Hardware test equipment utilization measurement

Abstract: Today’s software developers are familiar and often faced with the challenge of strict deadlines which can further be worsened by lack of resources for testing purposes. In order to measure the true utilization and provide relevant information to address this problem, the RCI-lab Resource Utilization tool was created. The tool was created with information from interviews which were conducted with developers from different teams who all agreed that the main reason for over-booking resources is to make sure that they have access when they really need it. A model for resource utilization was defined and used as a basis for the thesis. The developed tool was later used to measure, and visualize the real utilization of hardware resources where the results confirmed the information provided from the interviews. The interview participants estimated the true utilization to be about 20-30% out of twenty-four hours. The data collected from the RCI-lab Resource Utilization tool showed an overall average utilization of about 33% which corresponds well with the estimation by the developers. It was also shown that for the majority of the resources, the maximum utilization level reached to about 60% of the booked time. This overbooking is believed to be due to the need to always have a functioning resource and could possibly be because of the agile environment where resources are a necessity in order to be able to finish the short sprints in time. Even though Ericsson invests in new resources to meet the need, the developers still find it difficult to get access to the resources when they really need it. The developers at the studied department at Ericsson work with scrum where the sprints are 1,5 weeks long. The need for hardware resources varies depending on the tasks in the given sprint which makes it very difficult to predict when a resource is needed. The created tool is also intended to help the stakeholders at the studied department at Ericsson in making investment decisions for new resources and work as a basis for future implementation on additional resource types. Resource utilization is important in many organizations where this thesis provides different aspects of approaching this matter.