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An increasing number of companies aim to enable their development teams to work in an agile manner. When introducing agile teams, companies face several challenges. This paper explores the kind of leadership needed to support teams to work in an agile way. One theoretical agile leadership concept describes a Scrum Master who is supposed to empower the team to lead itself. Empirical findings on such a leadership role are controversial. We still have not understood how leadership unfolds in a team that is by definition self-organizing. Further exploration is needed to better understand leadership in agile teams. Our goal is to explore how leadership changes while the team matures using the example of the Scrum Master. Through a grounded theory study containing 75 practitioners from 11 divisions at the Robert Bosch GmbH we identified a set of nine leadership roles that are transferred from the Scrum Master to the Development Team while it matures. We uncovered that a leadership gap and a supportive internal team climate are enablers of the role transfer process, whereas role conflicts may diminish the role transfer. To make the Scrum Master change in a mature team, team members need to receive trust and freedom to take on a leadership role which was previously filled by the Scrum Master. We conclude with practical implications for managers, Product Owners, Development Teams and Scrum Masters which they can apply in real settings., Robert Bosch Automotive Steering GmbH, Projekt DEAL

Non‐functional requirements define qualities of the software system that ensure effectiveness while embedding any constraints and restrictions on the design. A challenge rises with agile implementation in handling non‐function requirements in regulated environments. Thus, a practitioner's perceptions of agile method tailoring are described in\ud relation to inter‐team boundaries and non‐functional requirements. The research comprises 18 practitioner interviews from two multinational agile software development companies. Interviews were recorded, transcribed, and analysed using an approach informed by grounded theory and information flow models were used to compare and\ud contrast interactions of processes. It was discovered that one of the case study companies managed non‐functional requirements as artefacts in their agile methodology, while the other company reverts to conventional plan‐based software development practices of documentation, timeline estimations, and safety critical requirements. This research creates a detailed comparison of these contrasting approaches. The main contribution of this study is a set of proposed recommendations to deal with non‐functional requirements in\ud a regulated environment using agile techniques. The introduction of two new artefacts, Documentation Work Item and Safety Critical Work Item, is recommended and it is accompanied with an illustrative example, to transform the handling of documentation and safety critical requirements in a more agile way.

In the recent years, the advances in mobile technology have brought an exorbitant change in daily lifestyle of individuals. Smartphones/mobile devices are rampant in all aspects of human life. This has led to an extreme demand for developing software that runs on mobile devices. The developers have to keep up with this high demand and deliver high-quality app on time and within budget. For this, estimation of development and testing of apps play a pivotal role. In this paper, a Systematic Literature Review (SLR) is conducted to highlight development and testing estimation process for software/application. The goal of the present literature survey is to identify and compare existing test estimation techniques for traditional software (desktop/laptop) and for mobile software/application. The characteristics that make mobile software/application different from traditional software are identified in this literature survey. Further, the trend for developing the software is towards agile, thus this study also presents and compares estimation techniques used in agile software development for mobile applications. The analysis of literature review suggests filling a research gap to present formal models for estimating mobile application considering specific characteristics of mobile software.

The linear frequency‐modulated frequency agile radar (FAR) can be used for synthesizing high‐range‐resolution profiles (HRRP), and also has excellent electronic counter‐countermeasures performance. Similar to the Newtonalized orthogonal matching pursuit (NOMP) for line spectral estimation problem, the NOMP for the FAR radar termed as NOMP‐FAR is designed to process each coarse range bin to extract the HRRP and velocities of multiple targets, including the guide for determining the oversampling factor and the stopping criterion. In addition, it is shown that the target will cause false alarm in the nearby coarse range bins, and a post‐processing algorithm is proposed to suppress the ghost targets. Numerical simulations are conducted to demonstrate the effectiveness of NOMP‐FAR.

The maturity of organisations is measured using process assessment models like the International Organization for Standardization (ISO)/IEC 33001. Product quality is refined with internal and external product quality characteristics based on models like the ISO/IEC 25010. With the shift from the Tailorism‐driven process orientation to a more people‐centric organization, the process and product quality dimensions have to be extended by the teamwork quality (TWQ) dimension. For the sake of systematic organization development, this new third quality dimension needs to be integrated into existing quality frameworks to achieve a holistic quality approach. This article introduces agile TWQ as the method of choice. It explains its design, implementation and evaluation in the large enterprise context of the Volkswagen AG. It provides insights into the effectivity of this approach in heterogeneous multi‐team settings, as well as into its strengths, weaknesses, and limitations.

Over the last 3 decades, researchers have attempted to shed light into the requirements traceability problem by introducing tracing tools, techniques, and methods with the vision of achieving ubiquitous traceability. Despite the technological advances, requirements traceability remains problematic for researchers and practitioners. This study aims to identify and investigate the main challenges in implementing (semi‐)automated requirements traceability, as reported in the recent literature. A systematic literature review was carried out based on the guidelines for systematic literature reviews in software engineering, proposed by Kitchenham. We retrieved 4530 studies by searching five major bibliographic databases and selected 70 primary studies. These studies were analysed and classified according to the challenges they present and/or address. Twenty‐one challenges were identified and were classified into five categories. Findings reveal that the most frequent challenges are technological challenges, in particular, low accuracy of traceability recovery methods. Findings also suggest that future research efforts should be devoted to the human facet of tracing, to explore traceability practices in organisational settings, and to develop traceability approaches that support agile and DevOps practices. Finally, it is recommended that researchers leverage blockchain technology as a suitable technical solution to ensure the trustworthiness of traceability information in interorganisational software projects.

Data analytics is increasingly important to the operations and strategic growth of higher education institutions. In September 2019, three higher education professional associations issued a rare joint statement calling for the accelerated investment and intensified efforts to develop and deploy data analytics in support of campus decision making. COVID-19 disrupted the momentum generated by the joint statement. However, during the pandemic, many universities recognized data analytics as a critical asset to their response to the crisis. In this case study of Ohio State University's COVID-19 dashboard development process, the authors demonstrate that the principles advocated by the joint statement are exactly the reasons that a successful and nationally recognized dashboard effort was possible. The case study shows that senior leadership support, strategic investment in the right technologies, and close collaboration among campus data analytics professionals are among the key factors of success.

Robotics and artificial intelligence (AI) are revolutionizing all spheres of human life. From industrial processes to graphic design, the implementation of automated intelligent systems is changing how industries work. The spread of robots and AI systems has triggered academic institutions to closely examine how these technologies may affect the humanity—this is how the fields of roboethics and AI ethics have been born. The identification of ethical issues for robotics and AI and creation of ethical frameworks were the first steps to creating a regulatory environment for these technologies. In this paper, we focus on regulatory efforts in Europe and North America to create enforceable regulation for AI and robotics. We describe and compare ethical principles, policies, and regulations that have been proposed by government organizations for the design and use of robots and AI. We also discuss proposed international regulation for robotics and AI. This paper tries to highlight the need for a comprehensive, enforceable, and agile policy to ethically regulate technology today and in the future. Through reviewing existing policies, we conclude that the European Unition currently leads the way in defining roboethics and AI ethical principles and implementing them into policy. Our findings suggest that governments in Europe and North America are aware of the ethical risks that robotics and AI pose, and are engaged in policymaking to create regulatory policies for these new technologies.

The purpose of this scoping review focused on the relationship between smart working, a conception of job centered on the flexibility and autonomy of the worker, and well-being/illness in an organizational context before and during COVID-19. The literature review, conducted using the PRISMA (Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis for qualitative synthesis) method for qualitative synthesis, considered studies published from 2014 to 2020. From the analyses conducted by three independent coders, three main areas of interest in the literature emerged: (1) smart working and work engagement, (2) smart working and technostress, and (3) mediators of the relationship between smart working and well-being. The review highlights the need for an organizational culture increasingly oriented towards agile working practices in conjunction with organizational support and training.

In times of a complex, uncertain and dynamic world with increasingly faster product life cycles agile approaches in the early phase of product development are demanded in small and medium sized enterprises (SME’s). Despite the high demand, there is still no generally valid and need-specific solution concept for the integration of agile approaches due to different company specific requirements such as the level of maturity, experience and application purposes. Within this research, the question about the actual needs as well as the corresponding design of a concept for integrating agile approaches in product development for SME requirements is tackled. In order to identify existing challenges in the field of agile product development an empirical study with eleven mechanical engineering companies is conducted and analyzed. By using agglomerative-hierarchical clustering, three distinct types of SME’s with similar needs are structured. As a result, this research proposes a systematic procedure, enabling SME’s to be clustered by their needs and enable the integration of agile approaches through a problem-oriented roadmap with specified recommendation of actions. Enhancing the integration and application of agile approaches effectively in product development projects, the level of agility appropriate to the situation and needs must be identified and introduced. Therefore, the potential that arises from the process-oriented support of the product development teams in the early phase of innovation projects will be outlined. Keywords: agile approaches, needs analysis, small and medium sized enterprises, clustering, product development, mechanical engineering

Agile transformation is a necessary process for companies in various fields of activity to ensure their competitiveness in modern business conditions when the uniformity of production processes and the growth of the level of customer (client) demands reduce the impact of traditional ones that remain competitive. Modern business is a «customer-oriented» business, in which instead or in addition to technological or marketing advantages comes the highest value of human resources and teamwork. That means Agile transformation provides companies with a transition to another level, and those who have not moved to this level remain outside of competitiveness, if not in the near term, then in a strategic perspective. Agile transformation is comparable to the need to intro-duce new technologies into production processes to replace obsolete ones since, without new technological solutions, the products created do not meet modern quality requirements or do not have a competitive cost price. Thus, Agile transformation ensures the introduction of new technology not only into the production process but into the management system and product creation processes within the framework of the project or project-oriented activities

Several large organizations underwent agile transformation processes over the past few years, despite limited theory and empirical research on agile working. The present study draws from the taskwork–teamwork distinction and the proactivity literature to develop a new multilevel model of agile working. We tested this model in a sample of 114 teams ( N = 476 individuals) undergoing an agile transformation at a large German transport and logistics organization. Teams at the end of the agile transformation scored significantly higher on agile work practices, proactivity norms, and team performance than teams at the beginning of the transformation. Results of multigroup structural equation modeling indicated that agile taskwork related indirectly to team performance through a positive relationship with proactivity norms. The positive relationship of agile teamwork with team performance was not mediated by proactivity norms, unlike hypothesized. Finally, we found that agile taskwork increased the likelihood that individual employees benefited from engaging in proactive behavior (specifically, employee intrapreneurship) in terms of in-role performance (i.e., cross-level interaction). This was presumably because of the favorable proactivity norms of teams practicing agile taskwork (i.e., mediated moderation). We discuss the implications of our findings for the literature on proactive behavior in teams.

As the modern business environment is highly volatile and demanding, orchestrating all business and IT components and capabilities are crucial. Firms use enterprise architecture (EA) for this purpose. However, it is currently by no means clear how EA-driven firm capabilities facilitate becoming agile. When firms are agile, they can recombine digital resources to change the business practice while also coping with uncertainty and recovering rapidly from disruption through innovative digital technologies. This study embraces the dynamic capability view (DCV), develops a model, and validates the associated hypotheses using cross-sectional data from 177 firms using a Partial Least Squares approach. The outcomes show that EA-driven dynamic capabilities are a crucial antecedent of digital project benefits. In turn, these benefits positively enhance agility. The findings shed light on becoming agile, and this study providing insights and guidance on achieving the EA-driven benefits.

The convergence of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and the Internet of Things (IoT), or AIoT, has breathed a new life into IoT operations and human-machine interactions. Currently, resource-constrained IoT devices usually cannot provide sufficient capability for data storage and processing so as to support building modern AI models. An intuitive solution is to integrate cloud computing technology into AIoT and exploit the powerful and elastic computing as well as the storage capacity of the servers on the cloud end. Nevertheless, the network bandwidth and communication latency increasingly become serious bottlenecks. The emerging edge computing can complement the cloud-based AIoT in terms of communication latency, and hence attracts more and more attention from the AIoT area. In this paper, we present an industrial edge-cloud collaborative computing platform, namely Sophon Edge, that helps to build and deploy AIoT applications efficiently. As an enterprise-level solution for the AIoT computing paradigm, Sophon Edge adopts a pipeline-based computing model for streaming data from IoT devices. Besides, this platform supports an iterative way for model evolution and updating so as to enable the AIoT applications agile and data-driven. Through a real-world example, we demonstrate the effectiveness and efficiency of building an AIoT application based on the Sophon Edge platform.

In project management, agility concept has emerged for overcoming the limitations of traditional methodologies that are sequential and linear. An agile project contains planned processes as well as iterations. In global competitive areas, achieving agility in outsourcing processes enables the companies to cope with changes and dynamic issues. This paper introduces an integrated cognitive map-based intuitionistic fuzzy multiple criteria decision aid to rank agile outsourcing provider alternatives and then determine the best performing one. Intuitionistic fuzzy sets are employed for dealing with uncertain and vague data along with the loss of information that may be occurred in numerical operations with fuzzy numbers. Intuitionistic fuzzy cognitive map tool is used to weight the evaluation criteria that are interrelated with each other with causal links. The most appropriate agile outsourcing provider alternative is identified via intuitionistic fuzzy complex proportional assessment technique, which aims to obtain a solution relative to the ideal solution. In order to demonstrate the robustness of the proposed intuitionistic fuzzy decision aid, a case study is conducted in Turkish white goods industry. As a comparative study, a scenario analysis is provided to understand the impacts of COVID-19 pandemic on agile provider evaluation/selection decision. According to the results obtained from the scenario analysis, it is worth noting that home office procedures are appropriate for maintaining agility in outsourcing processes of project management.

Machine-based classification usually involves some computer programs, known as algorithms, developed using several mathematical formulations to accelerate the automated classification process. Along with the exponential increase in the size and computational complexity of the data today, such optimized, robust, agile and reliable computational algorithms are required which can efficiently carry out these conforming classification tasks. In this review paper, deterministic optimization techniques have been analysed that are efficiently employed for machine learning applications. In this review, systematic literature review approach has been adopted in which 200 research articles were downloaded from which 100 latest articles has been selected based on the most commonly employed neural networks’ techniques. Moreover, the reported neural networks techniques based on Back Propagation Neural Network (BPNN), Recurrent Neural Networks (RNNs) Algorithm and Levenberg-Marquardt (LM) with several hybridized classification algorithms based on optimization techniques have been indicated that are commonly used to optimize and benefit the classification process.

Of the approximately 100,000 km of High-Speed Rail (HSR) lines in the world today, half are in operation and half are planned or under construction. The implementation of HSRs are planned in various countries with different characteristics to pursue different objectives. Today, the results are known, and therefore, the differences between the planned and achieved objectives can be verified. Italy is one of the countries that first built an HSR, and now, at the national planning level, Italy has decided to implement an HSR in Southern Italy. The problem is therefore not “whether” to realize an HSR but “which” type of HSR to realize. Italy is an important case study at the international level because it is possible to extend the HSR network in three different ways: upgrading existing lines by increasing the speed to 200 km/h, building a new line with speeds of 300 km/h with heavy freight trains, and building a new line with speeds of 300 km/h without heavy freight trains. The problem is how to find the best alternative in order to pursue sustainable development while considering national planning. To solve this problem, at the intermediate level between planning and design, the theoretical Lean, Agile, Resilient, Green (LARG) paradigm is proposed and applied. This approach can be extended to all countries that are launching massive and expensive programs to construct HSR lines or to upgrade existing lines.

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.

The success of applications of physiologically‐based pharmacokinetic (PBPK) modeling in drug development and drug labeling has triggered regulatory agencies to demand rigorous demonstration of the predictive capability of the specific PBPK platform for a particular intended application purpose. The effort needed to comply with such qualification requirements exceeds the costs for any individual PBPK application. Because changes or updates of a PBPK platform would require (re‐)qualification, a reliable and efficient generic qualification framework is needed. We describe the development and implementation of an agile and sustainable technical framework for automatic PBPK platform (re‐)qualification of PK‐Sim® embedded in the open source and open science GitHub landscape of Open Systems Pharmacology. The qualification approach enables the efficient assessment of all aspects relevant to the qualification of a particular purpose and provides transparency and traceability for all stakeholders. As a showcase example for the power and versatility of the qualification framework, we present the qualification of PK‐Sim® for the intended purpose of predicting cytochrome P450 3A4 (CYP3A4)–mediated drug–drug interactions (DDIs). Several perpetrator PBPK models featuring various degrees of CYP3A4 modulation and different types of mechanisms (competitive inhibition, mechanism‐based inactivation, and induction) were coupled with a set of PBPK models of sensitive CYP3A4 victim drugs. Simulations were compared to a comprehensive data set of 135 observations from published clinical DDI studies. The platform's overall predictive performance showed reasonable accuracy and precision (geometric mean fold error of 1.4 for both area under the plasma concentration‐time curve ratios and peak plasma concentration ratios with/without perpetrator) and suggests that PK‐Sim® can be applied to quantitatively assess CYP3A4‐mediated DDI in clinically untested scenarios.

The purpose of this study is to explore and analyze the variables that determine the success of implementing dynamic governance in West Java. This research was conducted qualitatively using a literature review research design. The data obtained were then analyzed following the steps of qualitative data analysis by Miles, Huberman & Saldana. The results of this study reveal that there are at least four elements that contribute significantly to the success of dynamic governance in West Java, namely the typical pentahelix collaboration, creative funding, digital government, and the Jabar Open Data program. The implications of this study confirm two things. First, program forms in dynamic governance are based on problems in the local environment, so that each region has a different type of program. It's just that in principle the program must be adaptive and accommodating. Second, the design of dynamic governance is the most reliable design for the needs and conditions of the people of West Java today. It could be that the design of agile governance will be adopted by the West Java Provincial Government when dynamic governance is deemed irrelevant and unsolvable.

The article discusses questions about the development of the theory of data-centric operations (DCO). The DCO theory is based on the concepts of metamorphism - variability & agile development and 4D-extensionalism of data-centric systems. Metamorphism means adaptive dimensional -time synthesis and reconfiguration of the data-centric system structure (DSoS), which provides the most efficient DSoS operation in specific conditions. One of the main issues in the development of the method of adaptive dimensional -time synthesis of the structure of data-centric ADS is considered the development of the model of the cycle of combat work. The model to be developed is based on J. Boyd's concept and his model of the collective struggle of two opposing sides, taking into account the cyclic processes OODA - Observe - Orient - Decide - Act. The work analyzes the components of the OODA processes. The article proposes to use a modified OODA loop model when describing the combat performance of ADS. The modification is done by introducing a synthesis phase and changing the content of the “orientation” phase. The combat operation cycle of a data-centric ADS is presented as a sequence of nested loops OODSA - Observe - Orient - Decide - Synthesis - Act. This work considers the OODSA model for data-centric ADS. The notion of “orientation” has been substantially changed. Now, depending on the stage of the battlefield operation, “orientation” can be regarded as analysis of information, its structuring (conversion into data), or formation/refinement of a behavioral model. Decision making is regarded as a voluntary choice to be made within the framework of the reverse behavioral model. The article discusses the methodology of using the Lanchester equations to analytically assess the effectiveness of the combat use of ADS. The key variable that determines the overpowering or defeat in the classical OODA loop is "time. Within the framework of OODSA model the performance of the process of anti-aircraft warfare ADS is evaluated using Probabilistic-time indicators.

The high level of volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity in business environments lead to the fact that traditional management has been in serious trouble. The required flexibility should provide the agile project management causing a silent revolution of the way projects are organized and executed. Although initially rooted in the software development industry, we can say that agile methodologies are spreading across a broad range of industries. The benefits of applying an agile approach are widely recognized, but there are still various challenges and problems that the organization faces with when adopting an agile practice.

Every software development company makes software development based on a specific approach. There are a number of approaches to software development, both disciplined and agile. Each approach includes a set of different activities. Sometimes, the specific nature of a company’s work requires a specific approach, but the need to make work more efficient, faster and better requires implementing activities of other approaches. Then hybrid software development approaches come in. The paper presents an expert survey to examine the most important software development activities, the combinations of development approaches that are used in software development processes and the way of upgrading existing approaches. The evaluated activities of software development process are classified according to their nature – whether they correspond with a team, organisation, documentation, development, and testing. The conclusions are also made on the practices that are required most – disciplined, Agile or hybrid.

In the electronic health record, using clinical notes to identify entities such as disorders and their temporality (e.g. the order of an event relative to a time index) can inform many important analyses. However, creating training data for clinical entity tasks is time consuming and sharing labeled data is challenging due to privacy concerns. The information needs of the COVID-19 pandemic highlight the need for agile methods of training machine learning models for clinical notes. We present Trove, a framework for weakly supervised entity classification using medical ontologies and expert-generated rules. Our approach, unlike hand-labeled notes, is easy to share and modify, while offering performance comparable to learning from manually labeled training data. In this work, we validate our framework on six benchmark tasks and demonstrate Trove’s ability to analyze the records of patients visiting the emergency department at Stanford Health Care for COVID-19 presenting symptoms and risk factors., In the electronic health record, using clinical notes to identify entities such as disorders and their temporality can inform many important analyses. Here, the authors present a framework for weakly supervised entity classification using medical ontologies and expert-generated rules.

Background Evidence-based interventions (EBIs) could reduce cervical cancer deaths by 90%, colorectal cancer deaths by 70%, and lung cancer deaths by 95% if widely and effectively implemented in the USA. Yet, EBI implementation, when it occurs, is often suboptimal. This manuscript outlines the protocol for Optimizing Implementation in Cancer Control (OPTICC), a new implementation science center funded as part of the National Cancer Institute Implementation Science Consortium. OPTICC is designed to address three aims. Aim 1 is to develop a research program that supports developing, testing, and refining of innovative, efficient methods for optimizing EBI implementation in cancer control. Aim 2 is to support a diverse implementation laboratory of clinical and community partners to conduct rapid, implementation studies anywhere along the cancer care continuum for a wide range of cancers. Aim 3 is to build implementation science capacity in cancer control by training new investigators, engaging established investigators in cancer-focused implementation science, and contributing to the Implementation Science Consortium in Cancer. Methods Three cores serve as OPTICC’s foundation. The Administrative Core plans coordinates and evaluates the Center’s activities and leads its capacity-building efforts. The Implementation Laboratory Core (I-Lab) coordinates a network of diverse clinical and community sites, wherein studies are conducted to optimize EBI implementation, implement cancer control EBIs, and shape the Center’s agenda. The Research Program Core conducts innovative implementation studies, measurement and methods studies, and pilot studies that advance the Center’s theme. A three-stage approach to optimizing EBI implementation is taken—(I) identify and prioritize determinants, (II) match strategies, and (III) optimize strategies—that is informed by a transdisciplinary team of experts leveraging multiphase optimization strategies and criteria, user-centered design, and agile science. Discussion OPTICC will develop, test, and refine efficient and economical methods for optimizing EBI implementation by building implementation science capacity in cancer researchers through applications with our I-Lab partners. Once refined, OPTICC will disseminate its methods as toolkits accompanied by massive open online courses, and an interactive website, the latter of which seeks to simultaneously accumulate knowledge across OPTICC studies.

Increasingly, organizations have been employing self-managing teams to circumvent bureaucratic controls and stimulate innovation. However, this goal is not easily achieved; in many situations, informal controls replace formal controls. This study develops a multi-level perspective of control. We explicitly analyze control mechanisms at different levels of the organization and how they affect innovative team output. We theorize and empirically investigate a potential downside of horizontal social control mechanisms at the team level (i.e., peer pressure) affecting self-managing teams’ innovative outcomes. We also discuss managerial control mechanisms at the organizational level (i.e., interactive and diagnostic management control systems) that may help to mitigate such negative effects. We theorize how they may influence the innovative output of self-managing teams, both directly and interactively. We chose a multi-level, multi-source setting for our study and ran three parallel surveys with employees in a Fortune 500 firm. 248 team members, 126 internal team leaders, and 97 organizational leaders enabled us to create a unique database of 97 self-managing software development teams. Our findings confirm that peer pressure is common among established agile teams and that it negatively influences the innovative output of the agile teams. Moreover, our findings show that the magnitude of the effect of peer pressure is contingent on control mechanisms at higher levels within the organization. This enables us to provide new theoretical insights regarding the paradoxical effect of managerial control systems when it comes to flat organizations and autonomous teams. Additionally, we provide practical guidelines for managers who increasingly adopt agile practices but at the same time face issues with regard to innovation.

Prior to COVID-19, telework was a key action adopted by companies to foster employee wellbeing, but the evidence of its effects was equivocal. This study aims to 1) develop and validate a questionnaire measuring the quality of telework (QoT-q) and 2) assess the impact of telework on employee work engagement and work-family balance in the case of high-quality telework (HqT), low-quality telework (LqT), and no telework (NoT). The sample consists of 260 workers from three Italian organizations. Through principal component analysis and Cronbach’s alpha values, the final QoT-q comprised three areas: 1) agile workplaces, 2) flexible worker, and 3) virtual leadership. ANOVAs showed that job resources, work engagement, and work-family balance are significantly higher among HqT, while job demands do not differ or were lower. The Job Demands-Resources model was useful to explain the effects of telework. Implications for future research and practice are presented.

Der Arbeitskreis „Arbeitsgestaltung und -forschung“ der Bundesvereinigung der Deutschen Arbeitgeberverbände (BDA) beschreibt aus einer praxisnahen Perspektive verschiedener deutscher Industrie- und Dienstleistungsbranchen heraus wichtige Forschungsbedarfe für die Arbeitswelt der kommenden Jahre (2021+). Ziel ist es, die vielfältigen Facetten und den Wandel der Arbeitswelt zu beschreiben, relevante Positionen und Thesen für die Arbeitsforschung aus Arbeitgebersicht herzuleiten sowie die Diskussion zur Weiterentwicklung der Arbeitswissenschaft anzuregen. Betrachtet werden soziotechnische Aspekte, wie zum Beispiel die Auswirkung der Digitalisierung und Künstlichen Intelligenz auf die Arbeitsgestaltung, Nachhaltigkeit in der Wirtschaft. Verschiedene arbeitsorganisatorische Ausprägungen, wie zum Beispiel mobile Arbeit, agiles Arbeiten, Führungsanforderungen, stehen ebenso im Mittelpunkt der Thesen.

Agile methods can be used as a strategy tool by incumbents to explore and exploit market opportunities through times of unprecedented industry transformation. Drawing on 18 interviews with managers at a premium manufacturer based in Asia, the case of sales in the automotive industry during the COVID‐19 crisis provides in‐depth insights into the crisis management, focusing on but looking beyond sales. Six fundamental principles are identified as strategic tools to leverage resources and improve business outcomes while using agile‐work methods.

The growth of software demand has caused more competition among customers who expect faster changes and better quality in the software products delivered. The need to satisfy the continuous requirements of the market, the need to keep the quality of products and services, as well as the need to improve their processes become a difficult task for organizations. DevOps arises to handle this continuous change because it addresses the reduction of the gap between development and operation. However, the influence of this new paradigm in organizations becomes a big challenge, mainly related to a cultural change. If the change of culture is not properly implemented, it could impact a team with negative consequences. In this context, there is no specific guidance that helps organizations with their implementation. Based on the lack of guidance, this paper presents the Reinforced DevOps Guidance, which aims to help teams to achieve an evolution of their software development, software delivery, and project management processes toward a proper DevOps implementation. The guidance uses a web platform that allows a dynamic implementation. That way helps teams to understand the set of tasks to be followed and the impact of their implementation on their current organizations. This paper shows both an overview of the guidance, highlighting the web platform, and its application in a very small entity (VSE). The results show that the use of the guidance: provides support toward addressing the effort in VSEs; gives the information of the technology, processes, and teams aspects that should be improved; and allows the cultural change in a pace supported by VSEs.

The success of CubeSat space missions depends on the ability to perform properly in a harsh environment. A key component in space missions is the flight software, which manages all of the processes executed by the satellite on its onboard computer. Literature shows that CubeSat missions suffer high infant mortality, and many spacecraft failures are related to flight software errors, some of them resulting in complete mission loss. Extensive operation testing is the primary technique used by CubeSats developers to ensure flight software quality and avoid such failures. The “New Space” requirements pressure to add “agility” to the software development, which could limit the capacity to test. While advanced and beneficial software testing techniques are found in the software engineering field, CubeSat software solutions mostly rely on unit testing, software in the loop simulation, and hardware in the loop simulation. In this work, fuzz testing techniques were developed, implemented, and evaluated as a manner to expedite operational testing of CubeSats while maintaining their completeness. The impact of the tools was evaluated by using the three new 3U CubeSats under development at the University of Chile. We identified twelve bugs not covered by classic testing strategies in less than three days. These failures were reported, fixed, and characterized by the developers in eight sprint sessions. Our results indicate that fuzz testing improved the completeness of flight software testing through automation and with almost no development interruption. Although our approach has been tested on the SUCHAI flight software, it applies to systems that follow a similar architecture.

Scope creep is considered as one of the crucial reasons for the failure of traditional software development projects. The ability to manage and control the change elements on a project, particularly the project scope, is a key to project success. The notion of agile process was introduced to tackle the scope change-related challenges such as scope creep. By adopting an agile-footed process, the development organizations can react to the consistent market changes and client requests. However, continuous change accommodation may negatively impact on the success of the targeted project since the project manager mainly focuses on controlling scope change rather than analyzing its impact on the cost and quality. The agile-process advocates have accepted that this situation could happen even following agile methodology, which prompts on compromising the quality, postponed the plans, increases the cost, plan to modify, and diminished the consumer loyalty. Additionally, the scope-related challenge significantly increases, especially when managing scope creep in Global Software Development (GSD) context. Thus, there is a need to focus on scope creep factors in the context of AGSD. Motivated by this, current work aims at identifying the factors causing scope creep in the context of AGSD. To achieve the targeted objectives, we reported the current state-of-the-art related to existing scope creep models in AGSD context. We performed a systematic literature review and an empirical study to address the formulated research questions. The current study also identifies the additional challenges of scope creep from the industrial perspective. Based on the obtained results, the current work proposes a conceptual model for scope creep to assist the agile practitioners to effectively handle the scope creep, which ultimately increases the project success and forecasts change control effect on a software project. Moreover, the proposed conceptual model’s effectiveness is validated through expert judgment and a case study. The obtained promising results ensure the additional aspects of AGSD; hence, the project manager could overcome the project’s overall risk by implementing the proposed model.

Cloud computing has now become a very standardised concept in our society. However, many modern applications need a better level of security that includes saving data from internal breaches. Thus, cloud databases need effective security mechanisms to keep track of data modifications. This paper will introduce the enhanced structure of cloud relational database (RDB) based on blockchain technology (BC) named BC over cloud-RDB. Through a self-verification mechanism, it enables the client to detect and prevent erroneous RDB manipulation. We proposed two systems to improve cloud-RDB namely, agile BC-based RDB and secure BC-based RDB. Both are distributed among several cloud service providers based on the Byzantine Fault Tolerance consensus. Additionally, both rely on linking records to each other using the SHA-256. At the same time, secure BC-based RDB uses a proof-of-work consensus to make data offensive operation impossible. On the basis of performance of both systems’ and security analysis, the agile BC-based RDB is highly suggested for the high throughput database. On the other hand, the secure BC-based RDB is recommended for RDB that contains sensitive data and low throughput performance. The improved RDB is flexible and can be operated according to the data owner’s specifications.

Context: Widespread use of agile software development (ASD) methods can be observed nowadays. Non-functional requirements (NFRs) are often reported to be a problematic issue for agile projects, since ASD methods tend to neglect NFRs while focusing on incremental delivery of functional features. Despite that, only very few studies have explored the requirements engineering practices used in ASD and dedicated particularly to NFRs. Objective: We aimed to identify and investigate the practices used in industrial ASD projects to identify, elicit and document NFRs. Method: We conducted a systematic literature review (SLR) and used its findings to prepare an interview guide. We then conducted a series of semi-structured interviews with 10 experienced practitioners. Results: The SLR revealed a number of strategies related to the timing of NFR identification as well as 13 elicitation practices and 20 documentation techniques. At least some of these findings show discrepancies between ASD theory and practice. The interviews provided a more in-depth understanding of the practices used, and their context. The main findings from the interviews include: practitioners’ attempts to start identifying NFRs early in the project, a lack of elicitation techniques aimed at NFRs only, and different choices about documentation techniques, including the additional techniques introduced to cope specifically with NFRs. Conclusions: It was not confirmed that requirements engineering activities related to NFRs are perceived by ASD practitioners as a problem, as they developed effective practices to deal with this issue. Moreover, our findings show that different approaches to NFRs can be used and give satisfactory results.

Current research has shown that global software development (GSD) organizations rely on agile methods to guarantee better communication, coordination, and improved productivity. Moreover, as organizations continue to grow, they are facing large-scale global project challenges and complexity, leading to an urge to scale agile practices for better coordination. However, it has been surprising to find that approaches in the literature on scaling agile for large and global projects remain unclear. In addition, to identify and highlight which agile scales practices reported in studies on Agile GSD (AGSD) are related to SAFe practices, we conducted a systematic literature review. Besides, we mapped AGSD practices to the SAFe 5.0 framework to provide bases for those starting on such a journey. In our study, we found 24 articles related to the scaling of agile practices in a global environment, and 44 scaling agile practices that embrace 95 SAFe 5.0 components, including “agile coaching,” “agile architecture,” and “system demo”. This study provides an in-depth scientific investigation on how SAFe can be associated with global teams applying GSD. The results and findings will benefit researchers and practitioners in conducting further research and provide more dedicated solutions for challenges to scaling agile in the context of GSD.

In order to satisfy new normal life styles in the post-COVID-19 era, an efficient information and communication technology (ICT) framework is required to collect, process, and utilize data for the purpose of satisfying increasing user demand in communications and computing while providing a functionality of responding quickly to pandemic. We propose an ICT framework that is capable to support diverse application requirements based on ambient communication, resilient computing, and agile control technologies. Computer simulations are conducted to evaluate the fundamental functionalities of the proposed framework by using a case study where data are exchanged and processed among different network entities in unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) empowered vehicular environments. The simulation results show that the proposed approach can outperform existing baselines in various conditions.

[EN] Agile frameworks continue to provide positive evidence regarding the benefits of their use in the software products. Since these methods develop professional skills in those who practice them, their knowledge and use will acquire greater demand in areas other than software development. For this reason, it is essential to recognize the key skills for agile team building. The goal of this paper is to identify the agile professional skills that the Chilean industry considers key to conform high-performance agile teams. A survey was applied to agile community professionals in Chile to validate the results of previous work and to identify relevant information regarding learning processes, techniques, and tools for working with agile frameworks. The results allowed to establish three key skills for high-performance teams with their respective levels of achievement., This work was supported in part by the Dirección de Investigación of the Universidad de Atacama (DIUDA) under Grant 22386, and in part by the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Valparaíso through the Corporación de Fomento de la Producción (CORFO) Project New Engineering 2030 under Grant 14ENI2-26905.

The Philippines’ location within the Pacific Ring of Fire brings enormous threat to its people. Intervention and innovation are to be in place for survival and growth, since nothing can be done about its geographic location and the threats that come with it. This study aims to create a framework for developing a decision support system, a mobile and web application for the efficient implementation of the disaster logistics support system. The study will utilize Agile Methodology for the software development in the proposed framework. This proposed framework exhibits the features of the system such as identifying location, affected families, supplies, reports, management of inventory, vehicle outsourcing, and monitoring. The system framework can be a helpful tool for the efficient and speedy delivery of needed help and an effective approach to disaster supply chain issues.

Digital innovations often follow a more fluid innovation process and, therefore, require different ways of managing the front end of innovation. Agile as alternative to established front end management practices is often suggested, potentially combined with Stage‐Gate, in what is called a hybrid Agile‐Stage‐Gate model, to reap the benefits from both. Implementing the hybrid model in the front end is however not sufficient for firms with separate Research and Development departments to succeed. In such organizations digital innovations still need to be transferred from Research, where the front end work on digital innovations takes place, to the Development department, where formal development actually starts. Yet, such front end transfers have been described as inefficient and ineffective. Realizing digital innovation front end transfers is likely even more challenging because of their fluid definition. In the absence of extant theory on front end transfers in such a setting, this research uses a case study approach to analyze the front end transfer experiences of the Research department of a firm in the lighting industry that is undergoing a transformation from traditional to digital lighting. The in‐depth analysis of triangulated data on eight front end projects shows that Research struggles to transfer digital innovations to Development, because transfer practices in terms of management, scope, and synchronization, turn out to be inherently challenging in a hybrid Agile‐Stage‐Gate setting. Specifically, the results reveal that each transfer practice plays an intricate role in either facilitating (i.e., transfer management) or inhibiting (i.e., transfer scope and synchronization) front end transfers of digital innovations. The discovery of these opposing forces has important implications for novel theorizing on the use of Agile in the front end of digital innovation, transfer practices from Research to Development in a hybrid setting, as well as for theorizing about digital innovation management.

The article briefly discusses the underlying principles and evolutionary development of the concept of network-centric warfare. The conclusion is made that in the conditions of mankind's transition to the 6th technological order, another bifurcation point arises, which determines the change in the paradigm of the development of weapons and military equipment systems and the concept of warfare. The necessity of development of the theory of data-centric operation is argued. The system-conceptual foundations of the theory of data-centric operations are presented. An ontological model of a data-centric operation is proposed. The issues of creation and functioning of data-centric systems in 4D space (3D coordinates / time) are considered as the main questions of the theory. The issues of conflict interaction of data-centric systems with network-centric systems are considered as separate questions of the theory. The main concepts of the theory of Data-Centric Operations are considered: variability & agile development (metamorphism); 4D-extensionism; dualism of data-centric SoS. A 4D extensional representation of the combat space of weapons and military equipment systems united into a single network is proposed. The concept of data-centric systems is introduced. The essence of the method of adaptive space-time synthesis of their structure is revealed. The dual nature of data-centric systems is that they can be viewed simultaneously as both a fit-to-purpose system and network resources. The theory DCO assumes that the use of the new technologies increases the efficiency and effectiveness of operations due to: transition to the paradigm of multi-intelligent systems based on the socio-cultural model; dynamic reconfiguration of the data-centric SoS and systems of the operating environment, when environmental conditions change; expanding the boundaries of the system by implementing decentralized governance of the behavior of systems.

Theoretical and practical issues of the active learning methods application using the high-profile methodologies aimed at finding effective learning technologies have been considered. There have been analysed the educational methodologies based on the Agile methodology to solve educational problems, taking into account the values and principles of the Agile methodology formulated in the Agile Manifesto. The project-based learning practice introduction in the educational process with the adaptation of the Agile methodology for teaching the “Architecture and analysis of software requirements”, “Software quality and testing”, “IT projects management” disciplines has been suggested, and the results of this approach have been analyzed.

Lean Manufacturing is always important for process improvement in manufacturing industries especially in deem of adoption but the implementation of simple lean is not enough to attain required results. A recent trend has been observed regarding the implementation of strategies like Lean, Agile, Resilient and Green (LARG) in combination to attain fruitful results. However, this combination carries a complication regarding its understanding and implementation and a gap observed regarding the availability of literature study that can cope all these strategies on one platform for understanding and can suggest a proper implementation method. It has been observed that there are some new models that are utilizing electronic configurations to provide powerful platform for process improvements. Utilization of LARG as tool or technique in combination of technologies can be very effective for process improvements. Therefore, this current work emphasis on the combining of LARG along with wireless technologies for obtaining a sustainable improvement in manufacturing sector, which seems unavailable. Based on this ideology, the aim of this research is to conduct a systematic literature study that reviews the previously available LARG research with the objectives to first study the LARG combination for understanding and to develop the interrelation between LARG and previous available technologies for its successful implementation. The literature study results that the LARG combination has many benefits like helpful to attain elimination of non-value activities (lean), responsive to the changing demands of customers as per increasing volatile market (agile), responsive to the unexpected disruptions (resilient) and to adopt environmental protection (green) but typically lacks its utilization with modern technologies (Like RFID) that will be helpful to attain successful implementation. The contribution of this study is the next generation in LARG implementation to emphasis more on the combining of LARG implementation with utilization of modern technologies

When NoSQL database systems are used in an agile software development setting, data model changes occur frequently and thus, data is routinely stored in different versions. The management of versioned data leads to an overhead potentially impeding the software development. Several data migration strategies exist that handle legacy data differently during data accesses, each of which can be characterized by certain advantages and disadvantages. Depending on the requirements for the software application, we evaluate and compare different migration strategies through metrics like migration costs and latency as well as precision and recall. Ideally, exactly that strategy should be selected whose characteristics fulfill service-level agreements and match the migration scenario, which depends on the query workload and the changes in the data model which imply an evolution of the database schema. In this paper, we present a methodology of self-adapting data migration, which automatically adjusts migration strategies and their parameters with respect to the migration scenario and service-level agreements, thereby contributing to the self-management of database systems and supporting agile development.

Context: A stable team is deemed optimal for agile software development project success; however, all teams change membership over time. Newcomers joining an agile project team must rapidly assimilate into the organisational and project environment. They must do this while learning how to contribute effectively and without seriously interrupting project progress. Objective: This paper addresses how newcomers integrate into an established agile project team and how agile practices assist with onboarding. Method: A single, qualitative case study approach was used, investigating a co-located agile project team in a large IT department who regularly onboard inexperienced newcomers. Analysis was abductive, consisting of inductive coding and theming using categories from an existing onboarding theory. Results: We describe the team’s onboarding practices and adjustments and present an agile onboarding model that encompasses onboarding activities, individual adjustments, and workplace adjustments. Conclusions: A mixture of general and specific agile onboarding practices contribute to successful onboarding in an agile team. We provide practical guidelines to improve onboarding practice in agile teams. Our major new contribution is an extended model of onboarding for agile teams.

Context: With an increase in Agile, Lean, and DevOps software methodologies over the last years (collectively referred to as Continuous Software Development (CSD)), we have observed that documentation is often poor. Objective: This work aims at collecting studies on documentation challenges, documentation practices, and tools that can support documentation in CSD. Method: A systematic mapping study was conducted to identify and analyze research on documentation in CSD, covering publications between 2001 and 2019. Results: A total of 63 studies were selected. We found 40 studies related to documentation practices and challenges, and 23 studies related to tools used in CSD. The challenges include: informal documentation is hard to understand, documentation is considered as waste, productivity is measured by working software only, documentation is out-of-sync with the software and there is a short-term focus. The practices include: non-written and informal communication, the usage of development artifacts for documentation, and the use of architecture frameworks. We also made an inventory of numerous tools that can be used for documentation purposes in CSD. Overall, we recommend the usage of executable documentation, modern tools and technologies to retrieve information and transform it into documentation, and the practice of minimal documentation upfront combined with detailed design for knowledge transfer afterwards. Conclusion: It is of paramount importance to increase the quantity and quality of documentation in CSD. While this remains challenging, practitioners will benefit from applying the identified practices and tools in order to mitigate the stated challenges.

Context: The concept of software craftsmanship has early roots in computing, and in 2009, the Manifesto for Software Craftsmanship was formulated as a reaction to how the Agile methods were practiced and taught. But software craftsmanship has seldom been studied from a software engineering perspective. Objective: The objective of this article is to systematize an anatomy of software craftsmanship through literature studies and a longitudinal case study. Method: We performed a snowballing literature review based on an initial set of nine papers, resulting in 18 papers and 11 books. We also performed a case study following seven years of software development of a product for the financial market, eliciting qualitative, and quantitative results. We used thematic coding to synthesize the results into categories. Results: The resulting anatomy is centered around four themes, containing 17 principles and 47 hierarchical practices connected to the principles. We present the identified practices based on the experiences gathered from the case study, triangulating with the literature results. Conclusion: We provide our systematically derived anatomy of software craftsmanship with the goal of inspiring more research into the principles and practices of software craftsmanship and how these relate to other principles within software engineering in general.

This book features state-of-the-art contributions from two well-established conferences: Changeable, Agile, Reconfigurable and Virtual Production Conference (CARV2020) and Mass Customization and Personalization Conference (MCPC2020). Together, they focus on the joint design, development, and management of products, production systems, and business for sustainable customization and personalization. The book covers a large range of topics within this domain, ranging from industrial success factors to original contributions within the field.

Scrum, recognized today as the most popular agile development methodology, has been used in a wide range of settings and for varying purposes, in- and outside of the traditional software development context. The use of Scrum in non-traditional settings and for different needs led to a considerable corpus of academic literature that investigates, presents, and discusses modifications to the original method, aimed to make it fit such novel forms of application. Based on a large-scale review of extant literature, this study systematically analyses why and how Scrum was reportedly modified in different instances and contributes with a synthesis that can serve as a basis for a more systematic approach to future research and practice. We explicate nine common modification objectives for change (e.g., attaining high performance, non-standard contexts, distributed development) mapped against seven generic modification strategies (e.g., method guidance, new procedures, or artifacts). Building on our extensive literature analysis we highlight research gaps and identify promising areas for future research.

Food waste is a significant problem within public catering establishments in any normal situation. During spring 2020 the Covid-19 pandemic placed the public catering system under greater pressure, revealing weaknesses within the system and generation of food waste due to rapidly changing consumption patterns. In times of crisis, it is especially important to conserve resources and allocate existing resources to areas where they can be of most use, but this poses significant challenges. This study evaluated the potential of a forecasting model to predict guest attendance during the start and throughout the pandemic. This was done by collecting data on guest attendance in Swedish school and preschool catering establishments before and during the pandemic, and using a machine learning approach to predict future guest attendance based on historical data. Comparison of various learning methods revealed that random forest produced more accurate forecasts than a simple artificial neural network, with conditional mean absolute prediction error of 0.15 for the trained dataset. Economic savings were obtained by forecasting compared with a no-plan scenario, supporting selection of the random forest approach for effective forecasting of meal planning. Overall, the results obtained using forecasting models for meal planning in times of crisis confirmed their usefulness. Continuous use can improve estimates for the test period, due to the agile and flexible nature of these models. This is particularly important when guest attendance is unpredictable, so that production planning can be optimized to reduce food waste and contribute to a more sustainable and resilient food system.

Software traceability, the ability to relate software development artifacts such as requirements, design models and code to each other, is an important aspect in software development. It yields a number of benefits such as facilitating impact analysis and tracking software changes. However, for companies to reap these benefits, a proper traceability strategy—a plan for how traceability should be managed—needs to be defined and implemented. Existing literature lacks concrete guidelines for practitioners to systematically define such a strategy. In this study, we address this gap by defining a Traceability Introduction Methodology (TracIMo), which is a methodology for systematically designing, implementing and evaluating software traceability in practice. We used design science research to design TracIMo and evaluated it in a case study with an agile development team of a company in the finance domain. Our results show that TracIMo is feasible as it allows incremental definition and evaluation of a traceability strategy that is aligned with the company’s traceability goals and the existing development process. We also report practical challenges encountered when designing a traceability strategy such as defining the right level of granularity and the need for defining intermediate development artifacts.