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This article emphasizes the importance of training scientists in software development skills, specifically in the field of computational biology. It highlights the need for open access and accurate implementation of software in scientific research. The article provides guidelines for teaching software engineering skills to researchers, including the emphasis on coding practices and the support for students to develop these practices. It also discusses the benefits of incorporating software engineering into scientific education and provides examples of successful software packages developed by students. The authors encourage graduate training programs to prioritize software development skills and promote sustainable software practices. [Extracted from the article]

Human decomposition studies aim to understand the various factors influencing human decay to assess the deceased and develop postmortem interval (PMI) estimation methods. These types of studies are typically conducted through physical experiments examining the deceased; however, big data systems have the potential to transform how large‐scale forensic anthropology research questions can be addressed with curated images of donors with known demographic, climatic, and postmortem historical data. This study introduces ICPUTRD (Image Cloud Platform for Use in Tagging and Research on Decomposition), a web‐based software system, which enables forensic scientists to easily access, enhance (or curate), and analyze very large photographic collections documenting the longitudinal process of human decomposition. ICPUTRD, a JavaScript‐based application, was designed and built through a combination of the Waterfall and Agile software development life‐cycle methods and provides an image search and tagging features with a predefined nomenclature of forensic‐related keywords. To evaluate the system, a user study was conducted, involving 27 participants who completed pre‐ and post‐study surveys and three research tasks. Analysis of the study results confirmed the feasibility and practicality of ICPUTRD to facilitate aspects of forensic research and casework involving large collections of digital photographs of human decomposition. It was observed that the nomenclature lacked certain law enforcement keywords, so future work will focus on expanding it to ensure ICPUTRD is suited for all its intended users. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The importance of incorporating an agile approach into creating sustainable products has been widely discussed. This approach can enhance innovation integration, improve adaptability to changing development circumstances, and increase the efficiency and quality of the product development process. While many agile methods have originated in the software development context and have been formulated based on successful software projects, they often fail due to incorrect procedures and a lack of acceptance, preventing deep integration into the process. Additionally, decision-making for market evaluation is often hindered by unclear and subjective information. Therefore, this study introduces an extended TOPSIS (Technique for Order Performance by Similarity to Ideal Solution) method for sustainable product development. This method leverages the benefits of cloud model theory to address randomness and uncertainty (intrapersonal uncertainty) and the advantages of rough set theory to flexibly handle market demand uncertainty without requiring extra information. The study proposes an integrated weighting method that considers both subjective and objective weights to determine comprehensive criteria weights. It also presents a new framework, named Sustainable Agility of Product Development (SAPD), which aims to evaluate criteria for assessing sustainable product development. To validate the effectiveness of this proposed method, a case study is conducted on small and medium enterprises in China. The obtained results show that the company needs to conduct product structure research and development to realize new product functions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this study, we evaluate predictive modelling techniques within project management, employing diverse architectures such as the LSTM, CNN, CNN-LSTM, GRU, MLP, and RNN models. The primary focus is on assessing the precision and consistency of predictions for crucial project parameters, including completion time, required personnel, and estimated costs. Our analysis utilises a comprehensive dataset that encapsulates the complexities inherent in real-world projects, providing a robust basis for evaluating model performance. The findings, presented through detailed tables and comparative charts, underscore the collective success of the models. The LSTM model stands out for its exceptional performance in consistently predicting completion time, personnel requirements, and estimated costs. Quantitative evaluation metrics, including Mean Absolute Error (MAE), Mean Squared Error (MSE), and Mean Absolute Percentage Error (MAPE), corroborate the efficacy of the models. This study offers insights into the success observed, reflecting the potential for further refinement and continuous exploration to enhance the accuracy of predictive models in the ever-evolving landscape of project management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Customers are looking for suppliers to deliver complex systems at faster rates, targeting three year cycle. This timeframe is challenging for low Technology Readiness Level (TRL) developments, increasing requirements engineering effort, leaving engineers little time and scope for innovation. Test and Evaluation (T&E) activities are often performed in Australia near the end of the process diminishing their value , compensating for a lack of modelling and simulation in early stages. Waterfall Project Management dominates where capability is hardware focused, leading to overruns and deliver capability that falls short of customer expectations in some areas. The Agile approach has been successfully used in software-focused developments. Project managers have been slow to adopt Agile for developments in areas like Defence where the safety is hardware dominant claiming the Agile process lacks necessary governance , increasing risk in the development. This paper examines the extant developmental process in a Defence context and proposes a Minimal Viable Product (MVP)-based framework using Agile to accelerate the development and mitigate risk escalation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Agile methods have emerged to overcome the obstacles of structured methodologies, such as the waterfall, prototype, spiral, and so on. There are studies showing the usefulness of agile approaches in software development. However, studies on Agile maintenance are very limited in number. Regardless of the chosen methodology, software maintenance can be carried out in either a local (on‐the‐premise) or global (distributed) environment. In a local environment, the software maintenance team is co‐located on the same premises, while in a global environment, the team is geographically dispersed from the customer. The main objective of this Systematic Mapping (SM) study is to identify the practices useful for software maintenance using the Agile approaches in the Cloud environment. We have conducted a comprehensive search in well‐known digital databases and examined the articles that map to the pre‐defined inclusion criteria. The study selected and analyzed 48 articles out of 320 published between 2000 and 2022. The findings of the mapping study reveal that Agile can resolve the major issues faced in traditional software maintenance, making the role of this approach significant in global/distributed software maintenance. Cloud computing plays a vital role in software maintenance. Most of the studies highlight the application of XP‐ and Scrum‐based Agile maintenance models. The study found a need for more Agile maintenance solutions in the cloud, highlighting the importance of agile in software maintenance, both locally and globally. Irrespective of the environment, Cloud computing provides a centralized platform for collaboration and communication, while also offering scalability and flexibility to adapt to diverse infrastructure needs. This allows agile maintenance practices to be implemented across both local and global environments, leveraging the cloud's capabilities to overcome geographical and infrastructural challenges. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the emotional responses of users to conversational agents (CAs) and the underlying values that shape these responses. The authors propose a novel integrated representation called "Emotion Value Assessment" (EVA) that allows researchers and practitioners to explore emotional reactions to technology in relation to the values fostered or harmed. The article provides insights into the interaction dynamics and emotional aspects of technology, which can inform product design and development. The authors conducted a qualitative study using interviews and focus groups to collect data on value implications and emotional responses related to Alexa. The results showed that anger-type emotions were most prominent, often related to functionality and usability issues, while joy was associated with comfort and quality of life. Surprise had both positive and negative connotations, and fear was linked to concerns about privacy and autonomy. The text also provides guidance on how to construct and interpret the EVA. The EVA focuses on three perspectives: emotional response, value quality, and value-bearer. The framework aims to provide a more nuanced understanding of user experiences and the impact of technology on human values. The EVA can be used in various stages of system design and development, providing insights into potential value harms and benefits, as well as informing ethical decision-making. However, the EVA has limitations in terms of generalizability and the complexity of analyzing values and emotions. Future research could explore instrumental relationships between different values and include a wider range of subordinate emotions in the analysis. The article suggests that future research should aim for better [Extracted from the article]

A system that will have major and dire repercussions in the event of a failure or malfunction is considered a critical system. Therefore, Software developers usually apply strict standards, testing, and regulatory compliance while developing, operating, and maintaining critical systems to ensure their reliability, security, and resilience due to the high risks involved. Software developers and large organizations try to apply the best methodologies to develop critical systems. The PMBOK framework and Agile methodologies have gained wide acceptance by software developers. These frameworks became more popular because they applied best practices and made them suitable for working in the management of critical systems development processes. The main objective of the research is to review the characteristics associated with the failure of critical systems and analyze how to reduce the failure of critical systems through the use of appropriate software development frameworks. This is done through a literature review, where published studies and research on the failure of critical systems and their critical characteristics will be reviewed. Along with emphasizing Agile Software Development Methods (ASDM) like Scrum, LeSS, and SAFe, this analysis also contrasts them with PMBOK’s best project management practices and recommendations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As public organizations increasingly adopt agile practices, understanding their opportunities, challenges, and transformative potentials is important. This article introduces the special issue on 'The Future of Agile in Public Service Organizations: Macro, Meso and Micro Perspectives' and explores the evolving landscape of agile in public service, drawing from diverse scholarly perspectives. To that end, we discuss various definitions of agile in the context of government and outline the potential benefits and drawbacks of the concept. We then delve into the macro-level characteristics and impacts of agile on institutions and society, its meso-level implications regarding organizational structures, processes, and outcomes, and micro-level determinants and effects on managers, employees, and teams. Referring to theoretical streams building the basis for agile on these different analytical levels, we build a conceptual framework of multi-level agile government. We introduce the six research studies and a book review included in this special issue and position them within this framework to highlight their contributions to understanding agile at each of the three levels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we call for an integration of project management logics within the now mature field of public strategic management, to analyze the potential contribution of projects in terms of increased strategic agility, in a context where traditional strategic planning and management tools and approaches are increasingly seen at risk of not being responsive enough to rapidly changing external conditions. To pursue this objective, we carry out a problematizing literature review on the two streams, by incorporating journal and book contributions from the last 30 years on Web of Science Database. 509 contributions have been quantitatively and qualitatively analyzed to answer two interconnected research questions: What is the state of the art in the literature on the interactions between project management and public strategic management? And, how can project management logics be integrated within traditional strategic planning and management processes in the public sector in order to achieve strategic agility? We find that, until today, public management literature has only sporadically dealt with the potential influence of project management logics on strategic management and, more in detail, strategy implementation. Furthermore, the review enables a discussion of five organizational drivers fostering an agile approach in public strategy implementation. Using a narrative approach, they then lead to the formulation of five researchable propositions. We conclude by proposing an updated model of the strategic planning and management cycle in the public sector, factoring in potential agile practices and feedback mechanisms induced by incorporating project logics in the implementation of strategy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the significant challenges in scaling agile software development is organizing software development teams to ensure effective communication among members while equipping them with the capabilities to deliver business value independently. A formal approach to address this challenge involves modeling it as an optimization problem: given a professional staff, how can they be organized to optimize the number of communication channels, considering both intra-team and inter-team channels? In this article, we propose applying a set of bio-inspired algorithms to solve this problem. We introduce an enhancement that incorporates ensemble learning into the resolution process to achieve nearly optimal results. Ensemble learning integrates multiple machine-learning strategies with diverse characteristics to boost optimizer performance. Furthermore, the studied metaheuristics offer an excellent opportunity to explore their linear convergence, contingent on the exploration and exploitation phases. The results produce more precise definitions for team sizes, aligning with industry standards. Our approach demonstrates superior performance compared to the traditional versions of these algorithms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Agile software development has reached wide adoption in various countries including Turkey, even though from which its original cultural backgrounds differ. In Turkey, many organizations have started to adopt Agile approaches more and more in their software development processes. This interest in the country's software development is parallel to what the academic literature on Agile in the country exhibits. However, despite the prevalence of Agile in Turkey, there is a lack of sufficient secondary research and comprehensive review on Agile in Turkey, which poses a significant necessity for further investigation. Considering this gap, we performed a quantitative bibliometric analysis of Agile software development publications produced by Turkish organizations in a holistic and broad approach both for scholars and practitioners. We provide a summary of relevant academic studies that emerged in Agile research in Turkey by focusing on many aspects including bibliometric properties of papers, researchers, affiliations, venues, and thematic contents that are separated into 15 sub‐research questions. After delivering results based on the questions, we discuss the results and findings of our study and present implications regarding the findings. The main contributions of our work are twofold. First, the paper may help the readers to have a quick idea, understand the subject, and gain insight from a large volume of scientific data. Second, the paper can help readers to use these analyses to form future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There have been success stories reported regarding the adoption of agile software development methods in the industry. There also exist observations on their limitations. One of these limitations is scalability since agile methods like Scrum were originally designed for small software teams. Scalable agile frameworks were introduced to address this limitation. We conducted an industrial case study on the adoption of such a framework, called Nexus. Our study involves quantitative and qualitative evaluation based on observations within a product development organization over a period of 12 months. Scrum is used for the development of a product during the first 6 months of this period. Nexus is used in the remaining 6 months. Data are collected throughout the whole period for measuring productivity, quality, and team member motivation. Results suggest a significant increase in productivity and product quality after switching to Nexus. Team motivation was slightly improved as well. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, changes have been made in the development of information systems software for a more agile way of working. Agile teams are responsible for obtaining requirements in a multidisciplinary set, where the business part and the development part are represented in a single project. DevOps is a new movement that tries to improve agility in service delivery. It encourages greater collaboration and communication between development teams and operations and prevents problems and operational needs from being exposed in the project, affecting software quality. For large and cross-platform businesses, it is essential to consider the mainframe in these tool chains because data and mainframe applications are among their strategic digital assets. The ideal architecture for mainframe inclusion harmoniously combines the specificity of the well-integrated mainframe / task platform (DevOps) into the broader environment of the development and operations chain. Inclusive tooling chains generate a significant competitive advantage by enabling you to have quality information from the mainframe code, making the platform much more accessible to DevOps equipment. Thus, the main problem of the work is: what are the main benefits that would lead a company's IT area to invest in the implementation of bimodal IT with DevOps, aiming to optimize processes? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Enterprise architecture is a growing trend that aims to help deal with the complexity of socio‐technical systems such as human organizations, as well as their information technology and systems areas. Nevertheless, the contribution of enterprise architecture to the field of software engineering remains unclear. The purpose of this systematic literature review is to see how enterprise architecture is used in software development and maintenance practice. To this end, we first carried out a search in the SCOPUS database and then organized the papers according to the Software Engineering Body of Knowledge to determine what areas of software engineering are covered by each research study. To understand how enterprise architecture is used, we established a classification based on ISO 42010 and TOGAF. From the systematic literature review, we noticed that the early stages of development are the most impacted by the enterprise architecture. On the other hand, we observed that enterprise architecture is of assistance in the areas of engineering management, engineering processes, and engineering models and methods; these tasks are carried out by teams or managers using different, often agile, development methods or standards. In turn, we found that the most common categories are architecture descriptions; these are often used to facilitate communication and information‐sharing between different stakeholders, in addition to frameworks, which will help to establish common practices in the organization related to the joint use of enterprise architecture and software development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The practices of lean and agile methods are important to manage and guide projects development in different situations. However, selecting the appropriate practices of lean and agile methods is a daunting task, owing to the availability of hundreds of practices. This wide variety of available practices bewilders potential users, in terms of the best practices that may yield satisfactory solution when applied to the project development. Lean and agile practices selection model is necessary to guide both academic and industrial experts to choose the appropriate practices for a specific project development. Thus, this study aimed to develop lean and agile practices selection (LAPS) model that presents a clear picture of how developers can use LAPS model to select and adopt different practices from various lean and agile methods. Qualitative research method (e.g., grounded theory) was used to interview 18 software developers across 13 countries. The validated qualitative analysis results showed that the proposed LAPS model consists of two main components, which are (1) lean and agile practices that include 41 best practices related to lean and agile methods and (2) factors that affect the process of lean and agile practices selection including five main factors and 17 subfactors associated with the five main factors. The two case studies conducted assured the validity and applicability of the lean and agile practices selection model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: South African insurance companies are under pressure to adapt to the constantly changing environment and customer-changing requirements. Agile software development presents itself as a viable solution for swiftly meeting these demands. However, there is a lack of comprehensive understanding regarding the current utilisation of agile methodologies within the South African insurance sector; this article aims to bridge this gap. Objectives: The purpose of this theme is to fully understand the extensive level of the experience for the participants and the nature of projects the participants have been involved in and lastly time frames of the projects and how long have insurance been using agile methodology. Method: For this study, purposive sampling that involves the selection of the units to be observed based on your own judgement about which ones were the most useful or representative will be applied. The criteria were based on the participants having played a role as stakeholder in a project that has used agile methodology within the selected organisation within the past 3 years to remain relevant to this study purpose. Results: The identified pattens from the respondents showed that agile methodology is currently utilised for the following in the selected insurance company: software upgrades new product new function Conclusion: In summary, the current state of agile methodology utilisation in a South African insurance company is associated with application transformation to cloud computing, work transformation, onboarding of new applicants, environment enhancements, schema amendment, introduction of new product such as sales force, automating insurance claims documents, scheme enhancement, fund anniversary and renewal of people’s schemes. Contribution: This comprehensive research significantly contributes to the body of knowledge, shaping the strategic direction of agile methodologies within software development project environments.

Agile Software Development (ASD) confronts the challenge of effectively measurement and predicting the capabilities of software engineers and teams to improve individual performance, team efficiency, and project success. This study delves into exploring and identifying gaps and research prospects in assessing and predicting human capabilities within ASD. Thus, we conducted a Systematic Literature Review, building upon a prior review from 2001 to 2016 by different authors. To encompass primary studies published after 2016, we extended to 2022. Further, our study extends the scope of the previous SLR with a new research question to identify key attributes in publications focused on agile team formation. Our findings disclosed new attributes for evaluating and predicting the capabilities of professionals engaged in ASD, such as Openness to Creativity and Agile Adaptation. These attributes boost individual performance, contribute to ameliorated team productivity, and facilitate the precise composition of teams. Moreover, this study expands our prior study, providing more details on capability identification and research design, extends the analysis of attributes and prediction models, provides a more granular discussion of discoveries and comparisons with prior review, and more indepth discussion about practical implications and thoroughly examines study validity. We observed that technical metrics were more prevalent than social and innovative aspects. Also, the study identified the prediction of agile capabilities as an emerging research domain necessitating further scrutiny due to the scarcity of existing models. The majority of studies (78%) supplied detailed metric descriptions, facilitating the evolution of the capabilities repository and supporting future investigations in this domain. Ultimately, these findings can aid agile practitioners in formulating team composition decisions based on individuals’ and teams’ appraised and foreseen abilities.

Agile software development (ASD) methods such as Scrum promote collocated team collaboration. However, adopting Scrum in hybrid work environments can pose challenges. Therefore, understanding the positive aspects and challenges of adopting Scrum in hybrid settings and the relevant agile tools and practices is important. Software engineering education should also prepare students with the necessary knowledge and skills for implementing ASD methods in hybrid settings. This study provides insight into implementing Scrum in a hybrid setting, in a course project, discussing its positive aspects, challenges, and relevant project management and communication tools. We used a questionnaire to collect feedback from 12 scrum teams, made up of 59 master’s degree students at the University of Oulu, who developed student well-being prototypes in four sprints. We applied thematic analysis to analyze the teams’ feedback. We found 16 challenges, 12 positive aspects, and varying ASD practices and tools. Key challenges included scheduling conflicts, communication issues, and estimating efforts. Discord and Microsoft Teams were popular for communication, while JIRA and Trello were favored for agile project management. This study complements software engineering literature with new empirical findings. It reveals practices and tools applicable to software practitioners and start-up teams for effectively adopting scrum in hybrid settings. It also contributes by illustrating the adoption of scrum course projects in hybrid settings and providing recommendations to enhance the design of similar courses. It identifies research gaps, such as the need for tools and practices to improve collaboration and the potential of asynchronous chats in hybrid environments.

This study presents a novel approach to resource allocation in software development teams working with Kanban. The simulation algorithm created in this study takes three types of resources, three types of work, resource capabilities, and a blocking mechanism different from the classic machine breakdown scenario. The data generated by the simulations are used to train a decision tree regression which is integrated into an optimization model as a clearing function. In numerical analysis, the research compares the decision tree clearing function to a straightforward two-step model that only takes the best of the simulation data and finds a resource allocation and a greedy heuristic algorithm which starts from an initial feasible solution and improves it step-by-step. Findings show that the developed decision tree clearing function model outperforms the other two benchmark models in mid and high amounts of data.

Behavior-driven development (BDD) is an Agile testing methodology fostering collaboration among developers, QA analysts, and stakeholders. In this manuscript, we propose a novel approach to enhance BDD practices using large language models (LLMs) to automate acceptance test generation. Our study uses zero and few-shot prompts to evaluate LLMs such as GPT-3.5, GPT-4, Llama-2-13B, and PaLM-2. The paper presents a detailed methodology that includes the dataset, prompt techniques, LLMs, and the evaluation process. The results demonstrate that GPT-3.5 and GPT-4 generate error-free BDD acceptance tests with better performance. The few-shot prompt technique highlights its ability to provide higher accuracy by incorporating examples for in-context learning. Furthermore, the study examines syntax errors, validation accuracy, and comparative analysis of LLMs, revealing their effectiveness in enhancing BDD practices. However, our study acknowledges that there are limitations to the proposed approach. We emphasize that this approach can support collaborative BDD processes and create opportunities for future research into automated BDD acceptance test generation using LLMs.

Privacy requirements engineering acts as a role to systematically elicit privacy requirements from system requirements and legal requirements such as the GDPR. Many methodologies have been proposed, but the majority of them are focused on the waterfall approach, making adopting privacy engineering in agile software development difficult. The other major issue is that the process currently is to a high degree manual. This paper focuses on closing these gaps through the development of a machine learning-based approach for identifying privacy requirements in an agile software development environment, employing natural language processing (NLP) techniques. Our method aims to allow agile teams to focus on functional requirements while NLP tools assist them in generating privacy requirements. The main input for our method is a collection of user stories, which are typically used to identify functional requirements in agile software development. The NLP approach is then used to automate some human-intensive tasks such as identifying personal data and creating data flow diagrams from user stories. The data flow diagram forms the basis for the automatic creation of privacy requirements. Our evaluation shows that our NLP method achieves a fairly good performance in terms of F-Measure. We are also demonstrate the feasibility of our NLP approach in CamperPlus project. Lastly, we are developing a tool to integrate our NLP approach into the privacy requirements engineering pipeline, allowing for manual editing of results so that agile teams can maintain control over the automated approach.

The goal of Digital Transformation of the Public Sector is the achievement of a better quality of life for citizens, via a more responsive and transparent administration and governance. By now it is clear that technological innovation, both in terms of computer architectures and software systems, is a crucial component of it, yet not sufficient. Indeed, a cultural, organizational and legal shift in how public organizations operate and relate to the citizens is also required. Nevertheless, computer scientists can play a key role in such a transformation and, given its impact on Society, it is essential to achieve a broader level of awareness of it and involvement in it of those scientific and professional figures. To this end, a technical map specifically designed for computer scientists, but properly placed in the context of the cultural, organizational and legal changes mentioned above, would be highly beneficial. To date, such a map is missing, to the best of our knowledge. The main contribution of this Tutorial is to provide it, together with a guided tour describing which key technological aspects enable and drive such a transformation. More specifically, based on a careful analysis of the available scholarly literature, that does not seem to include any Computer Science textbook material, a model of such a transformation is proposed, together with carefully selected examples incarnating it to show its validity: the cities of Barcelona and Chicago. Finally, a look at the future of this area is also provided.

Software Development based on Scrum Agile in a distributed development environment plays a pivotal role in the contemporary software industry by facilitating software development across geographic boundaries. However, in the past different frameworks utilized to address the challenges like communication and collaboration in scrum agile distributed software development (SADSD) were notably inadequate in transparency, security, traceability, geographically dispersed location work agreements, geographically dispersed teamwork effectiveness, and trust. These deficiencies frequently resulted in delays in software development and deployment, customer dissatisfaction, canceled agreements, project failures, and disputes over payments between customers and development teams. To address these challenges of SADSD, this paper proposes a new framework called ChainAgile, which leverages blockchain technology. ChainAgile employs a private Ethereum blockchain to facilitate the execution of smart contracts. These smart contracts cover a range of functions, including acceptance testing, secure payments, requirement verification, task prioritization, sprint backlog, user story design and development and payments with the automated distribution of payments via digital wallets to development teams. Moreover, in the ChainAgile framework, smart contracts also play a pivotal role in automatically imposing penalties on customers for making late payments or for no payments and penalties on developers for completing the tasks that exceed their deadlines. Furthermore, ChainAgile effectively addresses the scalability limitations intrinsic in blockchain technology by incorporating the Interplanetary File System (IPFS) is used for storage solutions as an off-chain mechanism. The experimental results conclusively show that this innovative approach substantially improves transparency, traceability, coordination, communication, security, and trust for both customers and developers engaged in scrum agile distributed software development (SADSD). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Self-supervised learning (SSL) is a potential deep learning (DL) technique that uses massive volumes of unlabeled data to train neural networks. SSL techniques have evolved in response to the poor classification performance of conventional and even modern machine learning (ML) and DL models of enormous unlabeled data produced periodically in different disciplines. However, the literature does not fully address SSL's practicalities and workabilities necessary for industrial engineering and medicine. Accordingly, this thorough review is administered to identify these prominent possibilities for prediction, focusing on industrial and medical fields. This extensive survey, with its pivotal outcomes, could support industrial engineers and medical personnel in efficiently predicting machinery faults and patients' ailments without referring to traditional numerical models that require massive computational budgets, time, storage, and effort for data annotation. Additionally, the review's numerous addressed ideas could encourage industry and healthcare actors to take SSL principles into an agile application to achieve precise maintenance prognostics and illness diagnosis with remarkable levels of accuracy and feasibility, simulating functional human thinking and cognition without compromising prediction efficacy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many agile projects use expert judgment-based methods for estimating effort. Commonly, the judgments made during estimating project features are consensual. However, this will hardly be achieved when a conflict arises between estimators. Besides, estimate depends on the experience and skills of the estimator and could be threatened by his uncertainty to make reliable and accurate assessments. To fill these gaps, an intuitionistic fuzzy expert judgment method is proposed. The latter allows making fuzzified assessments and integrates estimators' priorities according to a set of human factors. As well, it provides consensual estimates either by the end of the estimation rounds or automatically using an iterative algorithm. On the other hand, an initial empirical study has been conducted on an agile project in which user stories have been estimated by students and experts. The first findings have revealed that the proposal is more suitable for inexperienced estimators or in the first sprints of the project where disagreement is still significant. Nevertheless, when group agreement is increased during the estimating process, the proposal maintains a null bias toward the overestimation or the underestimation of the user stories. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The pace of technological advancements has been rapidly increasing in recent years, with the advent of artificial intelligence, virtual/augmented reality, and other emerging technologies fundamentally changing the way human beings work. The adoption and integration of these advanced technologies necessitate teams with diverse disciplinary expertise, to help teams remain agile in an ever-evolving technological landscape. Significant disciplinary diversity amongst teams, however, can be detrimental to team communication and performance. Additionally, accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic, the adoption and use of technologies that enable design teams to collaborate across significant geographical distances have become the norm in today's work environments, further complicating communication and performance issues. Little is known about the way in which technology-mediated communication affects the collaborative processes of design. As a first step toward filling this gap, the current work explores the fundamental ways experts from distinct disciplinary backgrounds collaborate in virtual design environments. Specifically, we explore the conversational dynamics between experts from two complementary yet distinct fields: non-destructive evaluation (NDE) and design for additive manufacturing (DFAM). Using Markov modeling, the study identified distinct communicative patterns that emerged during collaborative design efforts. Our findings suggest that traditional assumptions regarding communication patterns and design dynamics may not be applicable to expert design teams working in virtual environments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scrum is an important and essential technique for developing software. Scrum framework is a project management technique that can emphasize software development teamwork. If you are starting, consider scrum as a method for accomplishing tasks as a team in manageable chunks simultaneously, with ongoing experimentation and feedback loops to learn and improve as you go. Scrum enables individuals and groups to collaboratively and gradually generate value. Being an agile framework, scrum gives people and teams the perfect structure to fit into their workflows while still including the best practices to cater to their requirements. There are some important considerations for security in the agile software development process such as threat modeling, secure coding practices, continuous security testing, authentication, and authorization. In this work, we reviewed various scrum developing techniques to find out the research gaps. This article consider the scrum technique with blockchain technologies for review because it is preferred by most of the software industries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many organizations have adopted agile values and principles in their products and services to provide increasing value to their customers. Although agile started with software development, it has been applicable and used in different industries and disciplines, including the space industry. This article presents the practical implications of teams transitioning to be agile teams using a general inductive analysis of 33 individuals from different NASA agile teams. The findings and recommendations are part of a larger effort performed as part of the development of a model for agile leadership. Some organizations may see agile as very risky and costly, and this article provides some guidance derived from the data to help support planning for agile transformation efforts. • Agile transformations of NASA Agile teams. • Being Agile with a continuous learning mindset. • Ability to create sustainable value to the customer in a technology-driven organization. • Recommendations to becoming Agile organizations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores historians' role in shaping public policy amid crises through the programs of the Idaho State Historical Society (ISHS). ISHS navigated the post-2008 recession, aligning with the History Relevance Campaign to redefine history's societal value and develop a legislative outreach program. This article encapsulates the ISHS's journey and history's power--through the agency's new briefing paper program--to inform, unite, guide policy, and promote informed governance. The article describes the author's workflow, which features traditional research methodology and adaptable projectmanagement philosophies and stresses the value of searchable research libraries as a framework for historians to manage multiple projects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Digital transformation in the public sector provides digital services to the citizens aiming at increasing their quality of life, as well as the transparency and accountability of a public administration. Since adaptation to the citizens changing needs is central for its success, Agile methodologies seem best suited for the software development of digital services in that area. However, as well documented by an attempt to use Scrum for an important Public Administration in Italy, substantial modifications to standard Agile were needed, giving rise to a new proposal called improved Agile (in short, iAgile). Another notable example is the Scrum@IMI method developed by the City of Barcelona for the deployment of its digital services. However, given the importance of digital transformation in the public sector and the scarcity of efforts (documented in the scholarly literature) to effectively bring Agile within it, a strategically important contribution that Computer Science can offer is a general paradigm describing how to tailor Agile methodologies and, in particular, Scrum, for such a specific context. Our proposal, called Scrum@PA, addresses this strategic need. Based on it, a public administration has a technically sound avenue to follow to adopt Scrum rather than a generic set of guidelines as in the current state of the art. We show the validity of our proposal by describing how the quite successful Scrum@IMI approach can be derived from Scrum@PA. Although iAgile can also be derived from our paradigm, we have chosen Scrum@IMI as a pilot example since it is publicly available on GitHub. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although there have been some studies on the success factors for IT software projects, there is still a lack of coherent research on the success factors for IT service projects. Therefore, this study aimed to identify and understand the factors and their relationships that contribute to the success of IT service projects. For this purpose, multivariate regressions and structural equation models (SEMs) were developed and analyzed. The regression models included six project management success criteria used as dependent variables (quality of the delivered product, scope realization and requirements, timeliness of delivery, delivery within budget, customer satisfaction, and provider satisfaction) and four independent variables (agile techniques and change management, organization and people, stakeholders and risk analysis, work environment), which had been identified through exploratory factor analysis. The results showed that not all success factors were relevant to all success criteria, and there were differences in their importance. An additional series of exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses along with appropriate statistical measures were employed to evaluate the quality of these four factors. The SEM approach was based on five latent constructs with a total of twenty components. The study suggests that investing in improving people's knowledge and skills, using agile methodologies, creating a supportive work environment, and involving stakeholders in regular risk analysis are important for project management success. The results also suggest that the success factors for IT service projects depend on both traditional and agile approaches. The study extensively compared its findings with similar research and discussed common issues and differences in both the model structures and methodologies applied. The investigation utilized mathematical methods and techniques that are not commonly applied in the field of project management success modeling. The comprehensive methodology that was applied may be helpful to other researchers who are interested in this topic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Agile Manifesto (AM) provides principles guiding agile software development as an alternative to traditional software development processes. While attempts have been made to adapt processes to the agile context, representation of AM principles remains underdeveloped and subjective. The Semat (Software Engineering Method and Theory) Essence kernel offers a common ground for representing software development endeavors. In this paper, we represent some AM principles using the language provided by the Semat Essence kernel to establish a common ground. Additionally, we define constraints in OCL (Object Constraint Language) to enhance the Semat Essence kernel, enabling the introduction of time management in our representation. Such a representation will allow us for adapting and assessing different processes in an agile context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Agile organizations represent a transformation in the search for convergence in relation to the dynamic challenges of the environment, market transformations and the growing complexity of social systems. The objective of this study was to develop a descriptive bibliometric study to identify research trends on agile organizations. Web of Science and Scopus databases were used to retrieve scientific production. Bibliometric indicators of production, collaboration, visibility, and impact were analyzed. The analysis of 150 documents, with the total participation of 340 authors, showed a growth rate of 4% per year in the time interval from 1995 to the beginning of 2023. Dominant trends were identified with respect to the research topic, the first referring to the human factor, organizational innovation and organization and management, and the second, agile methods, agile transformations, agile software development and agile organizations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Data Mine at Purdue University is a pioneering experiential learning community for undergraduate and graduate students of any background to learn data science. The first data‐intensive experience embedded in a large learning community, The Data Mine had nearly 1300 students in academic year (AY) 2022–2023 and nearly 1700 students for AY 2023–2024. The Data Mine embodies data‐infused education, research, and collaboration. Students learn Python, R, SQL, and shell‐scripting, while working on weekly projects within a high‐performance computing (HPC) cluster. In the Corporate Partners cohort, students work on teams of 5–15 students, led by a paid student team leader. Each cohort follows an Agile approach, working on data‐intensive projects provided by industry partners and mentored by company employees. Students develop professional and data skills throughout the academic year, from August through April. Many students return in subsequent years to the program, increasing their tenure with a Corporate Partner. Student teams are inherently interdisciplinary; students from 133 different majors are involved in the program, ranging from new incoming students through PhD level students. These interdisciplinary teams of students bring new perspectives to challenging problems in which data science is a key part of the solution. The interdisciplinary teams foster an environment of synthesis with ideas and solutions. Students come together with different life experiences, different levels of technical skill, but also varying ways they navigate paths to solutions because of the variety of majors represented, resulting in a more creative and robust solution than a traditional data science program. This article is categorized under:Applications of Computational Statistics > Education in Computational Statistics [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]