The rapid downfall of the Nokia software ecosystem has radically altered the landscape of software industry in Finland in recent years. There has been a shift from largely corporate driven way of working, which is often dominant in large companies, to more agile practices, and in general software organizations are seeking new, leaner ways of composing, delivering, and using software also inside already established companies. To accelerate this transformation in large scale, a collaborative research program has been created, called Need for Speed (N4S). In this paper, we give an insight to the joint goals and concrete actions of the program and discuss the motivations of individual companies that are participating in the program. As one concrete goal of the project, we introduce the concept of Mercury business, where the principles of the Lean startup framework are applied in a more conventional industrial setting.

Janne Järvinen (F-Secure), Tua Huomo (VTT), Tommi Mikkonen (Tampere University of Technology) , and Pasi Tyrväinen (University of Jyväskylä): From Agile Software Development to Mercury Business.

Lassenius C., Smolander K. (Eds.), Software Business: Towards Continuous Value Delivery: 5th International Conference, ICSOB 2014, Paphos, Cyprus, June 16-18, 2014. Proceedings, Springer-Verlag, Berlin.

http://www.springer.com/computer/general+issues/book/978-3-319-08737-5