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Agile methods have been widely adopted by the industry and its teaching has seen a surge, particularly in the software development field. However, these methods have a number of limitations which affect product outcomes, such as the fact that many software development companies now use Scrum to get developers to work without interruption between iterations, rather than to maintain a sustainable rhythm. Agile experts have stated the importance of incorporating creativity into Scrum, and although there are several agile resources that help with the learning process, it seems essential to approach such learning from a practical point of view. Furthermore, none of these resources introduce creativity. In this paper, we present an educational resource in the form of a serious game that allows you to acquire all the key concepts of agile and creative methods. The game is based on the use of LEGO pieces to simulate a real project, applying the key concepts of the Scrum and Design Thinking frameworks in a gamified way. It was assessed in a professional training centre of computer science by using surveys through which participants evaluated their previous knowledge of agile and creativity methods. We analysed the improvement of these competences, as well as the general level of satisfaction with the game. After the game, the results showed that the participants' knowledge of the Scrum and Design Thinking frameworks had improved and that they were very satisfied with the whole experience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Agile software development has reached wide adoption in various countries including Turkey, even though from which its original cultural backgrounds differ. In Turkey, many organizations have started to adopt Agile approaches more and more in their software development processes. This interest in the country's software development is parallel to what the academic literature on Agile in the country exhibits. However, despite the prevalence of Agile in Turkey, there is a lack of sufficient secondary research and comprehensive review on Agile in Turkey, which poses a significant necessity for further investigation. Considering this gap, we performed a quantitative bibliometric analysis of Agile software development publications produced by Turkish organizations in a holistic and broad approach both for scholars and practitioners. We provide a summary of relevant academic studies that emerged in Agile research in Turkey by focusing on many aspects including bibliometric properties of papers, researchers, affiliations, venues, and thematic contents that are separated into 15 sub‐research questions. After delivering results based on the questions, we discuss the results and findings of our study and present implications regarding the findings. The main contributions of our work are twofold. First, the paper may help the readers to have a quick idea, understand the subject, and gain insight from a large volume of scientific data. Second, the paper can help readers to use these analyses to form future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Companies face new challenges needing to find ways to stand out from the competitors. All companies face new projects, which need to be managed assertively and faster, launching new products on the market ahead of competitors. This strategy requires enormous dexterity and agility within teams, which are increasingly multifaceted, multidisciplinary, and multifunctional. However, teams need to conciliate apparent freedom for creation with the sustainability rules, which are increasingly demanding, such as legislation and image that companies want to pass on to the market in terms of corporate social responsibility, ensuring a sustainable development of the companies. The goal of this work is to investigate and correlate agile project management and sustainability, taking into account that there are strong relationships, as well as to learn how agile project management affects organization's social, environmental, and economical dynamics from the triple bottom line standpoint. The research examines how agile project management ideas are connected to the triple bottom line concepts based on the literature. The framework was based on the theoretical assumptions underpinning the present research. The basic structure of the developed framework is based on the framework of a matrix‐based method for ordering and synthesizing data. Thus, network diagrams have been developed reproducing the links existing in the literature, both explicitly and implicitly. However, they were deeply expanded considering links not previously referred in the literature. An explanation about these new links is also provided, justifying their inclusion. Hence, the new diagrams offer a more complete landscape about how the adoption of agile practices in project management can improve sustainability in its different aspects, and vice‐versa. The findings reveal that implementing agile project management induces direct effects on an organization's social, economic, and environmental dynamics of the companies, as well as in their teams, with a favorable effect on all of them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We live at an exciting time where software has become a dominant aspect of our everyday life. Although software provides opportunities for improving various aspects of our society, it also presents many challenges. One of them is development, deployment, and sustaining of high quality software on a broad scale. While agile methods (Scrum being one of the most prominent examples) ease the process, their popularity deteriorates the clarity and simplicity they were once meant to bring into software development. This article explores the synergy of Scrum and Essence, a domain model of software engineering processes, intending to become a common ground for software development methods, bringing clarity into the composition of methods from individual practices. This short communication motivates the interplay of Scrum and Essence, being accompanied with a set of videotutorials and 21 Scrum Essential cards to further guide more effective team's way of working. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Continuous improvement of agile software processes is inevitable in order to reach sustainable and high‐quality project outcomes. In this sense, organizations need guidance on how to apply agile software process improvement effectively; comprehensive approaches with in‐depth analysis and guidelines are required to keep software processes in balance and to continuously improve them, as in a typical business process, over time. This research aims to explore the implementation of Business Process Management approach for improving an agile software process and accordingly agile maturity level. Many organizations utilize from Business Process Management approach in order to improve workflows and to discover organization‐specific weaknesses. For this purpose, the study presents a practical, flexible model based on Business Process Management approach for agile software process improvement, which also incorporates maturity assessment for measuring the agile maturity level. Furthermore, an exploratory case study with a triangulation methodology of mixed methods was carried out for implementation of the model. The research puts forward that Business Process Management approach can be used for in‐depth analysis of agile software process, discovery of problems, and redesign of the process. The research roadmap introduces worthwhile insights on agile software process improvement for researchers and practitioners. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Product Owners have an important role in the agile and hybrid software development process. While this role is supposed to maximize the value of a product, there seem to be several scattered results on how they achieve this, as well as what actually constitutes this role in practice. To consolidate current research results and to further analyze the key attribute of Product Owners, we conducted a multi‐method research approach spanning a systematic mapping study and a consecutive case study in a hybrid development environment. The results of the mapping study states that Product Owners are communicators. We further investigated on this and used the shadowing technique to observe three Product Owners' communication activities. The results support that statement, as the gained data reveal that Product Owners spend 65% of their time in meetings. But rather than just providing the team with the necessary requirements for the product under development, Product Owners need this time to synchronize and align their work, streamline the agile process of large‐scale Scrum, discuss team‐based topics, and to solve upcoming issues addressed by the team. These results contribute to draw a more comprehensive picture of the important but yet complex role of Product Owners in practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Software requirement engineering (SRE) is the initial stage of the software engineering process and entails several challenges relating to the identification, implementation, evolution, and management of requirements for the development of software systems that meet the desired functionality quality standards. Agile software development (ASD) is a well‐known software development process that follows a lightweight and adaptive methodology to support the incremental development of software systems. Since the ASD follows an adaptive procedure (ie, a flexible, nanostructured, and dynamic approach) of software development, it becomes challenging to perform SRE that follows a structured approach for managing software requirements throughout the life cycle of software development. The primary challenges for SRE, while pursuing an ASD, include, but are not limited to, identification of incomplete requirements, implementation of vague requirements, prioritization of secondary functional requirements, and compromise on users' involvement that negatively impacts the software system's functionality and quality. To overcome these challenges, some of the recent research efforts have focused on managing different phases of SRE during software development using the ASD. However, there is a lack of solutions that provide software engineers/practitioners with a solution. Besides, frameworks to effectively manage all the phases of SRE as per the needs of the ASD are needed. We propose a framework that unifies joint requirements document (JRD) and SCRUM to incrementally (a) identify, (b) implement, (c) evolve, and (d) manage system requirements throughout the software development cycle. We have used the action research method to qualitatively validate the proposed framework based on data and user requirements collected from a product‐focused (multinational) Norway‐based software company. The results of the validation are based on statistical analysis that reflects the usefulness of the proposed framework for SRE in ASD‐based software engineering and development. Future research is the possible application of a machine learning approach (es) in the intended context for agile requirements elicitations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT Teaching agile practices is becoming a priority in Software engineering curricula as a result of the increasing use of agile methods (AMs) such as Scrum in the software industry. Limitations in time, scope, and facilities within academic contexts hinder students' hands-on experience in the use of professional AMs. To enhance students' exposure to Scrum, we have developed Virtual Scrum, an educational virtual world that simulates a Scrum-based team room through virtual elements such as blackboards, a Web browser, document viewers, charts, and a calendar. A preliminary version of Virtual Scrum was tested with a group of 45 students running a capstone project with and without Virtual Scrum support. Students' feedback showed that Virtual Scrum is a viable and effective tool to implement the different elements in a Scrum team room and to perform activities throughout the Scrum process. © 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Comput Appl Eng Educ 999: XX-XX, 2013; View this article online at ; DOI 10.1002/cae.21588 © 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Comput Appl Eng Educ 23:147-156, 2015; View this article online at ; DOI [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT Starting from the documentation of high sprint velocity fluctuations in a Scrum project, this paper presents a thorough approach to identify the sources of issues arising in the context of Scrum implementation. Given that Scrum provides guidance on identifying process issues but not their root causes, various approaches are explored. This is of great relevance because Scrum defines project schedules relying heavily on sprint velocity and because it is the most widely used agile methodology. The findings provide a new approach to evaluate such fluctuations and establish a more realistic project assessment than what is currently defined by Scrum. In this respect, this paper contributes to improve the understanding of the software development process using this agile framework. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While seemingly incompatible, combining global software development and agile practices is a challenge undertaken by many companies. Case study reports on the successful use of agile practices in small distributed projects already exist. How these practices can be applied to larger projects, however, remains unstudied. This paper reports a case study on agile practices in a 40-person development organization distributed between Norway and Malaysia. Based on seven interviews in the development organization, we describe how scrum practices were successfully applied, e.g. using teleconferencing and web cameras for daily scrum meetings, synchronized 4-week sprints, weekly scrum-of-scrums, and Jira for backlog management. Non-scrum agile practices included nightly builds, automated testing, and team rooms. Supportig global software development practices, e.g. frequent visits, unofficial distributed meetings, domain expert networks, and annual gatherings are described. Positive experiences of using scrum included improved communication, trust and motivation, as well as better perceived quality. Challenges included misunderstood requirements, lack of videoconferencing possibilities, and awkward communication in distributed meetings due to cultural and geographical distance. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many smaller companies cannot afford the time and effort to change their development processes all at once. In some cases, companies are not aware of the fact that many aspects of agile development are already in place. The aim of this work was to evaluate if an evolutionary transition to agile software development is suitable for small companies. We conducted a case study with a small company to start their step‐by‐step agile transition. Initially, three agile software development practices were introduced. Based on the assessment of improvements, the transition continued with three Kanban practices. Experiences with the improvement process and the selected practices were elicited by means of qualitative interviews for data collection. Our case study reports details on the implementation of the first practices as well as the way the resulting agile transition has taken so far. The positive experiences reported by all employees during the agile transition indicate that an evolutionary transition is suitable for small companies. The experiences concerning the transition process and the positive effects of the selected practices motivate practitioners to start their own agile transition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]