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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]

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]

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]

Agile software development companies considered small entities (VSE) face a new reality of remote development. However, remote communication has generated many videos because video calls are often recorded for later reference. The architectural knowledge contained in videos, derived from virtual meetings, is essential for companies facing the knowledge vaporization problem. However, only some proposals in the literature can potentially manage AK in videos. The present article proposes a solution to recover this architectural knowledge contained in videos, using an ontology as a classification scheme. We based our proposal on the concept of architectural knowledge condensation and proposed a condensation cycle from it. Finally, we validated our ontology to manage architectural knowledge following the Methontology guidelines. Implementing an ontology as a classification scheme represents a step forward to achieving the condensation of architectural knowledge in an agile development environment for VSE. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As the size and complexity of projects grows, estimates are increasingly used, especially in the agile community. Software development cannot begin without first conducting thorough planning and estimation. Estimating how much work a project will take is a common first step in the software development life cycle. By employing ensemble techniques, we integrate multiple learning algorithms to build a more accurate predictive model. The core elements of our proposed stacked ensemble strategy include Decision Tree, Principal Components Regression, Random Forest, NeuralNet, GLMNET, XGBoost, Earth, and Support Vector Machine. Moreover, we augment the model's performance by incorporating a blend of these foundational algorithms with other ensemble regression methods. Extensive testing in the suggested research work with a number of Super Learners demonstrates that Regression is the best technique for judging effort. The evaluation of the different estimators involved the use of various metrics, including Mean Absolute Error, Root Mean Squared Error, Mean Squared Error, Percentage of Close Approximations within 25% of the True Values (PRED (25)), R-Squared Coefficients, Precision, Recall, and F1-Score. The proposed method yields more trustworthy predicted performance than either single-model approaches or stacked ensembles. Effort estimation serves as the foundation for the rest of the project management process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Agile methodologies are adopted extensively by many of the software industries as it is flexible in nature as well as can address the required changes in any phase of development. Authentic estimation of the software products is not an easy task as it requires continuous attention of the product owner. Effort and cost can be estimated in a proper manner to ensure the success of the project. In this article, we considered the Scrum-based Agile projects that are developed into several Sprints. We proposed an extension to an existing algorithm, based on a total of 36 success factors; that estimate the development cost and effort required to complete the project. For estimation and computations, we have taken a dataset of 12 projects that are validated through experienced professionals. We also compared our results with the existing approach and it is found that our results are cost-effective even after considering more success factors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present trend of automation and digitization of jobs has made the skills gap even more pronounced, indicating that graduates are not sufficiently prepared for the challenges they will face in their careers. The educational process needs to adapt quickly to the demands made by employers and the job market. Learning tasks, assignments, and activities should mimic the practice environment as far as possible, to best prepare students for practice. One of the best approaches appears to be the incorporation of agile project management techniques and project-based learning into the educational process. The primary aim of this research is to examine the effects of implementing agile management techniques and project-based learning into education on students' skill sets and performance improvement rates. The activities and results that the students produced throughout the semester were gathered and assessed over two academic years. The course feedback was also gathered to investigate students' opinions about the course and their involvement during the semester. An exploratory study was conducted in order to achieve the results. The influence of implemented innovations on the course was addressed, and the acquired outcomes were contrasted and appraised. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The term agile is frequently used in IT especially in the area of software engineering. The broad pervasiveness of the term agile is astonishing, because it is not well defined in the area of software engineering. The fuzziness of the term agile comes with the danger of ill‐founded decisions and ideological discussions. Both slow down the gain in knowledge in the domain of software engineering. The term agile should therefore not be used either in science nor in the industry. This article provides a critical discussion of the term agile. By using a three‐layered abstraction concept for software development processes, the use of the term agile can be avoided. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary: The importance of the team, its internal dynamics, and its performance are widely recognized within the software engineering community. While popular frameworks identify wholeness, stability over time, and smallness as important factors, they offer little guidance on how to form teams that achieve these three characteristics. The objective of this study is to investigate how these team characteristics interact in large‐scale software development contexts, particularly focusing on the impact of stable and dynamic teaming approaches. This was done through a multivocal study of literature, followed by individual semi‐structured interviews with 19 engineers from two companies and validation workshops with an additional two companies from unrelated industry segments. The study results show that the question of stable versus dynamic approaches to forming software engineering teams is largely unaddressed in industry, with stable teams representing a habitual default option. Meanwhile, both stable and dynamic teams clearly have respective strengths and weaknesses, calling for careful consideration of the most suitable approach in any given situation. To support such consideration, this paper presents a model of how team stability, wholeness, and smallness interact. This model is found relevant, accurate, generalizable, and useful by practitioners. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The design-building of IT services in data centers has been historically conducted by applying rigorous IT service design-building phases-workflows. Consequently, relevant research has been conducted upon these rigorous phases-workflows to provide theoretical foundations and practical guidance to IT service design-building architects. However, the current dynamic business-governmental environment is demanding agile approaches, and research from this perspective is still very scarce. This research, thus, aims to provide an updated review and quantitative evaluation of the main rigorous (ITIL v2011, CMMI-SVC v1.3, and ISO/IEC 20000-1:2018) and main agile (ITIL v4, VeriSM, and ISO/IEC 29110-4-3) IT service design-building phases-workflows. For this aim, we conduct a conceptual review research methodology enhanced with an analytics hierarchical process (AHP) method to assess quantitatively how well these six IT service design-building phases-workflows fit two theoretical expected rigorous and agile IT service design-building phases-workflows pro formas. We found that the ITIL v2011 and CMMI-SVC v1.3 phases-workflows fit the rigorous pro forma with a high level, and the ISO/IEC 20000-1:2018 fits a moderate level, whereas all these three ones fit a low level the agile pro forma, as it was expected. ITIL v4 and VeriSM were found to fit a high level the agile pro forma but the ISO/IEC 29110-4-3 fits a moderate level. Unexpectedly, ITIL v4 and the ISO/IEC 29110-4-3 fit a moderate and moderate levels the rigorous pro forma, but VeriSM fits a low level as it was expected. Hence, we can conclude that ITIL v4 and VeriSM provide the most agile IT service design-building phase-workflow, and CMMI-SVC v1.3 the most rigorous one. The ISO/IEC 20000-1:2018 and ISO/IEC 29110-4-3 standards are still aligned to the rigorous approach, and ITIL v4 exhibits a dual moderate rigorous and high agile profile. Hence, this research provides ITSM professionals with an updated analysis useful to guide the selection and application of the IT service design-building phase-workflow—rigorous or agile one—in data centers. This research also contributes to the IT service design-building literature with updated insights and proposes specific research avenues to advance our scientific knowledge on how to design-building IT services. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]