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Enterprise architecture is a growing trend that aims to help deal with the complexity of socio‐technical systems such as human organizations, as well as their information technology and systems areas. Nevertheless, the contribution of enterprise architecture to the field of software engineering remains unclear. The purpose of this systematic literature review is to see how enterprise architecture is used in software development and maintenance practice. To this end, we first carried out a search in the SCOPUS database and then organized the papers according to the Software Engineering Body of Knowledge to determine what areas of software engineering are covered by each research study. To understand how enterprise architecture is used, we established a classification based on ISO 42010 and TOGAF. From the systematic literature review, we noticed that the early stages of development are the most impacted by the enterprise architecture. On the other hand, we observed that enterprise architecture is of assistance in the areas of engineering management, engineering processes, and engineering models and methods; these tasks are carried out by teams or managers using different, often agile, development methods or standards. In turn, we found that the most common categories are architecture descriptions; these are often used to facilitate communication and information‐sharing between different stakeholders, in addition to frameworks, which will help to establish common practices in the organization related to the joint use of enterprise architecture and software development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although there have been some studies on the success factors for IT software projects, there is still a lack of coherent research on the success factors for IT service projects. Therefore, this study aimed to identify and understand the factors and their relationships that contribute to the success of IT service projects. For this purpose, multivariate regressions and structural equation models (SEMs) were developed and analyzed. The regression models included six project management success criteria used as dependent variables (quality of the delivered product, scope realization and requirements, timeliness of delivery, delivery within budget, customer satisfaction, and provider satisfaction) and four independent variables (agile techniques and change management, organization and people, stakeholders and risk analysis, work environment), which had been identified through exploratory factor analysis. The results showed that not all success factors were relevant to all success criteria, and there were differences in their importance. An additional series of exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses along with appropriate statistical measures were employed to evaluate the quality of these four factors. The SEM approach was based on five latent constructs with a total of twenty components. The study suggests that investing in improving people's knowledge and skills, using agile methodologies, creating a supportive work environment, and involving stakeholders in regular risk analysis are important for project management success. The results also suggest that the success factors for IT service projects depend on both traditional and agile approaches. The study extensively compared its findings with similar research and discussed common issues and differences in both the model structures and methodologies applied. The investigation utilized mathematical methods and techniques that are not commonly applied in the field of project management success modeling. The comprehensive methodology that was applied may be helpful to other researchers who are interested in this topic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The design-building of IT services in data centers has been historically conducted by applying rigorous IT service design-building phases-workflows. Consequently, relevant research has been conducted upon these rigorous phases-workflows to provide theoretical foundations and practical guidance to IT service design-building architects. However, the current dynamic business-governmental environment is demanding agile approaches, and research from this perspective is still very scarce. This research, thus, aims to provide an updated review and quantitative evaluation of the main rigorous (ITIL v2011, CMMI-SVC v1.3, and ISO/IEC 20000-1:2018) and main agile (ITIL v4, VeriSM, and ISO/IEC 29110-4-3) IT service design-building phases-workflows. For this aim, we conduct a conceptual review research methodology enhanced with an analytics hierarchical process (AHP) method to assess quantitatively how well these six IT service design-building phases-workflows fit two theoretical expected rigorous and agile IT service design-building phases-workflows pro formas. We found that the ITIL v2011 and CMMI-SVC v1.3 phases-workflows fit the rigorous pro forma with a high level, and the ISO/IEC 20000-1:2018 fits a moderate level, whereas all these three ones fit a low level the agile pro forma, as it was expected. ITIL v4 and VeriSM were found to fit a high level the agile pro forma but the ISO/IEC 29110-4-3 fits a moderate level. Unexpectedly, ITIL v4 and the ISO/IEC 29110-4-3 fit a moderate and moderate levels the rigorous pro forma, but VeriSM fits a low level as it was expected. Hence, we can conclude that ITIL v4 and VeriSM provide the most agile IT service design-building phase-workflow, and CMMI-SVC v1.3 the most rigorous one. The ISO/IEC 20000-1:2018 and ISO/IEC 29110-4-3 standards are still aligned to the rigorous approach, and ITIL v4 exhibits a dual moderate rigorous and high agile profile. Hence, this research provides ITSM professionals with an updated analysis useful to guide the selection and application of the IT service design-building phase-workflow—rigorous or agile one—in data centers. This research also contributes to the IT service design-building literature with updated insights and proposes specific research avenues to advance our scientific knowledge on how to design-building IT services. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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

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

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

What happens when agile methods are introduced in global outsourcing set-ups? Agile methods are designed to empower IT developers in decision-making through self-managing collocated teams. We studied how agile methods were introduced into global outsourcing from the Indian IT vendor's perspective. We explored how agile processes in global outsourcing impacts work conditions of the Indian IT developers, and were surprised to find that agile methodologies, even after 3 years of implementation, created a stressful and inflexible work environment negatively impacting their personal lives. Many of the negative aspects of work, which agile methodologies were developed to reduce, were evident in the global agile outsourcing set-up. We propose translocality to repudiate the dichotomy of global/local reminding us that methodologies and technologies must be understood as immediately localized and situated. Translocality helps us to explain why we cannot determine the impact of global agile as a methodology independent of how it unfolds at particular sites. Instead, we must attend to concrete practices of use when evaluating the impact of new methods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research work explores the trends in formal and agile software development methods. Software development has evolved, from the era of "code and fix" to methods categorized as "heavyweight" and "lightweight". The heavyweight methods are championed by the waterfall method, while agile methods are considered the lead in lightweight methods of software development. Both methods have proven records of successes and failures. Bridging the divide between them and harmonizing their symbiotic properties has the synergy of creating beneficial and more robust methodology with complementary advantage which is termed ambidexterity. Ambidexterity allows for a high level approach of selecting a methodology on the basis of the problem requirements, and coordinates their independent processes complementarily without conflict. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Adoption of agile methods in the software development organization is considered as a powerful solution to deal with the quickly changing and regularly developing business environment and fullyeducated customers with constantly rising expectation, such as shorter time periods and an extraordinary level of response and service. This study investigates the adoption of agile approaches in software development organizations by using systematic mapping. Six research questions are identified, and to answer these questions a number of research papers have been reviewed in electronic databases. Finally, 25 research papers are examined and answers to all research questions are provided. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Organizations are introducing agile and lean software development techniques in operations to increase the pace of their software development process and to improve the quality of their software. They use the term DevOps, a portmanteau of development and operations, as an umbrella term to describe their efforts. In this paper, we describe the ways in which organizations implement DevOps and the outcomes they experience. We first summarize the results of a systematic literature review that we performed to discover what researchers have written about DevOps. We then describe the results of an exploratory interview-based study involving 6 organizations of various sizes that are active in various industries. As part of our findings, we observed that all organizations were positive about their experiences and only minor problems were encountered while adopting DevOps. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Traditional portfolio management tools and methods are challenging for software companies that use agile and lean approaches, because of the complex pre-planning activities required. In this paper, traditional portfolio management tools and methods that have been conventionally used in industry and presented in literature are reviewed. Findings concerning their use in agile and lean software companies are investigated, on the basis of the literature review and semi-structured interviews conducted in 7 agile and lean software companies in Finland. The findings indicate that the studied companies do not use traditional portfolio management tools and methods in their entirety. The software companies adapted suitable components from traditional portfolio management tools and methods into their practices. They also apply new tools and methods to manage their portfolios of offerings, to cope with the dynamics required by agile and lean methods. The companies' emphasis is on using tools to facilitate immediate feedback from customers, to assess the value of offerings in their portfolio. The results showed a growing interest in using Kanban at the portfolio level to provide a visual overview of offerings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scrum is a simple process to understand, but hard to adopt. Therefore, there is a need for resources to assist on its adoption. In this paper, we present the process followed to build a Bayesian network to assist on the assessment of the quality of the software process in the context of Scrum projects. The model provides data to help Scrum Masters lead the improvement of business value delivery of Scrum teams. The process is divided into 2 phases. In the first phase, we built the Bayesian network based on expert knowledge extracted from the literature and experts. We used a top-down approach and reasoning to define the key metrics necessary to build the models and their relationships. In the second phase, we updated the Bayesian network based on limitations of the first version. We validated the Bayesian network inferences with 10 simulated scenarios. Comparing both versions, for all scenarios, we improved the accuracy of the inferences. Therefore, we concluded that the Bayesian networks adequately represent Scrum projects from the viewpoint of the Scrum Master. Finally, the model built is in conformance with agile methods tailoring and can be adapted to any Scrum team. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Regression testing repeatedly executes test cases of previous builds to validate that the original features are not affected with any new changes. In recent years, regression testing has seen a remarkable progress with the increasing popularity of agile methods, which stress the central role of regression testing in maintaining software quality. The optimum case for regression testing in agile context is to run regression set at the end of each sprint and release, which requires a lot of cost and time. In this paper, we present an automated agile regression testing approach on both the sprints and release levels. The proposed approach addresses both weighted sprint test cases prioritization technique, which prioritizes test cases based on several parameters having real practical weight for testers, and Cluster-based Release Test cases Selection technique that clusters user stories based on the similarity of covered modules to solve the scalability issue. Test cases are then selected based on issues logged for failed test cases using text mining techniques. The proposed approach achieves enhancement for both the prioritization and selection of test cases for agile regression testing. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The construction of data center network by applying SDN technology has become a hot research topic. The SDN architecture has innovatively separated the control plane from the data plane which makes the network more software-oriented and agile. Moreover, it provides virtual multi-tenancy, effective scheduling resources and centralized control strategies to meet the demand for cloud computing data center. However, the explosion of network information is facing severe challenges for SDN controller. The flow storage and lookup mechanisms based on TCAM device have led to the restriction of scalability, high cost and energy consumption. In view of this, a source-controlled data center network (SCDCN) model is proposed herein. The SCDCN model applies a new type of source routing address named the vector address (VA) as the packet-switching label. The VA completely defines the communication path and the data forwarding process can be finished solely relying on VA. There are four advantages in the SCDCN architecture. 1) The model adopts hierarchical multi-controllers and abstracts large-scale data center network into some small network domains that has solved the restriction for the processing ability of single controller and reduced the computational complexity. 2) Vector switches (VS) developed in the core network no longer apply TCAM for table storage and lookup that has significantly cut down the cost and complexity for switches. Meanwhile, the problem of scalability can be solved effectively. 3) The SCDCN model simplifies the establishment process for new flows and there is no need to download flow tables to VS. The amount of control signaling consumed when establishing new flows can be significantly decreased. 4) We design the VS on the NetFPGA platform. The statistical results show that the hardware resource consumption in a VS is about 27% of that in an OFS. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The transition from a classical to an agile software development procedure needs a structured and strategic roll out to realize the expected benefits of the transition phase. Quality assurance as part of the software development has also to be designed to realize its targets of the agile transition for adequate project and program quality assurance. Besides effectivity the economic aspects have to be implemented also in a value-driven agile product quality assurance. This tension between effectivity and economy will be shown on the example of the Volkswagen group IT. The transition is mapped to the SPI Manifesto to demonstrate the currency in 2009 of the established values and principles for software process improvement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sequencing of Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) processes related to their order of implementation is one of the pending issues in the ITIL handbooks. Other frameworks and process models related to service management (e.g., COBIT, COSO and CMMI-SVC) are quite well described in the literature and their handbooks. However, the identification of the first process to be implemented has not been deeply analysed in the previous frameworks and models, and it is also a complex question to answer for organizations, especially Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs). Moreover, SMEs are the organizations that have the largest presence in the world economy; official data of General Business Directory, show that their range of presence in different countries around the world is between 93% and 99%, and the average of employment contribution is around 60%. Consequently, the improvement of information technology service management is of vital importance to accomplish in this type of enterprises. This research has focused on two surveys that aim at helping SMEs to select the ITIL process by which starting the implementation of ITIL. In the first survey, data were gathered through a questionnaire to SMEs registered in the region of Madrid. The second survey obtained data from experts and enterprises in countries as Spain, Ecuador, Chile, Luxembourg, Colombia, Norway, El Salvador, and Venezuela. Finally, the results of both surveys show that the tendency for starting an ITIL implementation in SMEs points to one of the processes included in the Service Operation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article provides information on the virtual learning environment in military health education including incorporation of new information technologies and communication, agile process based structures and learning management system. Topics include management of economic resources, computer systems and complementary teaching.