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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 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 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 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. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the last two decades, agile software development (ASD) has garnered much attention in both research and practice. Several ASD methods and techniques have been developed and studied. In particular, researchers have provided several theoretical perspectives on ASD and contributed rich insights to the ASD practice. Still, despite calls for a more unified theoretical understanding of ASD, a theoretical core of ASD has not been identified. This paper offers a theoretical core of ASD research, clarifying what is essential and what is less essential for IS agility, hoping to spark a scholarly discussion, and provides implications of such a core for understanding method tailoring. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As a global pandemic, COVID‐19 impacts work‐related processes, placing strain upon many employees in project teams. Identifying process variables and potential organizational resources can play an important role in addressing employee mental health, both for the current pandemic and future crises. Based on an extension of the job demands–resources model, this paper introduces COVID‐19 demands as distal job demands, examining their influence on emotional exhaustion through proximal unfinished tasks. Furthermore, we suggest that agile project management acts as a buffering job resource in this relationship. In two studies, we drew samples from Germany (N = 168) and the USA (N = 292). Across studies, COVID‐19 demands had an indirect effect on emotional exhaustion, mediated by unfinished tasks. Furthermore, agile project management acts as a buffering job resource for individuals in Germany, attenuating the relationship between COVID‐19 demands, unfinished tasks and subsequent feelings of emotional exhaustion. In contrast, findings from Study 2 revealed that COVID‐19 demands were more strongly related to unfinished tasks and subsequent feelings of emotional exhaustion in the USA when individuals reported higher levels of agile project management. Taken together, our results indicate that project work under COVID‐19 fosters feelings of emotional exhaustion through the accumulation of unfinished tasks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Usage of agile methods for software development has increased in recent times. Rapid delivery of software products is ensured by these methods with less expense and high user gratification. Application of these methods on a large scale causes many De‐Motivators or challenges as initially these methods were aimed at those developmental teams that worked on small scale. However, no effort has been made yet to hand out the various correlations among the challenges. To fill the space, the Interpretive Structural Model (ISM) approach is used to reconnoiter the correlations among the De‐Motivators regarding Scaling Agile Software Development Methodologies (ASDM) from the management perspective. Creation of a framework for structural modeling association among the De‐Motivators is the aim of this study. To attain the goal, a hybrid methodology was applied based on a Systematic literature review (SLR), empirical survey, and ISM. First, we pointed out 15 De‐Motivators of Scaling ASDM from management perspectives through SLR study. Second, with the help of 59 experts from different countries, a questionnaire survey was conducted to empirically examine the correlations among the detected De‐Motivators. Further, correlations among the challenges are discovered with the usage of ISM through review of the panel, and they accomplish the categorization through CrossImpact Matrix Multiplication Applied Approach. This review focuses on surgical techniques for complete surgical metastasectomy of spinal metastatic lesions, the potential indications, and the published clinical outcomes, and discusses the future prospects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Department of Defense (DoD) is experimenting with acquisition strategies intended to deliver new capabilities in cycle times of 2 to 5 years. These are executed in a market of few sellers, limited procurement quantities, and constrained budgets. Defense contractors respond by developing, producing, and supporting products. This research analyzed selected publicly‐released acquisition program data from 2007 to 2018. Quantitative methods identified significant factors and analyzed how acquisition strategy decisions and market conditions are related to these factors. Outcomes important to the government such as shorter cycle times are shown to be statistically associated with early government strategy decisions such as agile software development, and intentional use of commercial technology. Defense contractor responses within this market are related to government programmatic factors and not to reduced cycle times. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

FinTech companies are challenging established financial institutions' dominance by offering the same products with a superior customer experience and delivering new features faster. The adoption of agile software development partially enables this competitive advantage. In response to this challenge, banks explore how they can improve their agile processes. LHV, a mid‐sized bank, uses agile practices but faces the challenge of further improvement to stay competitive with FinTech companies. In this article, we explore how LHV can improve its agile software development process. We conduct a case study at LHV where we first derive eight change proposals based on a literature review and interviews. Then, we report on how LHV implemented the change proposals and their perceived impact. Our results stress the importance of taking a coherent approach to improving agile processes by considering both business units and operations involved in the product life‐cycle. It is also necessary to align organizational structures to enable team autonomy by, for instance, decentralizing decision authority. Finally, it is beneficial to adapt agile practices to their context and have an IT architecture and technology supporting the agile approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social loafing is a common issue encountered by many software development teams. In practice, agile software development teams often use team expectations agreements (TEAs), which contain rules to prevent social loafing behaviour. However, few studies in the software engineering literature examine how these rules are specified in TEAs and whether they serve the purpose. The authors intend to provide a better understanding on how to specify rules in TEAs to prevent social loafing behaviour in agile software development teams. A mixed‐method approach using both qualitative and quantitative data was employed. The results of our study show that agile software development teams specify the expectations of the whole team on meeting attendance and contribution, respect of tasks, roles and teammates, and collaboration with each other. These rules have the potential to prevent social loafing behaviours. However, specifying the rules in TEAs alone is not sufficient to make them effective. It needs to be complemented with team commitment to TEA rules. The work of the authors contributes to a better understanding of how to use TEAs to prevent social loafing in agile software development teams, and provides a conceptual basis for future research to investigate social loafing prevention using TEAs. [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]

In this work, 2‐element slot‐based frequency reconfigurable (FR) multiple‐input‐multiple‐output (MIMO) antenna design antenna with a very wide‐sweep is proposed for dynamic spectrum sharing (DSS) in 5G technologies. FR is achieved using varactor diode with frequency tuning range from 1655 to 2605 MHz. The design is a low profile with planar structure having a single element footprint of 19.5 × 20 mm2. The two slot antenna elements of the MIMO configuration are etched out from a ground (GND) plane of dimensions of 60 × 120 mm2. The proposed antenna is narrow‐band and hence it is suitable for RF front‐end in the 5G‐enabled DSS in cognitive radio (CR) applications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Organizations that are considering the adoption of digital tools like those suggested by Cooper (2021) are well-advised to assess the absorptive capacity of teams for which such investments are planned, and to protect teams from being overburdened with new information. Among logicians, pluralism is the view that under certain circumstances, such as when contending opinions over priorities and time horizons are present, there may be more than one correct logic to set what is most important (Beall & Restall, 2000). Cross-disciplinary teams within one organization, or task force teams that draw from multiple divisions in large organizations, for example, could exhibit significant variance in how people think and learn and collaborate. Accelerating innovation and protecting organizations: Pluralism in the COVID-19 age. [Extracted from the article]

This article presents a compact reconfigurable filter performing bandwidth reconfiguration covering the entire L‐band frequency range. The reconfigurable filter is developed using a C‐shaped resonator coupled to the source and load through varactor diodes. To reverse bias the diodes symmetrically both the diodes are fed with a common bias voltage. Hence the DC bias voltage is administered evenly to the diodes resulting is equi‐proportional coupling between the resonator and the nodes. This results in reconfiguring the bandwidth of the operating frequency. The designed filter is capable of tuning 3‐dB bandwidth from 0.613 to 1.353 GHz with the center frequency as 1.5 GHz. The percentage bandwidth of the filter is varied from 44.5% to 91.76%. The insertion loss offered by the filter is very less with the minimum value of 0.42 dB. The proposed filter is simple, compact and finds it application in power agile systems operating with different transmission power levels at different time instances. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Planning and managing of requirement change management (RCM) process in global software development (GSD) are a complicated task, but the RCM plays a significant role in developing the quality software within time and budget. The key aim of this study is to prioritize the factors that could positively influence the RCM program in GSD context. To achieve the study objective, the questionnaire survey study was conducted to get the feedback of the practitioners concerning the success factors of RCM in GSD context. Moreover, the fuzzy analytical hierarchy process (FAHP) was applied. The application of FAHP is novel in this research domain as it has been effectively applied previously in various other research areas, for example, supplier selection, electronics and electrical, personnel selection, and agile software development. The results of this study will provide the prioritization‐based taxonomy of RCM success factors and also contribute by introducing the novel FAHP approach in the research domain of RCM in GSD. The FAHP approach assists the practitioners to reduce the uncertainty and vague opinions of RCM experts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary: This article proposes a blockchain oriented platform to guarantee the origin and provenance of food items in a Smart Tourism Region context. Local food and beverage, in fact, can become a good combination to attract tourist and to promote the area provided that their provenance is clearly certified. We designed and developed a blockchain‐based system to manage an agri‐food supply chain for tracking food items. By using smart contracts the platform guarantees transparency, efficiency and trustworthiness. Our system is particularly suitable to manage cold chain since the system interfaces with IoT network devices providing detailed information about data monitoring food such as storage temperature, environment humidity, and GPS data. All involved actors can share data and information in a more efficient, transparent, and tamper proof way than traditional systems. The final consumer can access with transparency to all the agri‐food chain of the purchased product and verify provenance by retrieving all detailed information registered in the blockchain public ledger. The proposed system has been designed according to the ABCDE method, an agile development process recently conceived, to obtain a higher software quality to design a general blockchain system by means software engineering practices. A real case study applied to local products from Sardinia, Italy, is proposed at the end of the article. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: To describe a process of creating eHealth components for an integrated care model using an agile software development approach, user‐centered design and, via the Behavior Change Wheel, behavior theory‐guided content development. Following the principles of implementation science and using the SMILe project (integrated care model for allogeneic stem cell transplantation facilitated by eHealth) as an example, this study demonstrates how to narrow the research‐to‐practice gap often encountered in eHealth projects. Methods: We followed a four‐step process: (a) formation of an interdisciplinary team; (b) a contextual analysis to drive the development process via behavioral theory; (c) transfer of content to software following agile software development principles; and (d) frequent stakeholder and end user involvement following user‐centered design principles. Findings: Our newly developed comprehensive development approach allowed us to create a running eHealth component and embed it in an integrated care model. An interdisciplinary team's collaboration at specified interaction points supported clear, timely communication and interactions between the specialists. Because behavioral theory drove the content development process, we formulated user stories to define the software features, which were prioritized and iteratively developed using agile software development principles. A prototype intervention module has now been developed and received high ratings on the System Usability Scale after two rounds of usability testing. Conclusions: Following an agile software development process, structured collaboration between nursing scientists and software specialists allowed our interdisciplinary team to develop meaningful, theory‐based eHealth components adapted to context‐specific needs. Clinical Relevance: The creation of high‐quality, accurately fitting eHealth components specifically to be embedded in integrated care models should increase the chances of uptake, adoption, and sustainable implementation in clinical practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this letter, a four‐pole balanced frequency‐agile bandpass filter (BAL‐FA‐BPF) with constant absolute bandwidth (CABW) and four transmission zeros (TZs) is reported. This design is based on the advanced coupling matrix technique which ensures the realization of CABW for the filter. The fully‐canonical coupling topology with cross‐coupling and source‐load coupling is adopted, which introduces four TZs for the differential‐mode passband. The tunable half‐wavelength resonators are used and loaded by resistors, which effectively enhances the common‐mode (CM) suppression. The demonstrative BAL‐FA‐BPF has a frequency tuning range of 1.92‐2.97 GHz (42.9%) and keeps the absolute bandwidth within 167 ± 3.7 MHz (2.2%) over entire the FTR. CM suppression is better than 40 dB. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The primary objective of this paper is to report on the successful implementation of forensic facial approximation in a real case in the forensic context. A three‐dimensional (3D) facial approximation protocol of the skull was performed with free software, applying techniques in a virtual environment that have already been consolidated in the literature. The skull was scanned with the photogrammetry technique, the digital replica was imported in the Blender software (Blender Foundation, Amsterdam) and individualized model sketches of the face were traced with the MakeHuman software (MakeHuman Org) according to the anthropological profile of the victim. The face created was imported in Blender, where it was adapted, modeled, and sculpted on the 3D skull and its soft tissue markers, using an American open‐source application of the technique in the digital environment. The face created in a virtual environment was recognized and legal identification procedures were started, resulting in the more agile delivery of the disappeared body to its next of kin. It is therefore concluded that facial approximation may not be a primary method of human identification, but it can be satisfactorily applied in the forensic field as an individual recognition resource. It has great value in narrowing the search, reducing the number of alleged victims, and leading to identification tests, therefore significantly reducing the number of genetic DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid) tests—which are considered costly for the State or Federation—and consequently reducing the waiting time before delivery of the body to its family. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The volume at hand presents the special issue of the 12th International Conference on Software and Systems Process (ICSSP) 2019, which was held in Montreal, Canada, from May 25 to 26, 2019. ICSSP 2019 is the latest in a series of conferences that have been organized by the International Software and Systems Process Association. In our evolving landscape, many companies are making efforts to move towards new technologies and tools, agile principles, and continuous integration and delivery. In doing so, they find opportunity, flexibility, and strength in evolving towards hybrid processes, which are neither purely traditional nor can count as textbook agile. This special issue focuses on hybrid processes. [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]

The COVID‐19 pandemic has undoubtedly affected every corner of the world in 2020. It has also emphasized the importance of managing supply chain risk and developing an agile supply chain. Supply chain management instructors will likely want to introduce risk management concepts and strategies into their courses to raise their students' sensitivity to the impact of supply chain disruptions. Unfortunately there is currently a dearth of coverage of supply chain disruptions and risk management in the major supply chain management text books as well as in the broader library of supply chain management pedagogical research publications. To help to close this gap in the literature for instructors, we have developed a reading and set of related discussion questions and exercises that detail the causes of the shortage in toilet paper during the pandemic and short‐ and long‐term strategies to make the supply chain more resilient in the future. By focusing on a disruption students likely experienced first‐hand, they can develop a more nuanced understanding of the complexity and interconnectedness of supply chain functions in providing products and services to customers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The evolving concept of "agile" has fundamentally changed core aspects of software design, project management, and business operations. The agile approach could also reshape government, public management, and governance in general. In this Viewpoint essay, the authors introduce the modern agile movement, reflect on how it can benefit public administrators, and describe several challenges that managers will face when they are expected to make their organizations more flexible and responsive. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Most of the software development projects have traditionally been faced with severe problems in terms of quality, cost, and time. Researchers and practitioners have focused on agile software development methods (ASDMs) as an alternative to overcome these problems. Agile methods employ iterative development cycles, interspersed by user feedback. Agile methods were basically developed for small development teams. Scaling agile methods is a big issue from different perspectives. De‐motivators play a key role in project management as it allows early identification and prompt management of threats that may arise during project execution. The objective of this paper is to identify the de‐motivators while scaling agile at large, from management perspectives. We have adapted SLR and applied contrived search criteria derived from the research questions, followed by selecting the required research papers, data extraction, and data synthesis, which resulted in 15 de‐motivators from 58 relevant papers. Some of the identified de‐motivators are 'traditional organizational culture', 'lack of agile experts', 'reluctance to adopt', and 'lack of management and commitment support'. The identified factors have been compared from various perspectives, such as continents, digital libraries, organization size, and so forth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Infrastructure must be resilient to both known and unknown disturbances. In the past, resilient infrastructure design efforts have tended to focus on principles of robustness and recovery against projected failures. This framing has developed independently from resilience principles in biological and ecological systems. As such, there are open questions as to whether the approaches of natural systems that lead to adaptation and transformation are relevant to engineered systems. To improve engineered system resilience, infrastructure managers may benefit from considering and applying a set of "Life's Principles"—design principles and patterns drawn from the field of biomimicry. Nature has long withstood disturbances within and beyond previous experience. Infrastructure resilience theory and practice are assessed against Life's Principles identifying alignments, contradictions, contentions, and gaps. Resilient infrastructure theory, which emphasizes a need for flexible and agile infrastructure, aligns well with Life's Principles, addressing each principle and most sub‐principles (excluding "breakdown products into benign components" and "do chemistry in water"). Meanwhile, resilient infrastructure practice only occasionally aligns with Life's Principles and contradicts five out of six principles. As resilience theory advances, Life's Principles offer support in broadening how infrastructure managers approach resilience, and by using biomimicry, infrastructure managers can be better equipped to deploy resilience for complexity and uncertainty. Plain Language Summary: In today's rapidly evolving climate, and amid unprecedented technological disruptions, engineers and designers seek infrastructure solutions that are resilient to both known and unknown future conditions. This paper uses biomimicry to provide examples and guidance for resilient infrastructure systems, spanning theory and practice. We evaluate opportunities for improving design, prompted through consideration of Life's Principles—six principles that are associated with the emergence of resilience in natural systems. We conclude that resilient infrastructure theory generally accords with Life's Principles (aligning with all but two unaddressed sub‐principles). However, resilient infrastructure practice only occasionally aligns with Life's Principles, and it contradicts five out of six Life's Principles with the sixth ("use life friendly chemistry") being unaddressed. We recommend several pragmatic opportunities for infrastructure managers to improve infrastructure resilience going forward through incorporating Life's Principles within the design process. Key Points: Emerging resilient infrastructure theory addresses all Life's Principles and most sub‐principlesMeanwhile, resilient infrastructure practice largely ignores and, occasionally, contradicts Life's Principles and sub‐principlesBiomimicry provides examples of system resilience in a complex and uncertain world and offers guidance to infrastructure managers [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Species distribution models (SDMs) constitute the most common class of models across ecology, evolution and conservation. The advent of ready‐to‐use software packages and increasing availability of digital geoinformation have considerably assisted the application of SDMs in the past decade, greatly enabling their broader use for informing conservation and management, and for quantifying impacts from global change. However, models must be fit for purpose, with all important aspects of their development and applications properly considered. Despite the widespread use of SDMs, standardisation and documentation of modelling protocols remain limited, which makes it hard to assess whether development steps are appropriate for end use. To address these issues, we propose a standard protocol for reporting SDMs, with an emphasis on describing how a study's objective is achieved through a series of modeling decisions. We call this the ODMAP (Overview, Data, Model, Assessment and Prediction) protocol, as its components reflect the main steps involved in building SDMs and other empirically‐based biodiversity models. The ODMAP protocol serves two main purposes. First, it provides a checklist for authors, detailing key steps for model building and analyses, and thus represents a quick guide and generic workflow for modern SDMs. Second, it introduces a structured format for documenting and communicating the models, ensuring transparency and reproducibility, facilitating peer review and expert evaluation of model quality, as well as meta‐analyses. We detail all elements of ODMAP, and explain how it can be used for different model objectives and applications, and how it complements efforts to store associated metadata and define modelling standards. We illustrate its utility by revisiting nine previously published case studies, and provide an interactive web‐based application to facilitate its use. We plan to advance ODMAP by encouraging its further refinement and adoption by the scientific community. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Software development is a complex task, and the introduction of multi‐site development teams spread across the globe makes it even harder. Requirement changes during the software development process are inevitable, and failing to manage evolving requirements is one of the contributors to project failures. Requirements change management (RCM) becomes difficult in global software development (GSD) projects due to the need to communicate and coordinate between stakeholders in a distributed environment. This research work aims to identify the factors that have positive impacts on RCM activities in GSD. We conducted a multi‐vocal literature review (MLR) and a questionnaire survey study to identify the RCM success factors. The results of the t‐test (ie, t = 0.0347 and P =.700 >.05) and correlation (rs (25) = 0.573, P =.003) indicates that there is no significant difference between the findings of MLR and the questionnaire survey. The identified factors were further analyzed in the context of client and vendor organizations to better understand the RCM success factors in both types of GSD firms. The findings of this study can provide a useful framework for tackling problems associated with RCM in a GSD environment that is significant to the progression of GSD firms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) Curiosity rover landed in Gale crater in August of 2012 on its mission to explore Mt. Sharp as the first planetary rover to collect and analyze rock and regolith samples. On this new mission, sampling operations were conceived to be executed serially and in situ, on a "sample chain" along which sample would be collected, then processed, then delivered to sample analysis instruments, analyzed there, and then discarded so the chain could be repeated. This paper describes the evolution of this relatively simple chain into a richer sampling network, responding to science and engineering desires that came into focus only as the mission matured, scientific discoveries were made, and anomalies were encountered. The rover flight and ground system architectures retained significant heritage from past missions, while extending capabilities in anticipation of the need for adaptation. As evolution occurred, the architecture permitted nimble extension of sampling behavior without time‐consuming flight software updates or significant impact to daily operations. This paper presents the major components of this architecture and discusses some of the results of successful adaptation across thousands of Sols of Mars operations. [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]

Majority of software development firms are adopting the concepts of global software development (GSD) in order to develop high‐quality and low‐cost products. However, the requirements change management (RCM) becomes a significant challenge in the GSD environment because of the unavailability of proper RCM framework and taxonomy. The objective of this study is to develop a taxonomy of the challenging factors of the RCM process in GSD. The taxonomy is developed based on the results of the data collected during the survey study and the implementation of the analytical hierarchy process (AHP). Total 25 challenging factors are identified and mapped into four core categories, ie, "organizational management," "team," "technology," and "process." Moreover, the AHP analysis is performed to prioritize the challenging factors and their categories. The prioritization process highlight that "process" is the most significant category of the RCM challenging factors. The taxonomy developed in this study provides a robust framework to tackle problems associated with RCM activities in GSD environment, which is significant to the success and progression of GSD firms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we show how to achieve a sustainable software testing process in a very complex scientific project, the Square Kilometre Array (SKA) radio observatory. The project currently involves 13 countries, 16 agile development teams of about 150 individuals, governed through the Scalable Agile Framework (SAFe) framework; the software that is being built ranges from user interfaces to control systems, from transactional applications to high performance parallel scientific processing code. The paper illustrates the testing challenges we have to tackle; it also defines what a "sustainable testing process" is and how that constitutes the foundation of an incremental adoption plan rooted on systems thinking. The plan is then described, highlighting the principles we adhered to for synthesising a sequence of 9 basic testing goals that are currently being rolled out. We are confident that similar decisions can be made on many large scientific projects that are developed with agile methods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, the number of journals that publish articles without considering their scientific merit, but simply because the author has paid a fee, has expanded dramatically. Because non-predatory journals are unable or unwilling to accept more than a small fraction of the vast numbers of research papers being written, the predatory journal industry has a guaranteed supply of willing authors. Reputable journals could, at least in principle, refuse to process articles that cite predatory journals. [Extracted from the article]

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]

Software Development is a complex process, in which every software product is a knowledge representation of all the involved people. In agile software development, knowledge is prone to vaporise, because documentation is not a priority as indicated in the agile manifesto. This condition generates problems such as poor understanding of the requirements, knowledge transfer deficiency among developers, time wasted by developers while searching for knowledge. The objective of this work is to reduce architectural knowledge vaporisation by means of knowledge condensation to support expertise location (high‐level knowledge at a given time). This through an ontology that will condensate the knowledge in the code phase. This study presents the description of an ontology development process following the Methontology Framework. Results show that the proposed ontology does not present incongruence or inconsistency and answers the competency questions correctly. The main contribution of this study is the ontology which brings several benefits such as a shared concept of the knowledge in the code phase and a way to link the artefacts (resources used by developers in the project) and the experts (artefacts provider). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the agile approach to managing software development projects comes an increased dependability on well‐functioning teams, since many of the practices are built on teamwork. The objective of this study was to investigate if, and how, team development from a group psychological perspective is related to some work practices of agile teams. Data were collected from 34 agile teams (200 individuals) from six software development organizations and one university in both Brazil and Sweden using the Group Development Questionnaire (Scale IV) and the Perceptive Agile Measurement (PAM). The result indicates a strong correlation between levels of group maturity and the two agile practices iterative development and retrospectives. We, therefore, conclude that agile teams at different group development stages adopt parts of team agility differently, thus confirming previous studies but with more data and by investigating concrete and applied agile practices. We thereby add evidence to the hypothesis that an agile implementation and management of agile projects need to be adapted to the group maturity levels of the agile teams. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Group aspects are essential to the success of software projects; however, almost no research regarding group maturity in CMMI‐DEV Level 5 organizations has been conducted. The objective of this work is to investigate group maturity and its relationship to the efficiency and effectiveness of Agile Software Development teams in a CMMI‐DEV Level 5 organization. A case study was conducted, and three data collection methods were used: a validated questionnaire was given to nine agile software teams (59 people) to measure specific aspects of group maturity, team efficiency, and team effectiveness; the effort to develop Use Case Points and a group rate (related to productivity and salary) were collected to investigate team efficiency, and focus group sessions and semi‐structured interviews were conducted with project managers and team leaders to explore group issues in software development. Aspects of group maturity were correlated with team effectiveness and team efficiency measures. Communication was found to be strongly correlated with team effectiveness and group rate, and conformity and the clarity of roles and goals were found to be strongly correlated with team efficiency. The results suggest that group maturity has a positive influence on software teams in CMMI‐DEV Level 5 organizations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Improved efficiency of Markov chain Monte Carlo facilitates all aspects of statistical analysis with Bayesian hierarchical models. Identifying strategies to improve MCMC performance is becoming increasingly crucial as the complexity of models, and the run times to fit them, increases. We evaluate different strategies for improving MCMC efficiency using the open‐source software NIMBLE (R package nimble) using common ecological models of species occurrence and abundance as examples. We ask how MCMC efficiency depends on model formulation, model size, data, and sampling strategy. For multiseason and/or multispecies occupancy models and for N‐mixture models, we compare the efficiency of sampling discrete latent states vs. integrating over them, including more vs. fewer hierarchical model components, and univariate vs. block‐sampling methods. We include the common MCMC tool JAGS in comparisons. For simple models, there is little practical difference between computational approaches. As model complexity increases, there are strong interactions between model formulation and sampling strategy on MCMC efficiency. There is no one‐size‐fits‐all best strategy, but rather problem‐specific best strategies related to model structure and type. In all but the simplest cases, NIMBLE's default or customized performance achieves much higher efficiency than JAGS. In the two most complex examples, NIMBLE was 10–12 times more efficient than JAGS. We find NIMBLE is a valuable tool for many ecologists utilizing Bayesian inference, particularly for complex models where JAGS is prohibitively slow. Our results highlight the need for more guidelines and customizable approaches to fit hierarchical models to ensure practitioners can make the most of occupancy and other hierarchical models. By implementing model‐generic MCMC procedures in open‐source software, including the NIMBLE extensions for integrating over latent states (implemented in the R package nimbleEcology), we have made progress toward this aim. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The nature of "normal" research, as practiced by the vast majority of researchers, is that it is incremental. Successful iconoclasts will have convinced the majority of noniconoclast researchers of the veracity of their ideas. Both impact assessment and open access are more likely to be successful as iconoclastic changes because they are promulgated by powerful government bodies, with the resources and policies to demand change, not individual iconoclasts who would otherwise need to rely on their eloquence and wit. Using in-depth observational data from 46 virtual meetings conducted over a period of 6 months, the authors find four different prototype use practices that are effective in bridging syntactic, semantic, or pragmatic knowledge boundaries. [Extracted from the article]

Corporations increasingly engage with open source software communities in the co‐creation of software. This collaboration between corporate professionals and open source software community members is strikingly different from the early days of software development where for‐profit firms attempted to dominate and control the industry while attempting to throttle the success of independent developers offering an alternative, open source option. While many metaphors like trading zones, common pool resources and ecosystems have helped understand the phenomenon, the metaphors do not portray what the industry was like before and after the transition. We adopt a postcolonial metaphor as an analytical lens to examine such collaboration based on qualitative data gathered over three years from executives, managers and developers within corporations that engage in open source software development. Drawing on these insights, we then theorize a "Third Design Space," based on the concept of the third space proposed by Bhabha. This metaphor encourages the cultivation of a new design environment, creation of new design associations and circulation of shared design resources. Together these practices and behaviours make it possible to nurture innovative methods and new rituals for designing software with results and methods that represent a distinct departure from the competitive and proprietary past, even creating innovative artefacts that could not have been created without the Third Design Space. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Bridging knowledge boundaries among project team members is essential to prevent delays or complete failure of software development projects. Prior researchers have reported that software prototypes can be used to help bridge knowledge boundaries between team members in traditional software development settings, yet their use in an agile development setting remains unexplored. Agile development centers the interactions between team members on emerging representations of the prototype whose properties are prone to change over time. Therefore, we conducted an in‐depth study of an agile development project to enhance our understanding on how software prototypes are used as boundary objects in a distributed team setting. Our analyses of team member interactions during 46 virtual meetings that took place over a period of 6 months revealed four different prototype use practices (exemplifying, contrasting, relating, framing) that were effective in bridging syntactic, semantic, or pragmatic knowledge boundaries. We also provide empirically grounded evidence of how variations in object properties can afford different use practices, how the use practices take advantage of these properties, and how object properties are reshaped through these use practices as different types of knowledge boundaries are bridged. These findings bear important implications for research on prototypes as boundary objects in software development in particular and boundary object use in general. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary Though some software development teams are highly effective at delivering security, others either do not care or do not have access to security experts to teach them how. Unfortunately, these latter teams are still responsible for the security of the systems they build: systems that are ever more important to ever more people. We propose that a series of lightweight interventions, six hours of facilitated workshops delivered over three months, can improve a team's motivation to consider security and awareness of assurance techniques, changing its security culture even when no security experts are involved. The interventions were developed after an Appreciative Inquiry and Grounded Theory survey of security professionals to find out what approaches work best. We tested the interventions in a participatory action research field study where we delivered the workshops to three software development organizations and evaluated their effectiveness through interviews beforehand, immediately afterwards, and after twelve months. We found that the interventions can be effective with teams with limited or no security experience and that improvement is long‐lasting. This approach and the learning points arising from the work here have the potential to be applied in many development teams, improving the security of software worldwide. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Lessons learned from 19 years building an evaluation consulting business can inform other business owners. The Improve Group has grown from a one‐woman consultancy to an employer of more than thirty people. Staying grounded in a mission and a clear set of values is a guiding principle that has guided and informed growth. Sharing power with staff—to operate democratically while also leveraging their great ideas—has also strengthened The Improve Group's evaluation practice and operations as an organization. Balancing short‐ and long‐term opportunities has helped the organization stay nimble and situate itself well for the future. Reflections on major organizational changes—including a team restructure and the addition of a more inclusive approach to evaluation—show the application of these guiding principles. Additional personal reflections on leadership shed light on what founder and CEO Leah Goldstein Moses has learned about her leadership style over nearly 20 years at the helm of The Improve Group. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The layered architecture of AUTOSAR while making it highly modular, also makes it complex to debug when the software is tested directly on the hardware. This leads to iterations in the development process which sometimes can trace back to changes in the system architecture resulting in overheads and delays in the software development process. This paper discusses how test‐driven development (TDD) methodology can be adopted for AUTOSAR compliant software in enterprises which can reduce the iterations in the development process. This also makes it well suited for Agile workflow. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This editorial serves two purposes: It provides a general introduction to storytelling from an organizational and IS perspective. While such impoverished versions of storytelling are normally not included in the storytelling research discourse, there are other researchers who use the full richness of stories to engage with users in the software development process and thus contribute to and benefit from the storytelling scientific discourse. Recent hype around storytelling has made clear that the appeal, effectiveness, and potential of storytelling in IS is widely recognized. Storytelling in organizations: Why storytelling is transforming 21st century organizations and management. [Extracted from the article]

Summary: While modern CFD tools are able to provide the user with reliable and accurate simulations, there is a strong need for interactive design and analysis tools. State‐of‐the‐art CFD software employs massive resources in terms of CPU time, user interaction, and also GPU time for rendering and analysis. In this work, we develop an innovative tool able to provide a seamless bridge between artistic design and engineering analysis. This platform has three main ingredients: computer vision to avoid long user interaction at the pre‐processing stage, machine learning to avoid costly CFD simulations, and augmented reality for an agile and interactive post‐processing of the results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Architect and educator Marjan Colletti considers beauty in what he calls the 'fourth Industrial Revolution' – the post‐digital age. He begins with an ode to Beauty and continues in an autobiographical mode blending fact and personal experience. At points he evokes chimeras, myths and the South Tyrolean landscape; at others he describes aesthetic arousal in art and architecture as well as its power to scare – all in search of a personal beauty. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Industry in all sectors is experiencing a profound digital transformation that puts software at the core of their businesses. To react to continuously changing user requirements and dynamic markets, companies need to build robust workflows that allow them to increase their agility in order to remain competitive. This increasingly rapid transformation, especially in domains such as Internet of things or cloud computing, poses significant challenges to guarantee high‐quality software, since dynamism and agile short‐term planning reduce the ability to detect and manage risks. In this study, the authors describe the main challenges related to managing risk in agile software development, building on the experience of more than 20 agile coaches operating continuously for 15 years with hundreds of teams in industries in all sectors. They also propose a framework to manage risks that consider those challenges and supports collaboration, agility, and continuous development. An implementation of that framework is then described in a tool that handles risks and mitigation actions associated with the development of multi‐cloud applications. The methodology and the tool have been validated by a team of evaluators that were asked to consider its use in developing an urban smart mobility service and an airline flight scheduling system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We discuss the genesis of the paper for which the 2018 Forrester Award has been given. We then summarize its findings and put it into the context of the research streams in which it is embedded. We also describe the effects of the award paper on subsequent research. We then briefly discuss how laboratory experiment, field, and modeling work can complement each other in social systems research. Finally, we present some thoughts for leveraging the expertise of researchers and audiences from outside domains to the field of system dynamics, based on lessons from our work together as co‐authors and our mutual experience in project management, particularly in agile software development techniques. © 2019 System Dynamics Society [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Software development organisations are interested in adopting new agile methods and techniques. However, they often do not have the time and resources to explore available approaches or to customise them to the current situation at the project or organisational levels. As software companies are usually dealing with significant pressure and have to demonstrate productivity, time for software process improvement (SPI) is very limited. Using serious collaborative games can be helpful for the deployment of certain best practices recommended by agile methods. With the objective of facilitating SPI in organisations, the authors propose a ready-to-use collaborative game toolbox that is oriented for practical use in project team meetings. The set of collaborative games included in the toolbox have been designed for agile teams, regardless of the maturity level, to innovate and improve communication and cohesion, and to bring business value out of agile ceremonies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nowadays computer games are applied beyond entertainment. Gamification, the application of game elements in non-game environments supports behavioural studies in different disciplines including software engineering, the area in which collaborative work has become a fundamental key. The most used gamification elements in software development environments were analysed from two perspectives: (i) team building or reinforcement activities; and (ii) regarding a set of people's interactive styles. Then, interactive styles with software engineering roles were related in order to be able to identify scenarios that conform a model to build highly effective teams. The three analyses together allow identifying proper gamification elements for modelling scenarios to support the creation of highly effective teams in the software development domain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]