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The development of medical technology devices leads to the introduction and use of agile methods, which enable the delivery of increasingly complex software with the fastest possible innovations. Delivery of the highest quality software must be considered during development, as medical products are important elements in saving human lives. Their development begins with determining a set of product requirements that exactly correspond to it. The development of specified medical products is finally delivered to the customer, who participates in the development. In this article, we present the use and combination of agile methods in software development, which correct and facilitate timely and continuous delivery of products. They also know how to smooth out a quick reaction to the customer's changing needs and mainly focus on team management and communication. Specific agile methods make it possible to implement development through gradual improvements by integrating customer requirements towards the product. This article identifies three interconnected approaches to integrating agile methods and principles: SCRUM, SAFe, and Kanban combined with the V-model. The methods are gradually analysed based on the literature review, and the article presents a practical application in Siemens Healthcare Slovakia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scrum has emerged as the most widely used and desired Agile approach for providing corporate strategic competency by establishing a solid foundation for project management. However, there are several issues confronted during its implementation. Some researchers tried to solve specific areas of Scrum issues except only research that covers several aspects without resolving all of them. So, this study presents the EFSP model for improving maintainability, security and reusability. Methodologically, in this study, we carry out the following tasks: (i) apply Mark or 7C model on requirements, and (ii) identify Scrum aspects (artifacts and/or activities) that should be expanded as follows: adding the concept of systematic reusability into sprint planning, classifying the requirements into four layers according to clean architecture into sprint backlog, and evolutionary model into sprint. This model offers solutions to these problems while maintaining the simplicity and flexibility of Scrum. The system evaluation results have achieved an improvement in maintainability by reducing technical debt from 1.6% to 0.9%, security from 10 to 3, timeliness from 5 to 2, and improving team productivity from 1.24 to 2.78. The EFSP model may be utilized to develop a standard in other projects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Digital transformation in the public sector provides digital services to the citizens aiming at increasing their quality of life, as well as the transparency and accountability of a public administration. Since adaptation to the citizens changing needs is central for its success, Agile methodologies seem best suited for the software development of digital services in that area. However, as well documented by an attempt to use Scrum for an important Public Administration in Italy, substantial modifications to standard Agile were needed, giving rise to a new proposal called improved Agile (in short, iAgile). Another notable example is the Scrum@IMI method developed by the City of Barcelona for the deployment of its digital services. However, given the importance of digital transformation in the public sector and the scarcity of efforts (documented in the scholarly literature) to effectively bring Agile within it, a strategically important contribution that Computer Science can offer is a general paradigm describing how to tailor Agile methodologies and, in particular, Scrum, for such a specific context. Our proposal, called Scrum@PA, addresses this strategic need. Based on it, a public administration has a technically sound avenue to follow to adopt Scrum rather than a generic set of guidelines as in the current state of the art. We show the validity of our proposal by describing how the quite successful Scrum@IMI approach can be derived from Scrum@PA. Although iAgile can also be derived from our paradigm, we have chosen Scrum@IMI as a pilot example since it is publicly available on GitHub. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Agile software development (ASD) methods such as Scrum promote collocated team collaboration. However, adopting Scrum in hybrid work environments can pose challenges. Therefore, understanding the positive aspects and challenges of adopting Scrum in hybrid settings and the relevant agile tools and practices is important. Software engineering education should also prepare students with the necessary knowledge and skills for implementing ASD methods in hybrid settings. This study provides insight into implementing Scrum in a hybrid setting, in a course project, discussing its positive aspects, challenges, and relevant project management and communication tools. We used a questionnaire to collect feedback from 12 scrum teams, made up of 59 master’s degree students at the University of Oulu, who developed student well-being prototypes in four sprints. We applied thematic analysis to analyze the teams’ feedback. We found 16 challenges, 12 positive aspects, and varying ASD practices and tools. Key challenges included scheduling conflicts, communication issues, and estimating efforts. Discord and Microsoft Teams were popular for communication, while JIRA and Trello were favored for agile project management. This study complements software engineering literature with new empirical findings. It reveals practices and tools applicable to software practitioners and start-up teams for effectively adopting scrum in hybrid settings. It also contributes by illustrating the adoption of scrum course projects in hybrid settings and providing recommendations to enhance the design of similar courses. It identifies research gaps, such as the need for tools and practices to improve collaboration and the potential of asynchronous chats in hybrid environments.

Copyright of Investigación e Innovación en Ingenierías is the property of Universidad Simon Bolivar and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

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]

Restrictive Scrum assumptions make the effectiveness of this approach debatable in projects deviating from typical execution conditions. This article delivers a comprehensive software development approach for both academic and commercial Information Technology (IT) projects effectuated by teams that are hampered by significantly unsystematic participation of project members and mercurial internal communication. The nature of ‘ad-hoc’ projects imposes another level of difficulty in terms of both managing the conduct of such a project and ensuring the quality of the end product. Multicyclic action research enabled a gradual adaptation of the Scrum approach to support such project conditions. This study introduces major alterations to Sprint implementation and minor enhancements within the documentation process to streamline knowledge sharing among Development Team members. Proposed key alterations include the evolution of Daily Scrum towards Weekly Scrum, the possibility of extending Sprints length, the eventuality to switch team members during Sprint due to substantial failure to meet deadlines, having at least two team members responsible for a single Product Backlog Item (PBI) at all times, as well as exclusion of Burndown Chart in favor of Development Team members updating their working time. Positive validation of enhancements in mixed settings confirms that the generic Scrum framework can be adapted to support highly volatile projects. The proposed approach is suitable not only for carrying out software development initiatives that rely heavily on the skills of external experts and/or volunteers. It also supports traditional Scrum teams that seek to reduce their exposure to risk arising from organizational changes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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]

Goal: The Study aims to investigate the impact of project management constraints in fixed-cost and fixed-scheduled Agile software development contracts using multigroup analysis (MGA) to perform repeated comparisons of parameters across groups of Scrum or Kanban methodologies using structural equation modelling (SEM) Design/Methodology/Approach: A web-based survey is used to collect responses to a questionnaire based on project management constraints for Kanban and Scrum method-based Agile software development projects from people working on projects fixed-cost and fixed-schedule contracts and then analyzed with the help of multi-group analysis using SmartPLS 4.0 Results: Risk management has a mediating effect between project scope, resources, and delivery quality. MGA implied that the Kanban method is better at managing resources and will have a higher impact on the quality of deliverables than the Scrum method. Limitations of the investigation: Evaluating the suitability of various multi-group analysis approaches requires more than just our empirical example using satisfactory data and other project management constraints. Practical implications: The findings of the study suggest that hypothesis testing should be carried out for a distinct model parameter between study groups, whenever they are comparing more than two group. Originality/Value: This study helps in contributing to exploring PLS route modelling by the introduction of the original non-parametric confidence set approach based on a comparison of parameter estimations and bootstrap confidence intervals. The study investigates the impact of several project management constraints on to fixed-cost Agile software development projects.

The publication deals with the application of Agile principles in organizing the work of service units of higher education. The first part of the publication deals with theoretical aspects of the methodology. Agile does not exist by itself, but is structured and carries out all processes with the so-called Agile Manifesto, consisting of 12 principles. It is found out, to what extent it will be correct to transfer the principles of Agile-manifesto to the system of higher educational institutions. The basic principles, which can guide the administration of the service units of the HEIs, are defined. Agile's definition is articulated in the Agile manifesto of software development, which emphasizes that people and communication take precedence over processes and tools. A functioning product is more important than extensive documentation, and collaborating with customers is more important than negotiating contractual terms. Additionally, being willing to adapt and change is more important than sticking to the original plan. Numerous project management approaches exist to apply the Agile philosophy, with Scrum, Extreme Programming, and Kanban being among the most prevalent. Among project managers, Scrum project management is widely used as one of the most popular Agile methodologies. The second part of the publication identifies the differences and similarities between Agile and Scrum. The third part of the publication examines the application of the methodology in practice. It is important to focus on constantly changing external and internal environment and take into account the feedback from customers and users. This encourages developers and engineers to experiment and look for new solutions without being constrained by rigid frameworks and standards. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Goal: The Study aims to investigate the impact of project management constraints in fixed-cost and fixedscheduled Agile software development contracts using multigroup analysis (MGA) to perform repeated comparisons of parameters across groups of Scrum or Kanban methodologies using structural equation modelling (SEM). Design/Methodology/Approach: A web-based survey is used to collect responses to a questionnaire based on project management constraints for Kanban and Scrum method-based Agile software development projects from people working on projects fixed-cost and fixed-schedule contracts and then analyzed with the help of multi-group analysis using SmartPLS 4.0. Results: Risk management has a mediating effect between project scope, resources, and delivery quality. MGA implied that the Kanban method is better at managing resources and will have a higher impact on the quality of deliverables than the Scrum method. Limitations of the investigation: Evaluating the suitability of various multi-group analysis approaches requires more than just our empirical example using satisfactory data and other project management constraints. Practical implications: The findings of the study suggest that hypothesis testing should be carried out for a distinct model parameter between study groups, whenever they are comparing more than two group. Originality/Value: This study helps in contributing to exploring PLS route modelling by the introduction of the original non-parametric confidence set approach based on a comparison of parameter estimations and bootstrap confidence intervals. The study investigates the impact of several project management constraints on to fixed-cost Agile software development projects. [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]

The cultural component of the project team is recognized as one of the most critical factors in the implementation of agile project management (APM), especially in nonsoftware industries, where the diffusion of APM still involves several challenges. Particularly, the successful implementation of scrum—the most diffused APM methodology—seems related to the project teams’ subculture, which may differ from the overall organizational culture of the company. This article contributes to the APM literature in nonsoftware contexts by studying the cultural values that develop inside agile teams and the scrum principles and practices that are particularly relevant for fostering these values. Using interview data collected from seven manufacturing and service organizations, we use the competing value framework as the theoretical model to understand the cultural profiles of their organizations, how they deploy into the project teams’ subculture, and what, if any, connections exist with the adoption of scrum principles and practices. We find that clan and market values are the dominant subcultures in agile teams. These cultural values are fostered at a strategic level by a subset of scrum values (i.e., courage, openness, and respect) and pillars (i.e., transparency and adaptation). At an operational level, retrospective meetings and the definition of particular artifacts also contribute to develop these dominant cultural values. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Effort estimation (EE) is crucial for planning software projects since it contributes to delivery goals. Nevertheless, even in agile methodologies, EE is a complex process due to environmental and structural factors surrounding the interaction between the leader and the development team. To simplify EE, companies prefer insourcing development with a mature team and a leader that provides resources. We model the interaction between the leader and the development team as a leader-follower game to understand how they behave at equilibrium. Later, we compare leader and development team equilibrium strategies when they interchange their roles. Our main results provide conditions that guarantee the uniqueness of equilibrium strategies, and we illustrate the impact of exogenous variables on equilibrium strategies through numerical examples.

Copyright of Revista Facultad de Ingeniería - UPTC is the property of Universidad Pedagogica y Tecnologica de Colombia, Facultad de Ingenieria and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Problem definition: Agile project management, in particular Scrum, is enjoying increased use in practice despite only scant scientific validation. This article explores how agile project management impacts project performance and execution. We compare the effects of agile sprints—short-term project phases characterized by time-boxed progression from one sprint to the next and self-imposed, phase-specific output goals—with those of traditional project management. Methodology/results: We decompose the two sprint elements of time-boxed progression and self-imposed, phase-specific output goals as factors in a 2 × 2 experimental design. We then conceptualize project execution as a simple real-effort task and conduct a controlled laboratory study. For a given duration, participants perform better with time-boxed progression as, without it, that is, with flexible progression, they spend too much time on early project phases at the expense of later ones. We refer to this effect as "progression fallacy" and show how it differs from well-known behavioral effects that cause project delays. Introducing self-imposed, phase-specific output goals in combination with time-boxed progression, as proposed by Scrum, does not significantly improve performance when compared with time-boxed progression alone. However, the combination of self-imposed, phase-specific output goals and flexible progression, as is common in traditional project management, amplifies the progression fallacy with the result that goal-setting has a negative performance effect. In two control treatments, we show that the progression fallacy is robust to planning and progression prompts despite some mitigation. Managerial implications: This study contributes evidence of higher project performance when working in agile sprints, which mitigate behavioral flaws present in traditional project management. Not only do these behavioral insights apply to project management; they are also relevant in the broader context of task completion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract When developing a Learning Management System (LMS) using Scrum, we noticed that it was quite often necessary to redefine some system behaviour scenarios, due to ambiguities in the requirement specifications, or due to misinterpretations of stories reported by the Product Owners (POs). The definition of test suites was also cumbersome, resulting in test suites that were incomplete or did not at all comply with the system requirements. Based on this experience and to deal with these problems, in this paper, we propose the ScrumOntoBDD approach to agile software development, which combines Scrum, ontologies and Behaviour-Driven Development (BDD). This approach is centred on the concepts and techniques of Scrum and BDD and focuses on the planning and analysis phases of the software life cycle, since the BDD tools currently provide little support to these phases, while most of the problems during the LMS development were found exactly there. We claim that our approach improves the software development practices in this respect. Furthermore, ScrumOntoBDD employs ontologies in order to reduce ambiguities intrinsic to the use of a natural language as a BDD ubiquitous language. In this paper, we illustrate and systematically evaluate our approach, showing that it is beneficial since it improves the communication between members of an agile development team.

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]

Agile software development is a group of project management methods that involve identifying customer requirements and developing solutions collaboratively. It is based on iterations of progress that consist of functional intermediate variants with few software bugs. Emphasis is placed on the frequent dialogue between team members through daily meetings where the progress made the previous day and the problems encountered are discussed. A customer representative frequently participates in these discussions. The Coronavirus pandemic has changed everyone's lifestyle. The only possibility of returning to a normal life seems to be the appearance of a weapon against the invisible enemy. Time plays the most important role, and errors must not exist. In just two weeks, a logistics software system was implemented within the National Institute for Medical-Military Research-Development "Cantacuzino" in Bucharest, to support the effort to combat the disease.

Agile and Integrated Business Solutions (Henceforth IBSs) have existed for years, and the primitive state indicates their evolution. In Peru, Innovative manufacturers employed IBSs and agile to cofound goods and services to solve various business difficulties and participate more successfully in their respective fields. However, the usefulness and benefits of IBSs and agile have declined due to the tight project management style used. This study proposes a method dealing with a concept for Peruvian manufacturers. The conceptual method to adjust new income sources in making good consumer partnerships by using the methodology of an agile project taking into account the iterative and interactive nature of IBS development. This study revealed that typical project management as a delivery strategy for IBSs is ineffective. Its customer-centred and iterative philosophy presents an alternate option in using an agile project management strategy. This study shows how the agile process known as Scrum works better with innovative IBS development and presents a conceptual description. This finding contributes to the corpus of knowledge about agile's application possibility in Peru. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Agile software development methods, especially Scrum, are commonly used in software development companies. For this reason, our goal was that our undergraduate students gain experience as Scrum development team members and our master's students as agile leaders. To this end, we had redesigned and linked an undergraduate and a master's course, and launched the new course in the spring of 2021. The success of our approach was confirmed by a questionnaire survey of 86 undergraduate and 27 master's students. A/B testing was also performed. Our approach is a novelty compared to solutions where the Scrum Master is a course member, an instructor, or a university employee. In addition to being resource-efficient, it also offers master's students an unparalleled opportunity to develop agile leadership skills. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The use of Agile methodologies in software development has grown steadily over recent years. One of the main emphases of these methods is employing cross-functional and self-organized teams and highly skilled developers in software projects. In such a condition, project management would be a serious concern. Indeed, it would be confusing whether Agile teams are really in need of the role of the project manager. While Agile methodologies do not explicitly define the role of the project manager, many reports mention the existence of this role in Agile projects in real environments. So, it seems that the existence of this role is debated. Conducting a Systematic Literature Review, this study tried to find out answers to the ambiguities and questions regarding the role of Agile project management, the role of the project manager, and related issues. Focusing on the primary studies, the results show that there is no independent job called project manager in Agile methodologies. However, there is a need for it. Moreover, in the absence of this role in Agile methodologies and the need for it, it seems that this role would be structurally different from the traditional role of the project manager in terms of responsibilities and duties. Finally, the results show that pre-defined roles in Agile methodologies are often responsible for the project manager duties in software teams with no project manager.

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]

Agile software development is a group of project management methods that involve identifying customer requirements and developing solutions collaboratively. It is based on iterations of progress that consist of functional intermediate variants with few software bugs. Emphasis is placed on the frequent dialogue between team members through daily meetings where the progress made the previous day and the problems encountered are discussed. A customer representative frequently participates in these discussions. The Coronavirus pandemic has changed everyone's lifestyle. The only possibility of returning to a normal life seems to be the appearance of a weapon against the invisible enemy. Time plays the most important role, and errors must not exist. In just two weeks, a logistics software system was implemented within the National Institute for Medical-Military Research-Development "Cantacuzino" in Bucharest, to support the effort to combat the disease. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When developing a Learning Management System (LMS) using Scrum, we noticed that it was quite often necessary to redefine some system behaviour scenarios, due to ambiguities in the requirement specifications, or due to misinterpretations of stories reported by the Product Owners (POs). The definition of test suites was also cumbersome, resulting in test suites that were incomplete or did not at all comply with the system requirements. Based on this experience and to deal with these problems, in this paper, we propose the ScrumOntoBDD approach to agile software development, which combines Scrum, ontologies and Behaviour-Driven Development (BDD). This approach is centred on the concepts and techniques of Scrum and BDD and focuses on the planning and analysis phases of the software life cycle, since the BDD tools currently provide little support to these phases, while most of the problems during the LMS development were found exactly there. We claim that our approach improves the software development practices in this respect. Furthermore, ScrumOntoBDD employs ontologies in order to reduce ambiguities intrinsic to the use of a natural language as a BDD ubiquitous language. In this paper, we illustrate and systematically evaluate our approach, showing that it is beneficial since it improves the communication between members of an agile development team. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scrum is a part of agile software development which also called incremental software development model. Scrum methodology commonly used to overcome uncertain condition and tight deadline. Scrum consists of three roles, they are product owner, development team, and scrum master. Scrum can be implemented on many areas such as development of education mobile application, integration of document management system, strengthen IT development centers, and many others. The successful of Scrum implementation depends on the skill and knowledge of the team members. The Scrum also has several risk factors and therefore needs risk management approaches. A comparison between agile and waterfall model is also discussed. The Scrum performance can also be tested with certain ways. Scrum used to make sure that all parts of the software can be delivered on time. The other benefits, scrum can make creative and productive workplace, and scrum can also increase business value.

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]

Agile development became very popular at the beginning of the 21st century when the Manifesto for Agile Software Development was released. Since then, it has been predominant in the software industry and has been increasingly transferred to the development of physical products due to its great success. There are many studies on Agile-Stage-Gate hybrids that combine agile Scrum and the traditional Stage-Gate model, however no research has been found that addresses a direct integration of Scrum into a concurrent product development model in a similar way. In this paper, we therefore examine the possibility of introducing Scrum into the concurrent product development and propose a Scrum framework for an Agile-Concurrent hybrid. We propose that the framework for concurrent development remains unchanged: the stages overlap and the track-and-loop approach is preserved, while Scrum is proposed for the execution of day-to-day work. The main advantage of the proposed hybrid is that after each iteration the customer reviews the results of an entire loop, not just of one stage, which enables a broader understanding of the progress and facilitates a more extensive feedback. A quicker resolution of discrepancies, and a faster and more effective response to change is thus ensured. In the paper, the needed organizational changes and potential implementation issues are also discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite the wide adoption of agile methodologies, software development teams still struggle to meet requirements, partially due to practitioners' lack of motivation to apply agile techniques in practice. We propose a gamification software tool to make Scrum techniques more fun and engaging for practitioners. This paper presents the results of the first iteration of a larger research effort that follows the Design Science Research methodology, in which a prototype was developed as a Jira Software app and evaluated with a real-world Scrum team. The results suggest that gamification can positively impact practitioners' motivation by changing the atmosphere within the team, even if it does not contribute to the improvement of Scrum practices adoption. The metrics corresponding to Scrum techniques slightly increased after using the app, but this result probably cannot be attributed to practitioners' improved motivation. Quantitative analysis and interviews with the team members showed that the gamified experience should be more challenging. We conclude that gamification's potential can be better achieved if more and better studies are conducted based on mixed methods, even if the conditions are not ideal. The app has been improved based on the feedback received, and currently is being evaluated with other Scrum teams. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides a systematic comparison between two well-known Agile methodologies: Scrum, which is a framework of doing projects by allocating tasks into small stages called sprints, and Kanban, which is a scheduling system to manage the flow of work by means of visual signals. In this regard, both methodologies were reviewed to explore similarities and differences between them. Then, a focus group survey was performed to specify the preferable methodology for product development according to various parameters in the project environment including project complexity, level of uncertainty, and work size with consideration of output factors like quality, productivity, and delivery. Results show the flexibility of both methodologies in approaching Agile objectives, where Scrum emphasizes on the corporation of the customer and development teams with a focus on particular skills such as planning, organization, presentation, and reviewing which makes it ideal for new and complex projects where a regular involvement of the customer is required, whereas Kanban is more operative in continuous-flow environments with a steady approach toward a system improvement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Flexible iterative development life cycle, adaptive nature and fast delivery has given Agile an upper edge as compared to all other software development frameworks. In the current industry scenario agile methods are gaining popularity, owing to its people centric approach, hence organizations are adopting agile development methodologies at a large scale. Agile projects work in self-organizing small collaborative teams. Team size varies according to the project requirement however, agile development focus on smaller team size. Supervised machine learning is applied in this study to provide optimum prediction model. All the available regression models in Matlab R2019b are used to predict number of team members required for an agile project. Iterations from five different open source projects are considered for this study. The results after training all the variants of each regression model, namely Linear Regression models, Support Vector Machine models, Tree models, Ensemble models and Gaussian Process Regression models are compared using Root Mean Square Error (RMSE) score and R-squared values. On the basis of evaluative and comprehensive analysis, the most significant model to predict manpower requirement for an agile project has been chosen. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aim/Purpose The purpose of this study was to explore and test several improvements for incorporating the Business Product Owner (BPO) role in student software projects using Scrum. Background As the popularity of Scrum has grown, its roles and ceremonies have been utilized in student software projects, yet one of the more challenging roles to implement in the academic context is the role of BPO. Consequently, although the BPO role is central to Scrum, this role is lacking in many student Scrum projects. Methodology Both quantitative and qualitative data were collected at a large university in the U.S. to assess the effectiveness of attempted improvements in incorporating the BPO role in 32 student Scrum projects. Contribution This study is among the first to theorize and examine the bottom-up selection of BPOs where team members select their own BPOs as a unique project requirement. This study extends current theory to expand the development team roles when BPOs are unable to articulate requirements during cocreation activities. This study also informs us of the impact of BPO attributes on team member perceptions and it demonstrates how BPO engagement can be improved in student Scrum projects. Findings The findings suggest that BPO engagement can be improved by (a) formalizing the BPO selection process through time-limiting responses, screening, and contractual agreements, (b) starting the BPO initiation process through co-creation activities (e.g., user story workshop), and (c) expanding the development team's role in defining and prioritizing features during the BPO execution process through mutual steering. Recommendations for Practitioners Based on the findings, practitioners are recommended to educate BPO's concerning their role and its impact on the Scrum team. Recommendations for Researchers Researchers are recommended to develop and test additional mechanisms to facilitate ongoing BPO engagement. Impact on Society Higher education needs to explore more ways of involving practitioners in student projects. Future Research Future research should explore ways of reducing BPO attrition in student Scrum projects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many organizations and software firms these days use pair programming to meet the challenges posed by digital transformations and to meet customer needs. They use pair programming to become more agile and responsive to their competitive environment. Although some studies suggest that pair programming can potentially increase the quality of developed software code and the satisfaction and confidence of developers, very little is known as to how pair programming affects team performance. Therefore, we conducted an empirical study at one of the largest enterprise software firms that serves a large number of Fortune 500 companies, and we collected data from the software developers, Scrum masters, and product owners of 62 software development teams. Our findings show that pair programming affects team performance positively by changing cognitive structures and behavioral patterns in software teams. Pair programming helps team members develop shared mental models and, as a consequence, increases backup behavior among team members. Backup behavior is particularly valuable for teams facing high task novelty. Our findings have critical implications for organizations and senior managers as they lead their digital transformation efforts where they often rely on autonomous teams for providing digital innovation. We show that pair programming can be a key ingredient for high-performance teams. Establishing the practice of pair programming promises to be particularly valuable for those teams that lack shared mental models and teams whose members fail to provide each other backup. This study examines the team-level effects of pair programming by developing a research model that accounts for mediators and moderators of the relationship between pair programming and team performance. We hypothesize that pair programming helps software development teams establish backup behavior by strengthening the shared mental models among developers. In turn, backup behavior attenuates the negative effect of task novelty on team performance. We collect data from the software developers, Scrum masters, and product owners of 62 software development teams in a global enterprise software firm and find broad support for our research model. The study makes important contributions by shifting attention to the team-level effects of pair programming and by explicating mediating and moderating mechanisms related to the roles of shared mental models, backup behavior, and task novelty. The results underline the importance of viewing pair programming as a context-specific practice that helps establish backup behavior in teams. In terms of implications for practitioners, our results show that pair programming can be a valuable element of team governance to create shared mental models and backup behavior and to achieve high team performance when teams face high levels of task novelty. [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.

Agile methodologies are increasingly considered important in the current context because of their focus on business benefit, strong stakeholder involvement and rapid incorporation of changing requirements. The Scrum methodology presents a generic and agile model for software development, but there are some gaps regarding solution architecture and requirements modeling and traceability. Fast customer feedback and support for volatile requirements result in higher product value, however, initial requirements modelling using modelling techniques are not commonly used in agile processes such as Scum to prepare the phase of Implementation of the software project. This article presents a first proposal for a visual environment to support the product / sprint backlog, helping to prioritize, track and decide on the most valuable, aligned and quickly deployable requirements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the beginning of 2000, the software industry has turned a corner to adopting agile lightweight methods that are subject to change at a more efficient pace; in addition, risk management is generally not explicitly addressed in agile projects. So agile teams generally do not use an intentional risk management approach. Although agile methodologies tend to manage project risk implicitly, it is important to have an appropriate risk management mechanism in agile methodologies.Therefore, in this paper a framework for integrating risk management in the agile development projects is proposed while considering Scrum as an agile method and the PMBOK as a project risk management guide. The main goals of this framework are to improve the risk management mechanism in Scrum and to increase the Scrum project's success rate [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Due to increasing interest in distributed agile software development, there is a need to systematically review the literature on challenges encountered in the agile software development environment. Using the Systematic Literature Review (SLR) approach, 32 relevant publications, dated between 2013 and 2018 were selected from four electronic databases. Data from these publications were extracted to identify the key challenges across the system development life cycle (SDLC) phases, which essentially are short phases in each agile-based iteration. 5 types of key challenges were identified as impacting the SDLC phases; these challenges are Communication, Coordination, Cooperation, Collaboration and Control. In the context of the SLDC phases, the Communication challenge was discussed the most often (79 times, 33%). The least discussed challenges were Cooperation and Collaboration (26 times, 11% each). The 5 challenges occur because of distances which occur in distributed environment. This SLR identified 4 types of distances which contribute to the occurrence of these key challenges - physical, temporal, social-cultural and knowledge/experience. Of the 32 publications, only 4 included research which proposed new solutions to address challenges in agile distributed software development. The authors of this article believe that the findings in this SLR are a resource for future research work to deepen the understanding of and to develop additional solutions to address the challenges in distributed agile software development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For medical device software development organizations, it is very challenging to maintain both conformance to the strict regulatory requirements enforced by the safety-critical nature of the domain and achieve efficiency in software development. Agile software development methods provide promising solutions to overcome the efficiency issues and the challenges of traditional software development approaches in the domain. Previously, we investigated to what extent the regulatory requirements defined in MDevSPICE® (the software process assessment framework for medical device software development) are met through using eXtreme Programming (XP) and Scrum and what additional practices have to be performed to ensure safety and regulatory compliance in the medical device software development domain. In this paper, we extended the research to include the Dynamic Systems Development Method (DSDM) which covers the whole software development life cycle. Here, we provide a comprehensive and quantitative analysis of XP's and DSDM's suitability for medical device software development and briefly discuss Scrum from the same perspective. We provide the coverage ratios of processes and practices defined in MDevSPICE® when these agile software development methods are implemented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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]

Featured Application: The presented results were used to design innovative mechatronic solutions: motion control algorithm of 5-axis feed drive "X-5" processing centre owned by the AVIA company, loading and forestry crane control system designed within the EU 7FP IAPP project called iLOAD. The paper presents the issue of metamodeling of Domain-Specific Languages (DSL) for the purpose of designing complex mechatronics systems. Usually, one of the problems during the development of such projects is an interdisciplinary character of the team that is involved in this endeavour. The success of a complex machine project (e.g., Computer Numerically Controlled machine (CNC), loading crane, forestry crane) often depends on a proper communication between team members. The domain-specific modelling languages developed using one of the two approaches discussed in the work, lead to a machine design that can be carried out much more efficiently than with conventional approaches. Within the paper, the Meta-Object Facility (MOF) approach to metamodeling is presented; it is much more prevalent in modern modelling software tools than Graph-Object-Property-Relationship-Role (GOPRR). The main outcome of this work is the first presentation of researchML modelling language that is the result of more than twenty ambitious research and development projects. It is effectively used within new enterprises and leads to improved traceability of the project goals. It enables for fully-featured automatic code generation which is one of the main pillars of the agile management within mechatronic system design projects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Agile methods have become very popular in software development. They emphasise importance of collaboration and communication in successful product development. Scrum is one of the most popular agile methods and it involves a number of artefacts and practices. The retrospective is one of the practices. It is an activity that serves a purpose as a team meeting to improve development processes. It is a time-boxed event, which should be planned and facilitated in order to obtain the best outcome. The paper aims at identifying appropriate practices for organising and running successful retrospectives. The practices are identified in the paper along with their attributes and usage suggestions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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