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Agile Project Management is a topic that has become popular both in business and academia, since the publication of the Agile Manifesto - a historic landmark in this subject. In the next 20 years, there was a relevant scientific production that must be analyzed to provoke reflection about the knowledge built up in this period. In this sense, this study aims to analyze the relevant scientific literature on Agile Project Management through a systematic review and a bibliometric analysis of articles published in scientific journals with Digital Object Identifier, in English, from the Web of Science and Scopus databases, from 2001 to 2021. The research results enable us to gain insights into the characteristics of this knowledge domain, regarding its volume and evolutionary trend, main contributors (i.e. scientific journals, authors, and their affiliations), main studies, methods used, and its central thematic axes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of the paper is to present a model of factors affecting the successful project implementation by introducing agility and artificial intelligence to increase the company's competitiveness. In the model, the multidimensional constructs describing the implementation of an agile work environment and artificial intelligence technologies and tools were developed. These multidimensional constructs are agile work environment, agile leadership, agile team skills and capabilities, improving the work of the leader in the project, adopting AI technologies in the project, and using AI solutions in a project. Their impact on successful project implementation and on the company competitiveness was tested. The fundamental reason for conducting this research and developing the model is to enhance the understanding of factors that contribute to the successful implementation of projects and to increase a company's competitiveness. Our developed model encompasses multidimensional constructs that describe the agile work environment and the utilization of AI technologies. By examining the impact of these constructs on both successful project implementation and company competitiveness, we aimed to establish a comprehensive framework that captures the relationship between agility, AI, and successful project implementation. This model serves as a valuable tool for companies seeking to improve their project implementation processes and gain a competitive edge in the market. The research was based on a sample of 473 managers/owners in medium-sized and large companies. Structural equation modeling was used to test the hypotheses. In today's turbulent environment, the results will help develop guidelines for a successful combination of agile business practices and artificial intelligence to achieve successful project implementation, increasing a company's competitiveness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Agile software requirements engineering processes enable quick responses to reflect changes in the client's software requirements. However, there are challenges associated with agile requirements engineering processes, which hinder fast, sustainable software development. Research addressing the challenges with available solutions is patchy, diverse and inclusive. In this study, we use a systematic literature review coupled with thematic classification and gap mapping analysis to examine extant solutions against challenges; the typologies/classifications of challenges faced with agile software development in general and specifically in requirements engineering and how the solutions address the challenges. Our study covers the period from 2009 to 2023. Scopus—the largest database for credible academic publications was searched. Using the exclusion criteria to filter the articles, a total of 78 valid papers were selected and reviewed. Following our investigation, we develop a framework that takes a three-dimensional view of agile requirements engineering solutions and suggest an orchestrated approach balancing the focus between the business context, project management and agile techniques. This study contributes to the theoretical frontier of agile software requirement engineering approaches and guidelines for practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Metrics are key elements that can give us valuable information about the effectiveness of agile software development processes, particularly considering the Scrum environment. This study aims to learn about the metrics adopted to assess agile development processes and explore the impact of how the role performed by each member in Scrum contributed to increasing/reducing the perception of the importance of these metrics. The impact of years of experience in Scrum on this perception was also explored. To this end, a quantitative study was conducted with 191 Scrum professionals in companies based in Portugal. The results show that the Scrum role is not a determining factor, while individuals with more years of experience have a higher perception of the importance of metrics related to team performance. The same conclusion is observed for the business value metric of the product backlog and the percentage of test automation in the testing phase. The findings allow for extending the knowledge about Scrum project management processes and their teams, in addition to offering important insights into the implementation of metrics for software engineering companies that adopt Scrum. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although agile software development (ASD) has been adopted in the industry, requirements approaches for ASD still neglect non-functional requirements. Privacy has become a concern due to new user demands and data protection laws. Hence, privacy needs to be properly specified, but agile requirements engineering techniques do not explicitly represent privacy requirements and, therefore, are not able to proper analyze such requirements. In this context, Privacy Criteria Method (PCM), an approach to specify privacy in requirements activities, was proposed to produce more complete and detailed privacy requirements. By considering PCM a promising approach to be used in ASD and the importance of empirical evaluation of new methods, we have as objectives: 1 evaluate the ability of PCM to support systems analysts in specifying privacy requirements when used in conjunction with some agile specification methods; and 2 show our lessons learned in conducting empirical research based on an mix-method approach defined to empirically evaluate the suitability of a requirements specification in specifying privacy requirements. Mixed-method approach is a controlled experiment as a quantitative evaluation and a feasibility study (questionnaire and task analysis based) study as a qualitative and quantitative evaluation. The requirements specifications following PCM allow to represent privacy aspects, such as user's personal data and the privacy mechanism that can be used to mitigate a privacy risk scenario. We also observed that some extra time is necessary to specify privacy requirements with PCM, but it does not imply a greater perceived effort. Specifications produced with PCM are of good quality and more privacy detailed. Additionally, we attest to the importance of conducting empirical research to evaluate new methods. PCM assists in specifying more complete and detailed in relation to traditional techniques used in ASD, which facilitates communication between the requirements analysts and developers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Agility gives the ability to be highly responsive to changes and make improvements in the way the agile project is documented. The just-in-time and just barely good enough documentation may miss out on important executable specifications. Interestingly, the frequently asked 'how-to-do' questions on the popular question answering (Q&A) websites like stack overflow are strong indicators of gaps in documentation and respondent answers can complement conventional software documentation practices. Social interaction within these QA websites generates partially structured content commonly referred to as crowd knowledge that can offer a peer-reviewed re-documentation by integrating the answers of these 'how-to-do' concerns. But finding the best, value-added answer to the question which can contribute toward an enriched and curated documentation is computationally difficult. Moreover, query duplicates can cause seekers to spend more time finding these best answers. As a solution, the research proffers a novel question-answering crowd documentation model (QACDoc) which is based on a socially mediated documentation mechanics involving the dynamics of community-based web. Firstly, duplicate questions are detected using Siamese neural architecture where two identical hierarchical attention networks are used to generate vectors for similarity matching. Semantic matching is done using Manhattan distance function, and a multi-layer perceptron is trained to output the predictions. Next, all respondents of semantically matched questions are grouped to form an intent-based crowd and lastly, top k-experts are identified using representative social presence features for expert ranking. The crowd documentation is then filtered to only include answers of these identified experts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As various estimation methods are available to predict the completion time of requirements at earlier phase of software development. Function point analysis used to estimate the efforts required to develop the traditional project on time. Now industries are moving to the agile technology to develop the project with involvement of customer. team member and tester as well. To advancement in the agile development the requirements are framed in the form of user stories. In today IT industries. essential view of agile is estimation methods are required to measure the user stories. Need of estimation method of agile through the implement of function point analysis for prediction. To improve the organization success. project completion needs to done on time. There is requirement of approach to find out the actual effort estimation of user story. In this paper. assignment of function point to user story is done and find out the effort estimation required to implement the user stories on the basis of different complexity weights. Initially. extract the "I want" section and obtain the number of transaction types (external inputs. external outputs and external inquires) on the basis of operational keywords appearance This proposed work computed UFR TDL VAR adjusted FP and efforts in hours on the basis of weights such as low, average. and high of IFPUG and the average by release 5 of ISBSG. The average complexity weight of the IFPUG and the average of release 5 of the 1SBSG are the key parameters for the comparison perspective. The outcome of the proposed work provides the adjusted FP and effort estimation in hours. In order to predict effort required. the interpolated values of effort estimation is calculated using Lagrange's interpolation. Both outcomes give the usage of FPA through IFPUG and ISBSG to estimate the effort so that the completion of project on time. Function point analysis on agile user story is used to improve the organization success. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Saturation pressure is one the most important parameters required for describing a hydrocarbon reservoir. The determination of saturation pressure using conventional laboratory method is expensive and time consuming; hence, it is necessary to develop agile, easy and accurate saturation pressure prediction methods. The application of machine learning techniques for determination of saturation pressure for any fluid type has been shown in this study; no such work has been reported in this area so far. Four machine learning techniques namely K-Nearest Neighbor (KNN), Support vector machine (SVM), Light Gradient Boosting Machine (LGBM) and artificial neural network (ANN) were utilized. A universal novel correlation has also been developed using ANN. Models were developed utilizing experimentally determined composition of 305 reservoir oil and gas condensate, properties of heptane plus and reservoir temperature. Results concluded that models and proposed correlation predicted saturation pressure with high accuracy. Results indicated that the LGBM model has performed better with coefficient of determination (R2) and mean absolute error (MAE) values of 0.9655 and 194.3887, respectively, for complete data set. However, the ANN model was the most accurate model with R2 and MAE values of 0.9507 and 271.8008, respectively, for test data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: The induction of anesthesia in children poses a challenge for the anesthesiologist, the parent and child. Anxiety and negative behaviours and strategies that effectively mitigate should be documented accurately and be available for future patient encounters. To address the need for a structured and standardized electronic documentation tool. Aims: Our aim was to develop a comprehensive electronic tool to capture and report behaviours during induction of anesthesia. Methods: We performed a literature search on existing validated tools for documenting behaviours during anesthesia induction. We used the nominal group technique to achieve agreement on the components to include. We used Agile software development techniques to design and review the integrated electronic tool. Twelve international hospitals informed the development of the tool. Results: We developed an electronic tool, the Standardized Anesthesia InductioN Tool (SAINT). SAINT incorporates validated scales for documenting key stages of the anesthesia induction journey (separation from caregivers, mask acceptance, induction behaviour, parental presence, the use of adjuncts and their effectiveness). In addition, the standardised data elements used in SAINT allow for local reporting, quality metrics and can assist in data across multi‐centre trials. To date the tool has been adopted by 133 institutions across four countries and is freely available. Conclusion: We show that collaborative development and rapid adoption of the comprehensive induction tool SAINT has led to its rapid adoption in the routine practice of pediatric anesthesiology across several countries. Further studies on how the SAINT is being used for quality improvement or research are warranted. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mentoring and coaching have many forms and formats. Choosing the right one is often challenging because of cost, delays on program launch, concerns with adoption, participation and capacity, overall readiness of mentors, prioritization and how it fits the company's objectives and culture. As part of talent development, organizational solutions, productivity and automations teams, which aim to develop mentor-mentee (coach-coached) matching engine and overall business process automation of a mentorship program, we had to identify the key deliverables, main features, evaluate existing solutions and then design, develop and operate the system. In this paper we present the in-house development process of a mentoring program software solution, its architecture and operations in trivago from 2018 until 2020 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Context: The complexity of modern economic processes, along with the pressure from competition, the increasing client expectations and the need to introduce changes in the course of project implementation have led to a great interest in agile management methods. Therefore, the answer the question whether the implementation of an agile approach to project management can contribute to the project success is gaining relevance in a changing and inconsistent environment. Objective: This study attempts to answer the question which aspects of agility and in what manner can influence the final outcome of project work? The underlying objective of the study was to identify the conditions and success factors of implemented projects. Method: This paper presents the results of a survey conducted in companies in ICT sector. For this purpose, a number of reports and materials provided by organisations and associations dealing with project management issues, in particular ICT projects, were analysed, complemented with data obtained from statistical offices and financial institutions. For the purposes of the own study, an original questionnaire was developed to identify critical factors for project success, in particular the defined agile components. Results: On the basis of the conducted survey it can be concluded that the presence and high level agility is conducive to successful projects. It is the high level of agility supporting project activities that is essential for success. Of no less importance are the people and interactions between them, as well as self-organising teams. They are crucial for a positive evaluation of the project activities. Conclusions: Identification of the relationship between selected agility components and project success components allowed recommendations for solutions and attitudes that increase the chances of success in project management to be formulated. The synergy of individual agile components applied that increases the chances for project success. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Crowdsourcing is an emerging approach in software development, where software is developed by unknown, heterogeneous people around the globe, via an open call by the employer. Crowdsourcing, when used with agile, faces challenges because of the different development methodologies. Agile development methodology has practices that involve face-to-face frequent interaction, whereas crowdsourcing is a distributed development with no or limited face-to-face interaction. Both concepts are actively being used in the software development industry due to their benefits. However, there is a need to explore the integration of both methodologies for an effective and efficient software development. In this regard, the first step is to identify the challenges of integrating crowdsourcing and agile. In this paper, we intend to identify the possible challenges that may be faced while executing agile along with crowdsourcing. For this, we have conducted a Systematic Literature Review. Five main categories of challenges are presented which are: team issues, coordination and communication issues, organizational issues, project-related issues and task-related issues. A list of possible challenges of Agile–Crowd Software Development (ACSD) is presented in this study. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Early effort estimation is important for efficiently planning the use of resources in an Information Technology (IT) project. However, limited research has been conducted on the topic of effort estimation in agile software development using artificial intelligence. This research project contributes to strengthening the use of hybrid models composed of algorithmic models and learning oriented techniques as a project-level effort estimation method in agile frameworks. Effort estimation in agile methods such as Scrum uses a story point approach that measures, using an arithmetic scale, the effort required to complete a release of the system. This project relied on labeled historical data to estimate the completion time measured in days and the total cost of a project set in Pakistani rupees (PKR). using a decision tree, random forest and AdaBoost to improve the accuracy of predictions. Models were trained using 10-fold cross-validation and the relative error was used as a comparison with literature results. The bootstrap aggregation (bagging) ensemble made of the three techniques provides the highest accuracy, and project classification also improves the estimates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Computation intelligence techniques are important for making decisions in an agile-based offshore software development paradigm. Offshore development faces additional challenges, such as trust, communication and coordination, and socio-cultural and knowledge transfer. There is a need to determine the rankings of challenges considering their criticality concerning practitioners working in agile-based offshore software development. This paper aims to identify and rank agile challenges in offshore software development by applying computational intelligence techniques. From the systematic literature review, we identified 30 communication and coordination challenges. The distributed agile pattern catalog consists of 15 patterns, from which eight were used to solve communication and collaboration challenges. Many researchers have used fuzzy logic to quantify their results. We further applied the fuzzy analytical technique to determine the priority order concerning the criticality of the identified agile pattern catalog. The results showed that Central Code Repository Pattern ranked the most significant for solving communication and coordination challenges. Global Scrum Board Pattern and Synchronous Communication Pattern ranked second. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Daily stand-up meetings (DSMs) are the most popular technique in agile methodologies and are deemed crucial for communication among the individual agile software developers to perform. Only a handful of studies in the past have shown the effect of the characteristics of DSMs on the attitude of agile developers. Little is known about how agile developers experience DSMs in their roles as junior/senior developers, and what feelings evoke these experiences. The purpose of this study was to describe and interpret agile developers' lived experiences with DSMs in their diverse roles. We conducted a hermeneutic phenomenological study with 19 professional agile developers. The lived experiences across the interviews revealed as an interaction between four categories: rationalising irrelevancy of DSMs, experiencing challenges with DSMs, conflicted opinion on the advantages of DSMs, and finding solutions. Developers experienced DSMs were too short to facilitate clear problem identification, or solve problems, or have a meaningful outcome. Senior developers experienced DSMs differently than junior developers in terms of sharing information, interest in other's work, monitoring progress, and facilitating decision making. Based on these findings, we discuss the theoretical contributions of our study, and offer recommendations for practitioners. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Today, the economic crisis is putting enormous pressure on most organizations. It evolves in a crucial competitive environment with a multiplication of production cycles and implementation on the market. Due to this dynamism, organizations must be scalable and agile by adopting an approach that aims to make the process model of a given organization reusable. Indeed, according to the new paradigm which is called "Design by reuse" the models of configurable processes, gain recently in importance since these models have the capacity to represent explicitly the common parts and variables of identical processes in a customizable model. These configurable process which group several execution choices through a variation point called configurable connector will present an uncertainty related to the execution (or not) of the conditional tasks in a process model. In this paper, we propose a measure based on Shannon's entropy in order to model the uncertainty of the process at design time to guide configurable business process designers and analysts in developing and improving processes to be more predictable, less complex, and more understandable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With years of frantic development, when release fast and release often was the mandatory rule for web technologies and services, the open source paradigm and online distribution repositories have imposed de facto standards for quality assessment in fast‐paced innovation processes. Nowadays, however, in pursuit of productivity, security, and user satisfaction, the industry is beginning, through the introduction of new standards such as ECMAScript 6 or web components, to consider software engineering mandates for web technologies. This article reports a quality model aligned with international standard ISO/IEC 25010, covering web components technology, which ultimately aims to improve adoption by the software engineering industry, traditionally wary of agile Internet practices, the open source paradigm, and public repositories. Our research also presents an experimentation platform on which end users have validated the quality properties, highlighting the implicit connection with the perceived quality. The key result of our research convinces us that user ratings are suitable as a testing mechanism for product quality and quality‐in‐use metrics in order to define an absolute scale of comparison for web component quality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Frequency hopping spread spectrum (FHSS) applies widely to communication and radar systems to ensure communication information and channel signal quality by tuning frequency within a wide frequency range in a random sequence. An efficient signal processing scheme to resolve the timing and duration signature from an FHSS signal provides crucial information for signal detection and radio band management purposes. In this research, hopping time was first identified by a two-dimensional temporal correlation function (TCF). The timing information was shown at TCF phase discontinuities. To enhance and resolve the timing signature of TCF in a noisy environment, three stages of signature enhancement and morphological matching processes were applied: first, computing the TCF of the FHSS signal and enhancing discontinuities via wavelet transform; second, a dual-diagonal edge finding scheme to extract the timing pattern signature and eliminate mismatching distortion morphologically; finally, Hough transform resolved the agile frequency timing from purified line segments. A grand-scale Monte Carlo simulation of the FHSS signals with additive white Gaussian noise was carried out in the research. The results demonstrated reliable hopping time estimation obtained in SNR at 0 dB and above, with a minimal false detection rate of 1.79%, while the prior related research had an unattended false detection rate of up to 35.29% in such a noisy environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To protect New Zealand's unique ecosystems and primary industries, imported plant materials must be constantly monitored at the border for high-threat pathogens. Techniques adopted for this purpose must be robust, accurate, rapid, and sufficiently agile to respond to new and emerging threats. Polymerase chain reaction (PCR), especially real-time PCR, remains an essential diagnostic tool but it is now being complemented by high-throughput sequencing using both Oxford Nanopore and Illumina technologies, allowing unbiased screening of whole populations. The demand for and value of Point-of-Use (PoU) technologies, which allow for in situ screening, are also increasing. Isothermal PoU molecular diagnostics based on recombinase polymerase amplification (RPA) and loop-mediated amplification (LAMP) do not require expensive equipment and can reach PCR-comparable levels of sensitivity. Recent advances in PoU technologies offer opportunities for increased specificity, accuracy, and sensitivities which makes them suitable for wider utilization by frontline or border staff. National and international activities and initiatives are adopted to improve both the plant virus biosecurity infrastructure and the integration, development, and harmonization of new virus diagnostic technologies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nowadays, Internet applications with different network resource requirements have been growing exponentially; therefore, the network equipment needs to be configured consistently based on application resource requirements. In this paper, Software Defined Network (SDN) is used to make the network more programmable, flexible and agile to develop the proposed model. Flow discrimination and optimized resource allocation are significant and challenging items in providing the required network resources for each flow. In this paper, we propose a model composed of (1) network flows' types discriminator and (2) the optimized resource allocation based on the flow classes. The applications are clustered into four groups according to the network resource requirements, and a deep network traffic discriminator is used for classification. The greedy algorithm is also used for optimized resource allocation. The proposed model is developed in Mininet with a Pox controller to prove Quality of Service (QoS) improvement paralleled with maximized utilization. The simulation results show that the proposed model has intelligent behaviour in network resource allocation based on flows' requirements compared to Spanning Tree Protocol (STP) and Dynamic and Adaptive Multipath Routing (DAMR) while maximizing the network utilization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Throughout the evolution of software systems, empirical methodologies have been used in their development process, even in the Internet of Things (IoT) paradigm, to develop IoT-based systems (IoTS). In this paper, we review the fundamentals included in the manifesto for agile software development, especially in the Scrum methodology, to determine its use and role in IoTS development. Initially, 4303 documents were retrieved, a number that was reduced to 186 after applying automatic filters and by the relevance of their titles. After analysing their contents, only 60 documents were considered. Of these, 38 documents present the development of an IoTS using some methodology, 8 present methodologies focused on the construction of IoTS software, and 14 present methodologies close to the systems life cycle (SLC). Finally, only one methodology can be considered SLC-compliant. Out of 38 papers presenting the development of some IoTS following a methodology for traditional information systems (ISs), 42.1% have used Scrum as the only methodology, while 10.5% have used Scrum combined with other methodologies, such as eXtreme Programming (XP), Kanban and Rapid Prototyping. In the analysis presented herein, the existing methodologies for developing IoTSs have been grouped according to the different approaches on which they are based, such as agile, modelling, and service oriented. This study also analyses whether the different proposals consider the standard stages of the development process or not: planning and requirements gathering, solution analysis, solution design, solution coding and unit testing (construction), integration and testing (implementation), and operation and maintenance. In addition, we include a review of the automated frameworks, platforms, and tools used in the methodologies analysed to improve the development of IoTSs and the design of their underlying architectures. To conclude, the main contribution of this work is a review for IoTS researchers and developers regarding existing methodologies, frameworks, platforms, tools, and guidelines for the development of IoTSs, with a deep analysis framed within international standards dictated for this purpose. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: The SingHealth-Duke-GlaxoSmithKline COPD and Asthma Real-world Evidence (SDG-CARE) collaboration was formed to accelerate the use of Singaporean real-world evidence in research and clinical care. A centerpiece of the collaboration was to develop a near real-time database from clinical and operational data sources to inform healthcare decision making and research studies on asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). Methods: Our multidisciplinary team, including clinicians, epidemiologists, data scientists, medical informaticians and IT engineers, adopted the hybrid waterfall-agile project management methodology to develop the SingHealth COPD and Asthma Data Mart (SCDM). The SCDM was developed within the organizational data warehouse. It pulls and maps data from various information systems using extract, transform and load (ETL) pipelines. Robust user testing and data verification was also performed to ensure that the business requirements were met and that the ETL pipelines were valid. Results: The SCDM includes 199 data elements relevant to asthma and COPD. Data verification was performed and found the SCDM to be reliable. As of December 31, 2019, the SCDM contained 36,407 unique patients with asthma and COPD across the spectrum from primary to tertiary care in our healthcare system. The database updates weekly to add new data of existing patients and to include new patients who fulfil the inclusion criteria. Conclusions: The SCDM was systematically developed and tested to support the use RWD for clinical and health services research in asthma and COPD. This can serve as a platform to provide research and operational insights to improve the care delivered to our patients. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: The SingHealth-Duke-GlaxoSmithKline COPD and Asthma Real-world Evidence (SDG-CARE) collaboration was formed to accelerate the use of Singaporean real-world evidence in research and clinical care. A centerpiece of the collaboration was to develop a near real-time database from clinical and operational data sources to inform healthcare decision making and research studies on asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). Methods: Our multidisciplinary team, including clinicians, epidemiologists, data scientists, medical informaticians and IT engineers, adopted the hybrid waterfall-agile project management methodology to develop the SingHealth COPD and Asthma Data Mart (SCDM). The SCDM was developed within the organizational data warehouse. It pulls and maps data from various information systems using extract, transform and load (ETL) pipelines. Robust user testing and data verification was also performed to ensure that the business requirements were met and that the ETL pipelines were valid. Results: The SCDM includes 199 data elements relevant to asthma and COPD. Data verification was performed and found the SCDM to be reliable. As of December 31, 2019, the SCDM contained 36,407 unique patients with asthma and COPD across the spectrum from primary to tertiary care in our healthcare system. The database updates weekly to add new data of existing patients and to include new patients who fulfil the inclusion criteria. Conclusions: The SCDM was systematically developed and tested to support the use RWD for clinical and health services research in asthma and COPD. This can serve as a platform to provide research and operational insights to improve the care delivered to our patients. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In software development, documentation is a continuous process that specifies what the system does, how it does it, and for whom it does it, describing all its characteristics from different perspectives in order to facilitate the understanding of all the interested parties. However, this is not always achieved due to poor documentation practices, leading to a type of technical debt known as documentation debt, which is related to missing, inconsistent, or incomplete documentation that degrades the understanding of the system, severely affecting its development, maintenance, and evolution. This phenomenon seems to be aggravated in agile approaches, either due to a misunderstanding of agile values and principles by focusing on the continuous delivery of functional software rather than comprehensive documentation, or a lack of good documentation practices. Although there are initiatives that generally describe the causes, effects, and good practices to mitigate documentation debt, it is still necessary to understand the impact of this type of debt on the software industry and to delve into a more complete definition in agile software development. In this sense, the results of a systematic mapping are presented, which provide a solid base of knowledge about documentation debt in agile software development and allow identifying gaps or research opportunities in this topic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article offers information on the importance of project management in library and information science, noting its increasing recognition as a valuable skill for librarians. Topics include the adoption of project management principles in academic libraries, differences between libraries and businesses in project management practices, and challenges faced by libraries in implementing project management.

As part of agile methodologies seen in the past few years, IT organizations have continuously adopted new practices in their software delivery life-cycle to improve both efficiency and effectiveness of development teams. Two of these practices are continuous integration and continuous deployment, which are part of the DevOps cycle which has helped organizations build software effectively and efficiently. These practices must be considered for new technologies such as smart contracts, where security concerns and bugs might cost more once deployed than traditional software. This paper states the importance of using a proper DevOps routine and how it is possible to apply this practice to a smart contract build. Specifically, this paper introduces a framework to implement DevOps for smart contracts development by describing multiple DevOps tools and their applicability to smart contract development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Context-- Making effort estimation as accurate and suitable for software development projects becomes a fundamental stage to favor its success, which is a difficult task, since the application of these techniques in constant changing agile development projects raises the need to evaluate different methods frequently. Objectives-- The objective of this study is to provide a state of the art on techniques of effort estimation in Agile Software Development (ASD), performance evaluation and the drawbacks that arise in its application. Methodology-- A systematic mapping was developed involving the creation of research questions to provide a layout of this study, analysis of related words for the implementation of a search query to obtain related studies, application of exclusion, inclusion, and quality criteria to filter nonrelated studies and finally the organization and extraction of the necessary information from each study. Results-- 25 studies were selected; the main findings are: the most applied estimation techniques in agile contexts are: Estimation of Story Points (SP) followed by Planning Poker (PP) and Expert Judgment (EJ). The most frequent solutions supported in computational techniques such as: Naive Bayes, Regression Algorithms and Hybrid System; also, the performance evaluation measures Mean Magnitude of Relative Error (MMRE), Prediction Assessment (PRED) and Mean Absolute Error (MAE) have been found to be the most commonly used. Additionally, parameters such as feasibility, experience, and the delivery of expert knowledge, as well as the constant particularity and lack of data in the process of creating models to be applied to a limited number of environments are the challenges that arise the most when estimating software in Agile Software Development (ASD). Conclusions-- It has been found there is an increase in the number of articles that address effort estimation in agile development, however, it becomes evident the need to improve the accuracy of the estimation by using estimation techniques supported in machine learning that have been shown to facilitate and improve the performance of this. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction. Several authors practice and disseminate good practices related to interactivity and agile, and from different areas and disciplines, as part of their activities, but few integrate them to develop projects. Objective. This paper presents the results of a review in which the level of dissemination of good practices related to these areas and those proposed for structuring, designing, and evaluating interactive content are investigated. Method. To conduct reliable literature reviews, it is necessary to build an initial protocol in which the research methodology is structured. Results. The final sample is made up of 100 works distributed mainly among articles, presentations at events, and online contributions. It was found that 47 % of the researchers publish about good practices to indicate an area or discipline of application, while 21 % describe them from interactivity and 24 % from agile. Conclusions. Furthermore, the good practices found are the result of personal experiences, not general validations, which makes it impossible to conclude whether they are really good. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The market for electric bicycles has grown extremely and developed rapidly in recent years. To enter such a market with a new product, the development process has to be fast, and throughout the process, feedback from future potential customer(s) should be sought in order to achieve the best possible market acceptance. The article presents the design process of a pedelec e-bike central drive system. The authors were members of the development team and the designers of the mechanical transmission, and therefore had a good overview of the whole project. The development process and the set-up of production require a certain amount of time, during which design changes are inevitable due to changes in customer expectations and demands. The development team should respond to these changes and take them into account during development. Only the ability to react to changes and constant communication with the customer will ultimately lead to a product that can be commercially successful. Based on a critical review of the successfully completed project, general guidelines were established for the development of mechatronic products that consider the principles of Agile methodology. Particular attention was paid to the development of polymer gears, as these were the most demanding components in the system. The presented guidelines were based on an overview of the e-bike R&D process presented, but they can be generalized and used in the development process of any technical physical product. Agile methods were developed in the field of software development and therefore cannot be directly transferred to the field of physical product development. The article highlights and discusses individual special features that distinguish agile development of physical products from software development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Implementation of agile technology and its effects on individuals, the environment, technology, and manufacturing factors are the focus of this study, with a special focus on agile technology's moderating effect. Consequently, this study investigates a unique conceptual framework to extend the notions of agile technology implementation to address this research gap. This conceptual framework has been subjected to empirical testing, with 380 population-representative employees serving as participants. This study establishes the inclusion requirements for Iraqi oil and gas (O&G) firms. Using a self-administered questionnaire, data are collected and analyzed using structural equation modeling partial least squares. The finding shows that there are various factors that have a positive effect on O&G companies in Iraq. The implementation of agile technology also has a partially significant positive moderating effect on these factors, indicating that agile technology can amplify the positive impact of these factors. This can lead to profits and the ability for companies to achieve long-term goals and a competitive advantage in the business environment while achieving sustainability in the O&G field. These findings are significant, as they suggest that the implementation of agile technology can have a positive impact on the O&G industry in Iraq, leading to long-term sustainability and profitability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aim/Purpose Using the Agile Adoption Framework (AAF), this study aims to examine the agile potential of software development companies in Nepal based on their agile maturity level. In addition, this study also examines the impact of various basic agile practices in determining the maturity level of the agile processes being implemented in the software industry of Nepal. Background Even if most organizations in the software sector utilize agile development strategies, it is essential to evaluate their performance. Nepal's software industry did not adopt agile techniques till 2014. The Nepalese industry must always adapt to new developments and discover ways to make software development more efficient and beneficial. The population of the study consists of 1,500 and 2,000 employees of software companies in Nepal implementing agile techniques. Methodology The sample size considered was 150 employees working in software companies in Nepal. However, only 106 respondents responded after three follow-ups. The sample was collected with purposive sampling. A questionnaire was developed to gain information on Customer Adaptive, Customer Collaboration, Continuous Delivery, Human Centric, and Technical Excellence related to agile practices along with the Agile Maturity Level. Contribution This research contributes to the understanding of agile practices adopted in software companies in developing countries like Nepal. It also reveals the determinants of the agility of software companies in developing countries. Findings The results suggest that some of the basic principles of agile have a very significant role in Agile Maturity Level in the Nepali context. In the context of Nepal, human-centered practices have a very high level of correlation, which plays a vital role as a major predictor of the agile maturity level. In addition, Technical Excellence is the variable that has the highest level of association with the Agile Maturity Level, making it the most significant predictor of this quality. Recommendations for Practitioners As Nepali software companies are mostly offshore or serve outsourcing companies, there is a very thin probability of Nepali developers being able to interact with actual clients and this might be one of the reasons for the Nepali industry not relying on Customer Adaptation and Collaboration as major factors of the Agile methodologies. Continuous Delivery, on the other hand, has a significant degree of correlation with Agile Maturity Level. Human-centric practices have a very high level of correlation as well as being a major predictor in determining the Agile Maturity Level in the context of Nepal. Technical Excellence is the most significant predictor and the variable which has the highest level of correlation with Agile Maturity Level. Practitioners should mainly focus on technical excellence as well as human-centric practices to achieve a higher level of Agile Maturity. Recommendations for Researchers There has not been any such research in the Nepali context that anyone could rely on, to deep dive into their organizational concerns regarding agile strategies and plans. Researchers will need to focus on a more statistical approach with data-driven solutions to the issues related to people and processes. Researchers will need to cover freelancers as well as academics to get a different perspective on what can be the better practices to achieve a higher level of agile maturity. Impact on Society This study on Agile work is accessible not only to the software industry but also to the general public. The Agile technique has had a huge impact on society's project management. It has revolutionized how teams approach project planning, development, and execution. The paper's findings will further information regarding the Agile methodology, which emphasizes collaboration and communication, fosters teamwork and higher quality work, and promotes the exchange of knowledge, ideas, and the pursuit of common goals. Future Research Owing to the limitations of this study, it is necessary to analyze agile practices in the Nepalese software sector using additional factors that influence agile maturity. The conclusion that years of agile experience do not serve as a balancing factor for both agile practices and the Agile Maturity Level requires additional research. Whether a software outsourcing firm or not, the organization type had no bearing on the degree of maturity of agile methods; this leaves space for further research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Experience shows that Agile project management tools such as Atlassian Jira capture the state of EAS projects by relying solely on expert judgement that is not supported by any knowledge model. Therefore, the assessment of project content against strategic objectives and business domain features are not supported by any tool. This is one of the reasons why Agile project management still does not provide sufficient EAS project delivery results. In order to address this problem, the Enterprise Application Software (EAS) development using Agile project management is summarized in a conceptual model. The model highlights the knowledge used and indicates its nature (empirical or causal digitized). The modified Agile management process we have developed and described in previous works is based on causal knowledge models that supports EAS development and Agile management processes. The purpose of this article is to specify knowledge repository to ensure the Agile management solutions of an EAS project are aligned with strategic goals and business domain causality. It is worth noticing that strategic goals have been identified and specified as capabilities using some enterprise architecture framework (NAF, MODAF, ArchiMate, etc.). The novelty of the proposed method is incorporating the business domain causal knowledge modelling approach into the Agile project management process. The causal knowledge unit is considered as a Management Transaction (MT), which includes closed loop dependence of its components. The modified Agile activity hierarchy (theme, initiative, epic, user story) defines the required content of their mutual interactions. An important new results obtained are the conceptual model of causal knowledge base (KB) and specification of enhanced Agile management tool components: project management database and project state assesment knowledge base. Causal KB includes specification of causal knowledge unit (MT metamodel) and specifications of traditional and causal Agile hierarchy meta-models. These conceptual models define the causal knowledge components necessary to evaluate the state of Agile activities in the EAS development project using intelligent Agile project management tool. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Agile methodologies are sometimes adopted, with the assumption that benefits can be attained by only using a set of best practices, which can sometimes work to a degree. In this paper, a case is discussed where a software‐producing organization of seven teams achieved significant improvements. The goal of the research was to answer two questions: how an already agile organization could improve its performance further and what is the impact of promoting quality aspects? The questions were answered by implementing interventions based on prior literature and data emerging from semi‐structured interviews. The context was an established business with a complex revenue stream structure, meaning the mix of various project/service/product based work rendered the adoption of agile methods a challenge. Action research comprising three rounds of interventions was conducted to improve the organization and its quality culture while enforcing code review practices. Interventions resulted in a significant improvement in quality, as measured by reported defects. Therefore, it is suggested that agile methods are not sufficient on their own to take software business forward unless a quality‐focused culture is simultaneously achieved through a mindset change and organizational structures to enforce quality practices. The paper contributes to research on the managerial practices of software business and agile transformation by providing empirical support to introducing formal quality improvement to the agile mix as a method for practitioners to improve organizations with complex business models and multiple teams. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the use of model-based code generation and its limitations. While there have been successful industrial projects that have used code generation from abstract models, the widespread adoption of code generation from explicitly defined models has not been as successful. The article identifies several challenges, including developers' ability to think in abstract form, the limitations of existing tooling, the need for flexible adaptation of the generator, and weak tool support for defining abstraction levels in a model. The article suggests that a "smart" generator could address these challenges by generating code for various functionalities, such as data transportation, user interfaces, logging, and search functionality. However, the article acknowledges that current code generators are not yet capable of such smartness and that more work is needed in this area. [Extracted from the article]

Modern software development requires agile methods to deploy and scale increasingly demanded distributed systems. Practitioners have adopted the microservices architecture to cope with the challenges posed by modern software demands. However, the adoption and deployment of this architecture also creates technical and organizational challenges, potentially slowing down the development and operation teams, which require more time and effort to implement a quality deployment process that allows them to constantly release new features to production. The adoption of a DevOps culture, along with its practices and tools, alleviates some of these new challenges. In this paper we propose a guide for the deployment of systems with a microservices architecture, considering the practices of a DevOps culture, providing practitioners with a base path to start implementing the necessary platform for this architecture. We conducted this work following the Design Science Research Methodology for Information Systems (DSRM). In this way, we identified the problem, and also defined the solution objectives through the execution of a Systematic Literature Mapping and a Gray Literature Review, having as a result the proposed guide. This work can be summarized as follows: (I) Identification of practices and technologies that support the deployment of microservices. (II) Identification of recommendations, challenges, and best practices for the deployment process. (III) Modeling of the microservices deployment process using SPEM. (IV) Integration of the knowledge in a guide to deploying microservices by adopting DevOps practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scrum is one of many agile frameworks and is considered the most popular and widely adopted. Although Scrum presents several advantages, process and final product quality continue to be Scrum's main challenges. The quality assessment should be an essential activity in the software development process. Several authors have attempted to improve the quality of Scrum projects, changing some aspects of the framework, such as including new quality practices, a quality role, and quality processes. However, the quantification of quality is still a challenge. For that reason, the authors proposed a framework called Scrumlity, which was defined in a previous study. This framework proposes a change to Scrum, including a quality role and some artifacts to evaluate quality through a complete execution of a Sprint. In this study, the authors add a User Story Quality assessment to the framework. The User Story Quality Assessment includes over 250 analyzed User Stories. Results obtained after this experiment indicate the importance of executing a User Story Quality Assessment and that Scrum Team members are willing to accept adding this to the framework. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]