales in Germany are sluggish, here is a reason

A screenshot from Fitbit’s German website this morning. The issue is circled in red, a scale with a “feel-good” weight of 122.5. Amusingly enough, this only feels good if you live in the colonies. Germany is not part of it. Here, the metric system rules, not the imperial one. 122.5 on a scale will be…

2013-06-19
Product management and I know who you are (price discrimination on the web)

During a trip to New Zealand I found this wool store near Taihape, on the road between Taupo and Wellington. I bought a couple of pieces and was so happy that I went to their website to buy some more, which also turned out to be a pleasant experience. However, when I returned yet again,…

2013-01-01
Planned inner source: Code reuse across profit-center boundaries (in German) [Technical Report]

Abstract: Wiederverwendung von Softwarekomponenten verspricht, Softwareentwicklung schneller und günstiger zu machen und die Ergebnisqualität zu steigern. Trotz diverser methodischer Ansätze ist es für viele Softwareentwicklungsorganisationen schwierig geblieben, diese Ziele auch nur ansatzweise zu erreichen. Vor diesem Hintergrund bietet „Inner Source“, die Verwendung von Open-Source-Praktiken in der firmeninternen Softwareentwicklung, neue Chancen. Inner-Source-Software ist Software, die innerhalb…

2012-12-04
Software architecture is a (poor) metaphor

At FAU, we are now holding our so-named “software architecture” seminar for the second time. It is important to realize (for students as well as the general public) that “software architecture” is a metaphor (or, maybe more precisely, an analogy). Architecture is a discipline several thousand years old, while software architecture is only as old…

2012-10-20
Developer Belief vs. Reality: The Case of the Commit Size Distribution [SE 2012]

Abstract: The design of software development tools follows from what the developers of such tools believe is true about software development. A key aspect of such beliefs is the size of code contributions (commits) to a software project. In this paper, we show that what tool developers think is true about the size of code…

2011-12-17
Business Risks and Governance of Open Source in Software Products (in German) [HMD Journal]

Titel: Geschäftsrisiken und Governance von Open-Source in Softwareprodukten Zusammenfassung: In fast jedem Softwareprodukt, auch in großer Standardsoftware, sind heute Open-Source-Komponenten enthalten. Die Hersteller dieser Software müssen die Geschäftsrisiken, die mit der Integration von Open-Source-Software in kommerzielle Produkte verbunden sind, verstehen und vernünftig managen. Dieser Artikel zeigt ein Modell verschiedener rechtlicher, technischer und sozialer Risiken auf,…

2011-12-17