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Fujitsu Group's Activities for Systems Engineers' Manufacturing Innovation

2010-4 (Vol.46, No.2)

This special issue presents the overall picture of Fujitsu Groups' activities for system engineers' manufacturing innovation and gives specific descriptions of the Five Innovations, Design, Production, Maintenance, Way of Working, and Human Resources, together with some of the approaches Fujitsu Groups will take in the future.

2010-4 (Vol.46, No.2) Contents

1. Preface (520 KB): Fujitsu Groups' activities for system engineers' manufacturing innovations such as Design, Production, Maintenance , Way of Working, and Human Resources, allow customers to speedily adopt high-quality and user-friendly systems. This special issue presents the overall picture of Fujitsu Groups' activities for system engineers' manufacturing innovation and gives specific descriptions of the Five Innovations, together with some of the approaches Fujitsu Groups will take in the future. ---[Kazuhiro Uematsu, Corporate Executive Advisor]

2. New Framework for Manufacturing Innovation by Systems Engineers (778 KB): Faced with a massive trend toward open environments and the changes surrounding them, the Fujitsu Group has been promoting four innovation initiatives—Design Innovation, Production Innovation, Maintenance Innovation, and SE Work Style Innovation—to maintain a high level of technical capabilities among its systems engineers (SEs). Over the last two and a half years, these initiatives have produced many results including guidelines for defining requirements, basic design guidelines, and a common maintenance framework using application portfolio management, but they have also revealed a number of issues. To resolve these issues, Fujitsu has decided to take the four innovation initiatives to a second stage and add a new initiative called Human Resources Innovation to form five innovation initiatives, which are slated to run for the next three years. These five innovation initiatives are not, however, the final objective. The Design, Production, and Maintenance Innovation initiatives will be consolidated into a unified system of knowledge that can provide value to customers, and the SE Work Style and Human Resources Innovation initiatives will lead to next-generation SEs with the skills for exploiting that knowledge. The objective is to create a structure in which knowledge and human resources are synchronized to create value in an ongoing manner. ---[Tooru Shibata, Haruhiko Gouda]

3. Consensus Building Technique Based on Structured Requirements (975 KB): Although the importance of upstream processes in system development has been talked about for a long time, project failures originating in the requirements definition process show no sign of decreasing. The increasing difficulty of the requirements definition process itself due, for example, to current conditions and changes in the business environment certainly plays a part in these failures, but there is a more fundamental problem in requirements definition unrelated to those factors. In this paper, we introduce a technique for building consensus and achieving traceability in requirements definition on the basis of a layered structure of stakeholders and the continuity of demands. This new requirements definition technique addresses the three mutually related issues of clarifying the roles and responsibilities of all stakeholders, ensuring the validity and sufficiency of requirements by confirming their continuity, and providing for management participation and control in requirements definition. It increases the settlement power in requirements definition and improves consensus building, so it should minimize the need for revisions during the system development process. ---[Kenji Wakasugi, Kazufumi Arakaki, Yuko Watanabe]

4. New Technique for Estimating Development Scale—Implementing the Function Scale Method— (1.50 MB ): The Function Scale (FS) method, which measures the size of a software system, was developed by Fujitsu in 2004 and has since been used extensively for software developed mainly for internal use within the Fujitsu Group. Up to now, the Function Point (FP) method has been the de facto standard for software size estimation and has been widely used as a functional size measurement method. Compared with the FP method, the FS method uses simpler measurements and its approach is easier to understand, so the results do not depend on who is conducting the measurements. The FS method is not merely a measuring technique but can also be used in project management. I give actual examples of this and also present examples of the various efforts to promote more extensive use of the FS method within the Fujitsu Group. ---[Nobuo Iida]

5. New Approach to Application Software Quality Verification (1.28 MB ): Fujitsu has developed a technique that can automatically prepare test scenarios/data, run the tests, and check the results based on a formal description of the application's external specifications. This eliminates problems that can arise in conventional test methods, such as failure to consider all possible test cases or data values, the existence of too many test cases for exhaustive testing, and variation in test results due to personality-related differences. By combining this technique with an application framework, we have made it available for use in the development of full-scale applications. This paper introduces our work on using formal verification techniques to achieve ground-breaking improvements in software quality as part of the Production Innovation project in Fujitsu's SE division. ---[Jun Ginbayashi, Tadahiro Uehara, Kazuki Munakata, Kazuo Yabuta]

6. Software Development Industrialization by Process-Centered Style (1.15 MB ): Fujitsu Applications, Ltd. (FAP) was established in April 2004 as a development division based on Fujitsu's System Development Architecture & Support (SDAS) facilities with the mission of implementing SDAS and establishing/collecting development know-how. It is working on new technologies based on experimental and practical studies, including issues such as the separation of design and manufacture, the industrialization of software development, and the utilization of offshore resources. Moreover, by taking on the roles of a manufacturing factory and an experimental factory, FAP is promoting innovative production in the Fujitsu Group, including the development of technology from an on-site viewpoint, technology verification, and the establishment of methodologies for managing development. The software development industrialization effort can be regarded as a transition from an individually led development style to a process-centered systematic development style. This paper introduces our code of good practice for our autonomous improvement activities. This consists of four conventions and six mechanisms, which are described here with reference to actual results. ---[Jun Watanabe, Tomiko Maruyama]

7. Improving Project Quality through Third-Party Quality Verification (682 KB): Fujitsu Advanced Quality Ltd. currently conducts third-party quality verification for production processes on system integration projects. The main characteristics of this verification mechanism are that it focuses on people (quality of work) rather than products and on front-line workers rather than leaders. The third-party goes to the actual location, checks the items in question, and interviews the front-line workers to verify the facts. The verification results are then provided to the project team as feedback, along with suggestions for improvements. As a result of putting this quality verification mechanism into practice, Fujitsu Advanced Quality has identified many issues related to work quality and has demonstrated effects in terms of increased project quality. This paper describes the mechanism of third-party quality verification that has been implemented at Fujitsu Advanced Quality and presents an actual case study. ---[Shinya Nakamura]

8. Strengthening Service Management by Comprehensive Analysis of Incidents (1.01 MB ): The complexity of the information systems (business applications and infrastructure) that support business enterprises has been increasing year on year, and in accordance with this the difficulty of operating and maintaining them has also been increasing. Daily incidents need to be dealt with in the places where these systems are operated, and there are not many projects for which the overall tendencies of those incidents can be determined, and the stage of solving their root cause or making proposals for improvement is seldom reached. To support the smooth operation of business, the Advanced Portfolio Management (APM) Competency Department in Fujitsu (as of December 21, 2009) has established a technique for comprehensive incident analysis, such as those incidents arising from inquiries and messages from the infrastructure and applications, from the perspectives of service management, users, and business operations. This technique targets busy fields in the operation and maintenance process and is composed of a service and templates that ease the burden placed on service managers in terms of time and effort, helping them find overall tendencies and root causes. This paper describes the technique for comprehensive incident analysis, and examines the effects of that technique by looking at actual examples. ---[Takashi Sano, Haruhisa Suzuki]

9. Expansion of Application Configuration Management (1.20 MB ): Application maintenance requires total success when changing existing applications. Even when changing a few lines of programming, it is necessary to investigate the impact of those changes and conduct tests to make sure that they do not affect other configuration items. These investigations and tests make up 80 to 90% of the application maintenance cost. The accuracy and efficiency of investigating the effects of any change need to be improved. Usual investigation depends on experienced and skilled engineers who are in charge of the system and application. They not only investigate applications but also the framework of applications and infrastructure. They also consider operations. We arranged configuration items that are needed for investigations and constructed a model. That model was applied to CentraSite's registry, and we made an investigation method. By using that method, all the engineers working in the operation and maintenance process can conduct investigations with the same accuracy and efficiency. ---[Junichi Kamakura]

10. Innovation of Working Style through Business Ethnography and Organizational Monitor (1.42 MB ): Understanding the nature of clients' work is a precondition for helping them to solve challenges posed by their business practices. Fujitsu has been committed to developing and deploying Business Ethnography that merges ethnographic qualitative analysis, frequently used in the areas of marketing and product design, with conventional quantitative analysis, not for study but as business. While ethnography has been used in the area of research, our current approach utilizes this methodology to understand the nature of clients' work. Also, in the field of research on organizations which has become widely recognized in some international ethnography associations including EPIC, Fujitsu's approach of Organizational Monitor has been developed and implemented by integrating the factors of quantitative analysis emphasizing the continuous and proactive commitments to innovation by organizations and individuals. It is regarded as an approach that goes beyond the conventional academic approaches that focus only on the reporting of exploration and interpretation of the facts observed in business scenes. This paper introduces a new approach based on these two types of ethnographic technique that adds a new aspect to the conventional working style. ---[Koji Kishimoto, Maki Terasawa, Sadayo Hirata]

11. New Efforts for ProjectWEB to Be Business Infrastructure (765 KB): Since its introduction in 1998, ProjectWEB, Fujitsu's in-house knowledge management tool has played an essential role in Fujitsu's systems engineering work. Recently, increasing numbers of business units have been using ProjectWEB to prevent security incidents, which demonstrates its ability to be used not only in projects, but also in various other business arenas. Not content with its current role, we will aim to position ProjectWEB as a business infrastructure for all Fujitsu engineers to be used also outside the Company. In order to achieve this, three priority subjects have been set: 1) realization of multiple-project management, 2) promotion of rules and manners, and 3) improvement of service levels. This paper will introduce the background to why ProjectWEB has been developed, its major features, and the approaches taken toward the goal of making it a business infrastructure. ---[Nozomu Murakami]

12. Innovating Human Resources in Solution Business (758 KB): The evolution of technology has accelerated changes in business domains and contents, so that there is now intensified competition to acquire new markets. In this situation, companies need to concentrate on their core competences. They must create new business domains voluntarily, by making the most of the content they have. We are in an age where it is difficult to survive in business, and companies should grow via their own unique strategies. Fujitsu is providing solutions, mainly technological ones, to accelerate the expansion of our global business in both circles of services and products. We are developing human resources that can provide value and satisfaction for our customers. This paper introduces the concept behind and course of actions for this human resources innovation, which we are conducting to master advanced technologies appropriately to fit the purpose. ---[Hiroyuki Kawakita, Ryusuke Yamada, Shintaro Okude]

13. Attempting to Increase Longevity of Applications Based on New SaaS/Cloud Technology (654 KB): In recent years, SaaS/Cloud technology has advanced significantly in development and operation, and IT vendors including Fujitsu must keep up with these developments. In this field, we need to ensure applications have a long life cycle. This paper introduces the concept of a meta-framework, which is a framework of frameworks for resolving the issues involved in extending the life of applications. The basic idea of a meta-framework is to validate the design and development process, and separate the design and framework processes. This will bring us closer to the ideal form of software development in which the end of design signifies the end of testing. By separating the design and the framework, the design can be a permanent asset. In addition, by creating a common base, i.e. the meta-framework, it will be possible to easily migrate a system to the latest framework. We will be able to create templates that are used to automatically generate source codes, and expanding the scope of automatic generation will reduce the cost of migration. ---[Toyoaki Furusawa]

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