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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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

Effort estimation is fundamental for the development of software projects and critical to their success. The objective of this paper is to understand how Colombian agile practitioners perform effort estimates and to identify opportunities for improvement based on these results. For this purpose, we conducted an exploratory survey study using as instrument an on-line questionnaire answered by agile practitioners with experience in effort estimation. Data was collected from 60 agile practitioners and the main findings are: (1) Agile practitioners prefer non-algorithmic estimation techniques, mainly those based on Expert Judgment. (2) Most of the respondents perceive that their estimates have a medium accuracy level; however, in most cases, no formal analysis of the accuracy level is carried out. (3) The determining effort predictors/cost drivers are characteristics of the project team (size, experience, and skills) and attributes of the software to be built (complexity, type, and domain). (4) The use of datasets for estimation is not common; proprietary datasets predominate and are used for productivity comparisons within the company. (5) Most of the results of related studies are comparable with ours; however, there are significant differences in terms of the roles involved and the techniques used in the effort estimation process. Based on the results and findings of the survey, we identified key opportunities to improve estimation accuracy through (1) software measurement standardization, (2) use of effort datasets, (3) implementation of techniques for measuring accuracy levels, and (4) knowledge management in effort estimation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Effort estimation based on user stories plays a pivotal role in agile software development, where accurate predictions of project efforts are vital for success. While various supervised ML tools attempt to estimate effort, the prevalence of estimation errors presents significant challenges, as evidenced by the CHAOS report by the Standish Group, which highlights incorrect estimations contributing to a substantial percentage of failed agile projects. This research delves into the domain of user story-based effort estimation in agile software development, aiming to explore the issues arising from inaccurate estimations. The primary goal is to uncover these issues comprehensively and propose potential solutions, thus enhancing the efficacy of the user story-based estimation method. To achieve the research objectives, a systematic literature review (SLR) is conducted, surveying a wide range of sources to gather insights into issues surrounding user story-based effort estimation. The review encompasses diverse estimation methods, user story attributes, and the array of challenges that can result from inaccurate estimations. The SLR reveals a spectrum of issues undermining the accuracy of user story-based effort estimation. It identifies internal factors like communication, team expertise, and composition as crucial determinants of estimation reliability. Consistency in user stories, technical complexities, and task engineering practices also emerge as significant contributors to estimation inaccuracies. The study underscores the interconnectedness of these issues, emphasizing the need for a standardized protocol to minimize inaccuracies and enhance estimation precision. In light of the findings, it becomes evident that addressing the multi-dimensional factors influencing user story-based effort estimation is imperative for successful agile software development. The study underscores the interplay of various aspects, such as team dynamics, task complexity, and requirement engineering, in achieving accurate estimations. By recognizing these challenges and implementing recommended solutions, software development processes can avoid failures and enhance their prospects of success in the agile paradigm. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]