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Agile methods and software product line engineering (SPLE) are widely recognized as practical approaches for delivering high-quality software, adapting to evolving stakeholder needs, and tackling complex problems. This study proposes a hybrid agile software development and reuse approach called SPLE-Scrum based on the activities of software product line engineering and Scrum. Within the SPLE process, we incorporate requirement engineering and design practices to create a reference architecture with reusable components called core assets by introducing a product management meeting. The core assets are reused to build a series of applications with various product lines. The product increments are delivered in each Sprint with the review and retrospective meetings based on Scrum lifecycle and practices. We present a case study involving a blockchain online store to demonstrate the practical application of SPLE-Scrum, highlighting the benefits of integrating Scrum and software product line engineering. The research hypotheses of the proposed approach were validated through a study of structured interviews with 5 experts and 44 software practitioners, showing that the key factors of product management, project requirements, and product architecture in the SPLE-Scrum approach have a beneficial impact on project success. The SPLE-Scrum approach provides valuable insights and practical guidance for organizations seeking to optimize their software engineering practices while incorporating agile development and software reuse capabilities. [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]

Scrum is a widely-used framework in industry, so many schools apply it to their software engineering courses, particularly capstone courses. Due to the differences between students and industrial professionals, changing Scrum is necessary to fit capstone projects. In this paper, we suggest a decision-making process to assist instructors in developing a strategy to adapt Scrum for their course. This framework considers critical differences, such as student’s workloads and course schedules, and keeps the Agile principles and Scrum events. To evaluate the adapted Scrum, we investigated student’s learning experiences, satisfaction, and performance by quantitatively analyzing user story points and source codes and qualitatively studying instructor’s evaluations, student’s feedback, and Sprint Retrospective notes. Our two case studies about adapted Scrum showed that having daily stand-up meetings in every class was not helpful, student’s satisfaction positively correlated to the difficulty of the task they tackled, and the project provided good learning experiences.

We present a solution based on blockchain technology and smart contracts for agile project management in light of the continuing transition in the software development industry. Due to the fact that these technologies are self-executing, customized, and impervious to tampering, they are considered to be crucial for the transition to a more efficient, transparent, and transactive payment gateway between major stakeholders. These major stakeholders will be able to communicate through smart contracts, which will act as a bridge between them. As part of their responsibility, they will make sure that all of the terms of the contract are met and acknowledged by all members of the team. As a result of our research, we propose a model in which payouts could be automatically enabled and penalties or grants could be introduced based on performance. If any changes were to be made to the contract in the future, all parties involved would be automatically notified. To maintain the development cycle, they should accept these changes as soon as possible. Because of this, the product owner and client are able to concentrate their resources on more profitable and productive tasks, without the need to monitor this aspect of agile project management. Our proposed model brings together different partners with the objective of successfully developing different IT projects by leveraging software engineering solutions such as smart contracts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Software engineering companies have progressively incorporated agile project management methodologies. Initially, this migration occurred mostly in the context of startups, but in recent years it has also sparked interest from other companies with larger and more geographically dispersed teams. One of the frameworks used for large-scale agile implementation is the LeSS framework. This study seeks to explore how Management 3.0 principles can be applied in the context of the ten practices proposed in the LeSS framework. To this end, a qualitative research methodology based on four case studies is used to identify and explore the role of Management 3.0 in software management and development processes that adopt this agile paradigm. The findings show that the principles of Management 3.0 are relevant to the implementation of the LeSS framework practices, especially in fostering team values and personal values; however, distinct principles between the two paradigms are also identified, namely the greater rigidity of processes advocated in the LeSS framework and a greater focus on process automation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Education is crucial for the growth of society, and the usage of effective learning methods is key to transmit knowledge to young students. Some initiatives present Virtual Reality technologies as a promising medium to provide active, effective, and innovative teaching. In turn, the use of this technology seems to be very attractive to students, making it possible to acquire knowledge through it. On the other hand, agile methodologies have taken an essential role within information technologies and they are key in Software Engineering education. This paper combines both areas and presents prior research about Virtual Reality experiences with educational purposes and introduces a serious VR video game that aims to promote the learning of agile methodologies in Software Engineering education, specifically the Scrum methodology. This application tries to bring students closer to their first days of work within a software development team that uses the Scrum methodology. Two evaluation processes performed with university teachers and students indicate that the developed video game meets the proposed objectives and looks promising. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Software systems evolve continuously and must be developed quickly to fit user requirements and new advances in technology. This has led the software engineering to propose several methods and approaches to overcome the development and maintenance of these software systems. In this regard, Agile Methodologies and Model-Driven Engineering (MDE) are two main approaches that have emerged in recent years and suggest a solution to some of the issues associated with Software systems developments. MDE focuses on software reuse through models and on generative approaches based on separation of concerns whereas Agile Methods promote the use of simpler models and best practices for programming to achieve quick feedback from clients within a development process. However, these two approaches have evolved separately and there are only a few works related to their combination. This paper presents a customized V development life cycle based on models which combines the two MDE variants: The MDA approach in the V left branch with the MBT approach to generate tests of the V right branch. In addition, we integrate this customized V life cycle in the agile Scrum methodology to facilitate the management of each Scrum sprint. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scrum innovated the role of the scrum master in software engineering. The scrum master is envisioned in agile literature as the "servant leader" who serves the team in a multitude of different ways, which include promoting scrum, facilitating the team's functioning, and removing obstacles. However, empirical studies focusing on the role of the scrum master in practice are scarce. To address this gap, a Grounded Theory study with a mixed methods approach was carried out which included semi-structured interviews with 39 software practitioners and a questionnaire with 47 respondents. In this study, we present and describe the scrum master's role in agile projects in terms of (a) the grounded theory of the role of the scrum master which involves everyday activities of facilitating, mentoring, negotiating, process adapting, coordinating, and protecting; (b) the varying involvement of the scrum master in selected agile practices carried out by the team; and (c) a positive association between the presence of the scrum master and the frequency with which agile practices are carried out by the team. This study presents for the first time a multifaceted study of the multiple dimensions of the scrum master role and will enable practitioners to better manage expectations of this role in practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In order to develop and deliver a software project successfully, any software development organisation has to follow a well-known and recognised software engineering process for successful delivery and maintenance of the software. However, when the organisation is willing to follow a new software development process, the success rate of adopting a new software engineering process is a question mark. In the paper, we aim at studying and comparing two software engineering processes, which are based on different paradigms or models, and proposing a hybrid methodology, which integrates advantages of both compared methods. They are Microsoft Solutions Framework as a representative for an iterative methodology and SCRUM for agile software development. The comparative analysis will help a software development company to make the transition easier from Microsoft Solutions Framework to SCRUM or vice versa.

Background: Although agile and Scrum have been important frameworks in software engineering for over a decade, little research has explored how teams use Scrum language within their sprints. Literature review: Most explorations of Scrum communication have been collected through self-reported means. These studies are inherently unable to explore how Scrum teams use Scrum-centric language in their meetings in ways that adhere or run counter to standard Scrum practice. Research questions: 1. In what ways is Scrum reflected in the language used by team members in various sprint meetings? 2. What associations exist between the job title of team members and their use of Scrum language? 3. What does a discourse analysis reveal about the ways in which this team uses language to value and discount Scrum? Research methodology: For three sprints over 10 weeks, I recorded meetings of 27 Scrum team members. I transcribed these meetings, developed a codebook for assigning Scrum language categories, conducted an interrater reliability agreement on the data, completed a correspondence analysis on how Scrum language associates with meeting types and job titles, and conducted a discourse analysis to determine in what ways these teams value and discount Scrum. Results/discussion: Scrum language was found in all recorded meetings across all three sprints, with much language found in the planning meetings. Few associations existed between Scrum language and job title, suggesting that Scrum at this engineering firm is an egalitarian process. In addition, the discourse analysis revealed that this engineering firm valued User Story and Sprint Execution language while discounting Capacity and Story Pointing language. Conclusions: Although this group broadly adheres to Scrum practices about 68% of the time, this study finds that several current standard components of Scrum are routinely discounted. This exploratory study suggests that more research into the in-situ use of Scrum language in engineering workplaces is necessary to better inform engineering professionals about the communicative expectations of Scrum and to better enable engineering communication educators to prepare future engineers for Scrum realities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Agile development methods were believed to best suit small, co-located teams, but the success in small teams has inspired use in large and very large-scale software development. However, fundamental assumptions of agile development are challenged when applying the methods at a very large scale. An interpretative revelatory case study on one of the largest software development programmes in Norway shows how agile methods were adapted and complemented with practices from traditional methods to handle the scale. The programme ran over four years with 12 co-located development teams and a total of 175 people involved. The case study was conducted retrospectively using group interviews with 24 participants and documents. Findings on key challenging areas are reported: customer involvement, software architecture, and inter-team coordination. The revelatory study also suggests refinements of a research agenda for very large-scale agile development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: The Academia-Industry partnership has been increasingly encouraged in the software development field. The main focus of the initiatives is driven by the collaborative work where the scientific research work meets the real needs of the Industry. Methods: Aiming to contribute to this effort we have proposed an approach called SoftCoDeR (Software Cooperative Design Research) that combines CMD (Cooperative Method Development), a method of Action Research, to concepts of DSR (Design Science Research). Results: We have applied the SoftCoDeR approach in a software development company to support a research and development project aiming to integrate User Experience practices into the agile software development process. Conclusions: In this paper, we present new findings about this approach that has been extended with the use of Experimental Software Engineering (ESE) practices to conduct experimental validations of artifacts before putting them in industrial practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nowadays, considerable attention is paid to agile methods as a means to improve management of software development processes. The widespread use of such methods in professional contexts has encouraged their integration into software engineering training and undergraduate courses. Although several research efforts have focused on teaching Scrum through simulating a software development project, they covered only the learning of programming practices within a Scrum team. Furthermore, few studies tackle nontechnical skills other than the development practices themselves. The work presented here introduces an original Scrum-based training model enhanced with agile coaching to maximize student performance. This was validated by a case study on a capstone project in a Scrum course. This paper summarizes the positive results of introducing agile coaching, which resulted in approximately 22% more coverage of software engineering practices. In addition, a survey data showed that, compared to students who did not receive coaching, coached students gained valuable insight into the internalization of Scrum, problem solving, and guidance by means of checkpoint meetings. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Although traceability information is vital to many software engineering activities, agile development approaches rarely use it because of the extra effort required. In this industry case study, the authors report the results of applying their lightweight semiautomated method that integrates traceability into software architecture developed with an agile process like Scrum. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In this paper, an undergraduate capstone course in software engineering is described that not only exposes students to agile software development, but also makes it possible to observe the behavior of developers using Scrum for the first time. The course requires students to work as Scrum Teams, responsible for the implementation of a set of user stories defined by a project domain expert playing the role of the Product Owner. During the course, data on project management activities are collected in order to analyze the amount of work completed, compliance with the release and iteration plans, productivity, ability in effort estimation, and the like. The paper discusses the achievement of teaching goals and provides empirical evaluation of students' progress in estimation and planning skills. A summary of lessons learned and recommendations is given, reflecting the issues to be considered when teaching courses in agile software development. Surveys of students have shown that they were overwhelmingly positive about the course, indicating that the course fully met or even exceeded their expectations. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]