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Nigeria is ranked second worldwide, after India, in reported incidences of cyberattacks. Attackers usually exploit vulnerabilities in software which may not have adequately considered security features during the development process. Agile methods have the potential to increase productivity and ensure faster delivery of software, although they tend to neglect non‐functional requirements such as security. The implementation of government policies, such as the Nigeria Data Protection Regulation (NDPR) Act 2019, impacts the security activities carried out by agile teams. Despite its significance, there is a paucity of research on security issues especially in the Agile Software Development (ASD) domain. To address this gap, a grounded theory study was conducted with 15 agile software practitioners in Nigeria. Based on our analysis of the interview transcripts, we developed a grounded theory of the security challenges confronting agile practitioners. The four challenges identified were (a) a lack of collaboration between security and agile teams; (b) the tendency to use foreign software hosting companies; (c) a poor cybersecurity culture; and (d) the high cost of building secure agile software. We used these challenges to identify gaps within the existing secure ASD and found a lack of indigenous software hosting companies in Nigeria. Our study also revealed tensions between the Nigerian regulatory environment and agile software developers' compliance. While practitioners acknowledged the government's efforts, there were concerns about the practicality of implementing such legislation. We recommend government action to increase awareness of local software hosting companies' capabilities, and closer collaboration between agile and security teams. Thus, the novel contribution of this article is the development of the policy adherence challenges (PAC) model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The software industry is a dynamic and ever‐changing environment where knowledge dissemination and ongoing learning is an open challenge, especially in agile organizations where continuous learning is essential. Organizational training covers the set of activities that drive this learning process and is one of the process areas of process improvement models like CMMI. In this paper, we discuss how the organizational training activity has been carried out at agile organizations under the lens of CMMI V2.0. In other words, we use the CMMI‐DEV V2.0 Organizational Training practices to provide an overview of how agile organizations plan, perform, and assess their training activities as part of their continuous learning process. Existing literature primarily discusses the techniques used to train and retrain employees. However, there is little evidence on how to plan training, how to assure alignment with the organization's strategic and tactical goals, and how to evaluate the effectiveness of training, which are very important challenges in the organizational training process. The paper concludes by presenting eight valuable insights identified by this research and matching them up with the CMMI‐DEV V2.0 Organizational Training practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With years of frantic development, when release fast and release often was the mandatory rule for web technologies and services, the open source paradigm and online distribution repositories have imposed de facto standards for quality assessment in fast‐paced innovation processes. Nowadays, however, in pursuit of productivity, security, and user satisfaction, the industry is beginning, through the introduction of new standards such as ECMAScript 6 or web components, to consider software engineering mandates for web technologies. This article reports a quality model aligned with international standard ISO/IEC 25010, covering web components technology, which ultimately aims to improve adoption by the software engineering industry, traditionally wary of agile Internet practices, the open source paradigm, and public repositories. Our research also presents an experimentation platform on which end users have validated the quality properties, highlighting the implicit connection with the perceived quality. The key result of our research convinces us that user ratings are suitable as a testing mechanism for product quality and quality‐in‐use metrics in order to define an absolute scale of comparison for web component quality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Agile methods are widely used in the software industry as a way to more rapidly develop and deliver new software. They define iterative work processes, advocate self‐organization and openness for change, and prescribe how software developers interact with each other and external stakeholders. Despite their popularity, it is unclear how agile methods influence work exhaustion in software developers and how developer skills play into this effect. On the one hand, agile methods may reduce software developers' work exhaustion by levelling out their workload across the entire duration of a project. On the other hand, agile methods exert a high level of pressure on software developers to continuously deliver working software, create many intensive social interactions, and to frequently adapt to changes. In light of these effects, prior research could not explain why some software developers become less exhausted from using agile methods, whereas others perceive the exact opposite. Based on the job demand‐control model, we develop a theoretical model connecting agile method use to individual developer skills and to two established determinants of employee exhaustion: role conflict and role ambiguity. We tested our research model in a field study among 1894 software developers in 217 project teams that used agile methods. The random coefficient modelling results show that agile method use facilitates the achievement of clear and unambiguous role perceptions and thereby reduces work exhaustion in developers, particularly if developers possess the organizational skills to effectively interact with others in their organization. We highlight implications for theory on the individual‐level effects of software development methods and provide practical insights for software companies. [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]

Agile development methodologies have been widely employed in the software industry, where they have been found to yield positive results. But can these new methods, with their new tools such as sprints, scrums, burndown charts, and backlogs, really be integrated with the traditional and popular Stage-Gate approach and then applied to physical products? Initial but limited evidence suggests yes: Larger IT firms have already integrated Agile and Stage-Gate and gained the benefits of both approaches; and most recently, a handful of manufacturing firms have employed this Agile-Stage-Gate hybrid model for physical new products. And if recent evidence can be trusted, this new approach promises to be the most significant change to our thinking about how new-product development should be done since the introduction of today's popular gating systems 30 years ago. The benefits of this hybrid model are a faster and more adaptive response to changing customer needs, better integration of voice-of-customer, better team communication, improved development productivity, and faster to market. A case example from a toy company, LEGO, is provided as an illustration. But there are negatives as well, and additionally, manufacturers must make modifications to Agile in order to adopt it successfully. Although initial results appear promising, much research is needed to explore this new Agile-Stage-Gate hybrid model, and many research challenges remain. [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]

There is often a misconception that adopting and tailoring agile methods is straightforward resulting in improved products and increasingly satisfied customers. However, the empirical nature of agile methods means that potential practitioners need to carefully assess whether they are exposed to the risks that can make agile method adoption problematic. This is particularly the case with small software companies who are less able to absorb the impact of failed experimentation. This study describes a minimally intrusive assessment approach for small software companies preparing for agile method adoption and tailoring in the light of key risks. The approach has been conducted with six small software companies, three of which are presented to show the evolution of the approach, describe the resource commitment that companies have to make, and highlight the type of information generated from an assessment. The contribution of this study is that small software companies have an alternative to ‘mere experimentation’ with agile methods and can take reasoned steps towards their adoption and tailoring. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Context: Agile software development has nowadays reached wide adoption. However, moving agile to large‐scale contexts is a complex task with many challenges involved. Objective: In this paper, we review practices, challenges, and success factors for scaling agile both from literature and within a large software company, identifying the most critical factors. Method: We conduct a focused literature review to map the importance of scaling practices, challenges, and success factors. The outcome of this focused literature review is used to guide action research within a software company with a view to scaling agile processes. Results: Company culture, prior agile and lean experience, management support, and value unification were found to be key success factors during the action research process. Resistance to change, an overly aggressive roll‐out time frame, quality assurance concerns, and integration into preexisting nonagile business processes were found to be the critical challenges in the scaling process. Conclusion: The action research process allowed to cross‐fertilize ideas from literature to the company's context. Scaling agile within an organization does not need to follow a specific scheme, rather the process can be tailored to the needs while keeping the core values and principles of agile methodologies. We investigate practices, challenges, and success factors for scaling agile software development. We follow a 2‐step process: a literature review used as input for an action research process within a company scaling‐up the development process. Culture within the company and prior agile and lean experience, management support, unification of views, and values were key success factors, while resistance to change, too quick roll‐out, quality assurance issues, and integration with previous non‐agile parts of the organization were critical challenges [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]