Search

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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 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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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 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]

Scrum is one of the most used frameworks for agile software development because of its potential improvements in productivity, quality, and client satisfaction. Academia has also focussed on teaching Scrum practices to prepare students to face common software engineering challenges and facilitate their insertion in professional contexts. Furthermore, advances in learning technologies currently offer many virtual learning environments to enhance learning in many ways. Their capability to consider the individual learner preferences has led a shift to more personalised training approaches, requiring that the environments adapt themselves to the learner. We propose an adaptive approach for training developers in Scrum, including an adaptive virtual learning environment based on Felder's learning style theory. Although still preliminary, our findings show that students who used the environment and received instruction matching their preferences obtained sightly higher learning gains than students who received a different instruction than the one they preferred. We also noticed less variability in the learning gains of students who received instruction matching their preferences. The relevance of this work goes beyond the impact on learning gains since it describes how adaptive virtual learning environments can be used in the domain of Software Engineering. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: Digital transformations of business processes are on the rise and the result is a need for a better understanding of how the elements of intellectual capital (IC) play a role in achieving successful digital project outcomes. New structural capital in the form of digital technologies must be identified and understood. Evolving skills of human capital in assimilating digital elements must also be considered, while collaboration within the development process involving relational capital provides a critical integration among these IC elements. This study illustrates the importance of identifying and managing the integration of IC components within an agile project management framework that are essential to achieving success for a digital initiative. More specifically, this study describes the process by which a multinational technology-based products company successfully developed a dynamic decision support platform utilizing an agile approach to guide a project management team to better manage the company's operations. Design/methodology/approach: This study focuses on a case analysis approach of a multinational commercial and consumer products company. The paper presents existing research on the evolving state of project management for digital initiatives and focuses on agile methods. This study then delves into the case analysis that illustrates how IC played an integral role in the company successfully developing effective decision support involving an interactive dashboard using agile Project Management (PM), which enabled the project management team to better manage resources. Findings: An examination at the case level illustrates that effective management and integration of IC has positive effects on project outcomes. While a balanced approach is evident as a requirement, the unique characteristics of the agile project management approach entails greater emphasis on select elements to adapt to a more dynamic development process. Originality/value: This work depicts the complexities in providing analytic-based decision support in an agile/flexible project management scenario. This work adds to existing research by illustrating elements within IC categories and the elements' interdependencies that play an essential role in achieving success in this more flexible project environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study provides empirical evidence to the body of knowledge in Agile methods adoption in small, medium, and large organizations in the global context. This research explores facilitators and inhibitors of Agile methods adoption in software development organizations. A survey was conducted among Agile professionals to gather survey data from 52 software organizations in seven countries across the world. This study found many facilitators of Agile adoption to be significant such as customers' dominant issues, encouragement, project champion, highly competent team, use of tools, etc. Similarly a correlation analysis revealed multiple inhibitors as significant: absence of a full set of right Agile practices, absence of customer presence, absence of tracking mechanisms during Agile progress, and failure to determine the role of the client. The present study identifies that an Agile team with high expertise and competence leads to higher quality in software, customer satisfaction along with return on investment (ROI) while a small Agile team increases ease in handling changing requirements, customer satisfaction, reduced delivery time, and increased ROI. Frequent delivery accelerates better control over work, adds to software quality, customer satisfaction, and in shortening delivery time along with increase ROI. It has also been observed that providing essential features early leads to increase in software quality and customer satisfaction. This study confirms that active customer focus leads to better control over work. Further, absence of customer decreases dealing with changing requirements, and customer satisfaction while absence of progress tracking lowers customer satisfaction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Exploring spatial and temporal audience behavior around ambient displays is an important area of HCI research. It aids in, for instance, understanding better user appropriation in natural environments. However, there are only a few tools to capture said behavior, and simultaneously, little knowledge of the space around ambient display installations exists. In this research, we report on audience behavior observed during an in-the-wild study where we deployed our custom Ambient Surfaces solution in a professional, large-scale agile software development context for circa 5 years. Across 18 weeks in 2017, we collected skeletal data with two Microsoft Kinect v2 cameras resulting in behavior information of more than 30,000 passersby. Our results indicate, among others, that users did show the highest levels of engagement at quite some distance to the Ambient Surfaces and that people engaging in direct interaction did so rather purposely. Ultimately, this article encapsulates our research's originality in four contributions including an approach to separate passersby from real users and an in-depth exploration of skeletal data. With the tools and methods illustrated, we hope to demonstrate manifold insights for future research on audience behavior tracking. [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]

The object of research in the article is the process of testing and operating software with cost minimization. In the Software Development Life Cycle, depending on the chosen option of the flexible methodology, special attention is focused on testing software versions both in the process of passing iterations and in the process of releasing alpha, beta and production versions. This article is devoted to the problem of developing a method for software testing cost optimization method that estimates the test cost function and the losses cost function from the occurrence of an error. Using the optimization method (for example, the first-order descent method) from the two functions of testing costs and estimating the losses caused during operation, it is possible to calculate the optimal cost of testing and operating the software product. The results obtained show that with the correct assessment of a cost function and a loss function such calculations allow to significantly save money and time for the production of the next version of the software product. These results are explained by the fact that the method of optimizing the cost function finds the optimum point and allows to pre-estimate the budget and risks during the development and operation of the software. The article provides several examples of the calculation and optimization of testing costs within the proposed concept for one iteration in a flexible software development cycle. The results of the study can be used in practice, provided that the functions of estimating costs for testing and compensation for losses caused during the operation of the software are set correctly. Experienced managers and project supervisors determine these functions quite accurately for a certain number of iterations, which makes it possible to apply the method of finding the minimum budget costs for testing and operating a software product. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The major challenge of most basic schools is inadequate educational resources despite a conscious effort to constantly provide. This is a result of inaccurate data management leading to inappropriate predictions for effective planning. The actual efficiency of a system is determined by its ability to predict real-life data with speed and accuracy. In this work, the neural educational expert system (ES) is evaluated using mathematical models for predicting the availability of resources for the growing school-aged population using a criteria-based formative evaluation to know resource life and its effect on availability. This will help in the decision to add more resources by knowing when and how the resources should be added. Technical mathematical model generation through differential equations is used to fuse the factors affecting the availability of educational resources. The real-life data is used in prediction regarding the actual enrollment of learners and the availability of resources. The model is evaluated and critically analyzed to know the degree of accuracy and the steady state. The findings revealed that the resources decay and attrite at an exponential rate in the long run and the constant number of resources provided cannot cater for the rate of decay, resulting in inadequacy. A proposed algorithm for managing the resources is presented. Plain Language Summary: Purpose: The main aim of this work is to evaluate the agile neural educational system and find out the reasons behind the inadequate resources despite the effort to make resources adequate in schools. methods: methodology adopted is criteria-based formative evaluation using differential equations with initial value problem. conclusions: Inadequate educational resources affect the process of learning. Poor performance at the foundation affects higher levels of learning. Careful planning, provision, and management of educational resources can best be achieved by using the model to monitor the availability and provision of resources. This can be done through the careful control of two major factors; the addition of resources at regular intervals and good maintenance skills to reduce the decay of resources. This will minimize the cost of education which usually forms a major component of the budgets in countries. Going forward, it is prudent for the country to adopt this model to manage educational resources. implications: stakeholders of education will minimize the cost of education which usually forms a major component of the budgets in countries. Going forward, it is prudent for the country to adopt this model to manage educational resources. Limitations: this work is limited to resources in the form of physical quantities at the basic level of education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Lithium-ion cells (LIC) are emerging as the critical energy source in space applications for spacecraft. The analysis of the failure of small satellites reveals that 41.3% have either suffered partial or total failures in the space environment around Earth, resulting in the accumulation of debris. The defects in batteries caused more failures than thrusters. The present paper details a framework for ensuring the durability of LIC systems in space applications. It is discussed in three verticals viz. a) Durability through Design' that gives prominence to best practices in cell chemistry selection, processing and, design through parametric modelling; b) 'Durability through quality control and testing by the manufacturer and by identifying relevant reliability models; c)'On-orbit management' through the State of Health (SOH) assessment by Random Forest algorithm and a well-equipped intelligent Battery Management System (BMS). Lacuna in standards for cell development process is brought out. Importance of quantitative approach for design, reliability and asset management during space application is highlighted. Use of agile, contemporary techniques of artificial intelligence in this quantitative approach is also discussed. The framework tries to bring out a systematized protocol to be followed during the development and operational life cycle of LIC for ensuring highly reliable systems for space application. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The systematic design, building and implementation of IT services for on-premise, cloud-based or hybrid data centers are a hard engineering and managerial process. Heavyweight IT service design workflows—from ITIL v2011, CMMI-SVC v1.3 and the ISO/IEC 20000 standard—have been used in the last decade. However, the current dynamic business requirements demand to accelerate IT service design, building and implementation. Consequently, agile workflows—from ITIL v4 and VeriSM—or lightweight ones—from ISO/IEC 29110-4-3 standard and FitSM—have been proposed. However, despite these IT service design workflows provide high valuable content, they are still reported in a coarse-grain level, and thus academics and practitioners interested in using to them must add ad-hoc roles, activities-tasks, and artifacts-templates. In this research, we address this relevant knowledge gap, and using a Design Science Research Methodology (DSRM), we elaborate and evaluate exploratory an agile IT service design workflow—called AVS_FD_MVITS—that provides fine-grain content regarding roles, activities-tasks and artifacts-templates. AVS_FD_MVITS was designed using design components taken from Scrum-XP and ITIL v4 IT service design workflows. To evaluate exploratory AVS_FD_MVITS, we applied it in a realistic case in an academic small data center. The exploratory qualitative-based evaluation suggests that AVS_FD_MVITS can be considered a valid agile IT service design workflow useful for academics and practitioners. However, confirmatory quantitative-based evaluations are asked for advancing this research stream. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Appropriate use of available inpatient beds is an ongoing challenge for US hospitals. Historical capacity goals of 80% to 85% may no longer serve the intended purpose of maximizing the resources of space, staff, and equipment. Numerous variables affect the input, throughput, and output of a hospital. Some of these variables include patient demand, regulatory requirements, coordination of patient flow between various systems, coordination of processes such as bed management and patient transfers, and the diversity of departments (both inpatient and outpatient) in an organization. Methods: Mayo Clinic Health System in the Southwest Minnesota region of the US, a community-based hospital system primarily serving patients in rural southwestern Minnesota and part of Iowa, consists of 2 postacute care and 3 critical access hospitals. Our inpatient bed usage rates had exceeded 85%, and patient transfers from the region to other hospitals in the state (including Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota) had increased. To address these quality gaps, we used a blend of Agile project management methodology, rapid Plan-Do-Study-Act cycles, and a proactive approach to patient placement in the medical-surgical units as a quality improvement initiative. Results: During 2 trial periods of the initiative, the main hub hospital (Mayo Clinic Health System hospital in Mankato) and other hospitals in the region increased inpatient bed usage while reducing total out-of-region transfers. Conclusion: Our novel approach to proactively managing bed capacity in the hospital allowed the region's only tertiary medical center to increase capacity for more complex and acute cases by optimizing the use of historically underused partner hospital beds. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In today's fast-paced business environment, implementing strategies through programs, projects, and business-as-usual activities can be challenging for companies. The telecommunication industry, in particular, faces these challenges as it experiences the effects of digital transformation and fast-changing markets. It requires a flexible and adaptive approach to project portfolio management (PPM) to optimize investments and deliver value. This article presents a successful case study of a PPM process using the Stage-Gate model in a prominent telecommunications company that operates in a dynamic and fast-growing environment. The Stage-Gate PPM model comprises four stages: Proposal Selection, Selection of Nominated Demands, Prioritization, and Categorization of Projects. The model is unique as it can be adapted to different projects and incorporates elements of Agile approaches, such as Portfolio Sprint meetings and artefacts. The study demonstrates the importance of a well-defined PPM process in coordinating short-term and long-term activities and effectively allocating time, money, and resources. The Stage-Gate PPM model can potentially enhance project success rates and bring greater value to companies by ensuring the realization of suitable projects. This article contributes significantly to the existing literature on portfolio management, providing valuable insights and lessons applicable to other companies in the industry to enhance their portfolio management processes. Furthermore, this study can interest scholars and researchers seeking to explore effective portfolio management in other complex and dynamic environments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study presents the design and implementation of a high-resolution radar extended target simulation system for simulating extended target echoes in high-resolution radar. The study establishes target echo models for one-dimensional distance targets, two-dimensional surface targets, and three-dimensional volume targets. The key technologies used to achieve the design and implementation of the high-resolution radar extended target simulation system include wideband RF receiver technology, large instantaneous bandwidth baseband echo signal generation technology, target RCS(Radar Cross Section) data acquisition and modulation technology, and wideband agile frequency synthesizer. The system is used to conduct RF simulation and two-dimensional imaging processing of a typical fighter jet target, and the results are compared with the simulation results obtained using RadBase simulation software to verify the effectiveness of the system. The validation results indicate that the RF simulation and two-dimensional imaging processing results of the system are consistent with the simulation results obtained using the RadBase software. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Prior work on leadership in information systems development (ISD) teams has assumed that all developers are treated equally by their team leader and ignored the possibility that differentiated leader-member exchange (LMX) may be an important instrument for team leaders to influence self-organizing, agile ISD teams. We conducted a concurrent mixed methods inquiry to understand how LMX differentiation is associated with developer satisfaction in agile ISD teams and through which team processes agile ISD teams address LMX differentiation. We ran a multilevel, multistage survey of 1,894 software developers in 217 teams and an embedded case study of five ISD teams drawing on qualitative data from 40 interviews of developers and team leaders. Two focus groups (one with 10 developers and one with 10 team leaders) helped to substantiate the meta-inferences from the quantitative and qualitative studies. The results showed that LMX differentiation was positively associated with developer satisfaction, especially in teams with high-quality team-member exchange (TMX). We identify three team processes (i.e., collectivization of resources, visible appreciation of privileges, and freeing up leader capacities) that are enacted through agile ISD practices and allow ISD teams to leverage benefits from LMX differentiation for all their members. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The software industry is increasingly facing the need for continuous deployment of systems. This leads to the adoption of continuous activities, including planning, integration, and deployment (a.k.a. Continuous Software Engineering (CSE)). At the same time, systems should exhibit high-quality architectures, which are often achieved through architecture evaluation methods. However, there is little insight of how such evaluation happens in the context of CSE. To cover this gap, we investigate in this work the state of the art of continuous evaluation of software architectures in CSE, including agile processes like SCRUM. For this, we systematically examine the literature to collect and summarize evidence. Our results show a diversity of means for evaluating architectures in continuous mode to support the continuous evolution of systems. We also found how such evaluation has been incorporated within continuous development processes and agile processes like SCRUM and Crystal. We finally derive the main trends and open issues in the area, aiming to support the community to better understand and further consolidate the field of continuous evaluation of software architectures. [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]

Various approaches toward the development of sustainable software systems have been proposed by the requirements engineering community over the last decade. We conducted a systematic mapping study, analyzed 55 publications, and identified 29 approaches that have been published since the year 2000. We analyzed how the approaches evolved over time and how the publications and authors are influenced by each other. Furthermore, the approaches are analyzed in terms of their supported requirements engineering activities, along with the evidence provided in the publications. Additionally, we also analyzed which sustainability definitions have been used, if an iterative application of the approaches is discussed, and if the approaches also provide a tool-support for practitioners. We noticed an increase of publications on requirements engineering approaches toward sustainability in the last years, whereas a majority discuss sustainability based on the same multi-dimensional concept. Although different case studies have been already conducted, we noticed a lack of an industrial application. Our main findings concern the need of an evaluation on how the proposed requirements engineering approaches can also be applied in agile software development processes. Additionally, we also promote the development of supporting software tools to support practitioners in adapting the proposed approaches. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Attention is currently being focused on DevOps, which aims to reduce software development time by means of close collaboration between the development and operations areas. However, little effort has been made to determine the role of requirements management in DevOps. The objective of this study is to help both researchers and practitioners by providing an overview of the best practices regarding requirements engineering in DevOps and identifying which areas still need to be investigated. A multivocal mapping study has, therefore, been carried out in order to study which methodologies, techniques and tools are used to support requirements management in DevOps environments. After applying the review protocol, 37 papers from formal literature and 14 references from grey literature were selected for analysis. The general conclusions obtained after analysing these papers were that, within DevOps, more attention should be paid to: (1) the reuse of requirements in order to identify systems and software artefacts that can serve as a basis for the specification of new projects; (2) the communication of requirements between the different areas of an organisation and the stakeholders of a project; (3) the traceability of requirements in order to identify the relationship with other requirements, artefacts, tasks and processes; (4) non-functional requirements in order to identify the requirements of the operations area in the early phases of a project; and finally (5) specific requirements tools that should be seamlessly integrated into the DevOps toolchain. All these issues must be considered without ignoring the agile and continuous practices of development, operations and business teams. More effort must also be made to validate new methodologies in industry so as to assess and determine their strengths and weaknesses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]