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Complexity leadership theory (CLT) is about balancing formal and informal organization to leverage dynamics of Complex Adaptive Systems (CAS) and produce learning, creativity, and adaptation in organizations. Based on interviews with sixteen agile coaches (AC) at Spotify, this study examines how AC practice enabling leadership, a key balancing force in complexity leadership. Coaches practice enabling leadership by increasing the context‐sensitivity of others, supporting other leaders, establishing and reinforcing simple principles, observing group dynamics, surfacing conflict and facilitating and encouraging constructive dialogue. The AC as complexity leader values being present, observing and reacting in the moment. Findings suggest flexible structure provided by an attentive coach may prove a fruitful way to navigate and balance autonomy and alignment in organizations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Traditional software teams that implement agile methodologies frequently experience difficulty working efficiently as agile teams. While agile methodologies support and promote social activities and behaviors, the understanding of the social phenomena and challenges that arise during the transformation of traditional teams into agile teams is limited. We conducted an extensive 10‐month case study in a software enterprise to analyze the changes in the communication and social interactions of employees during the transformation process, and to delineate the social challenges that arise during this process. Using social interaction registers, we collected data on the communication and social interactions of employees, first when they worked as a traditional team and then as an agile team. Then, we processed the data using social network analysis methods to identify the differences between these 2 types of teams and to create graphs of communication and social interaction networks. We identified that the transformation process influences formal, informal, oral, and written communication and increases conjunctive and disjunctive social interactions. Further, from the results of interviews conducted with all the enterprise members, we identified 5 social challenges to transforming a traditional team into an agile one. The results of this research suggest that the transformation process requires broad changes in the relationships and interactions among employees. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Software developing organizations strive to achieve flexibility to maintain a competitive advantage. There is no common understanding of what characterize flexibility for a software organization beyond the scope of the software product. Without a common understanding, it is difficult to evaluate the degrees of flexibility of software development approaches. The aim of this literature review is to collect attributes that characterize flexibility. The collected attributes are consolidated into a flexibility framework with 3 main attributes: properties of change, flexibility perspectives, and flexibility enablers. The resulting flexibility framework is then used to evaluate Agile and Lean practices. The evaluation shows that Agile and Lean practices address many flexibility attributes. However, some attributes are not addressed, such as infrastructure flexibility and strategic flexibility. On the basis of our evaluation, the classifications of flexibility attributes that we present in this paper could be used to aid software organization flexibility evaluation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: This article addresses the relationships between agile development and entrepreneurship. The objective of the study is to verify that the adoption of agile practices can promote entrepreneurial skills in software developers. In this study, agile practices were related to entrepreneurial skills, and developers of the software industry and academia professors were invited to contribute. Questionnaires were sent to the participants to obtain their opinion regarding this research. Participants also opined about the possibility of entrepreneurial skills being an observable behavior in agile culture, ie, if they are visible artifacts of agile culture. As a result, the study found a set of agile practices that promote entrepreneurial skills in software developers. That is, it was found that agile practices promote entrepreneurial behavior in these professionals. These entrepreneurial skills are sustained by the same basic values and assumptions that were learned by developers to resolve internal integration and external adaptation issues during the adoption of agile practices. In this article, an integration model has been adapted from other areas, thereby opening a new field of study involving the relationships between academic research and professional practice on entrepreneurship in the software area and agile development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Over the last decade, the use of agile methods has grown dramatically for software development. Agile methods guarantee to accelerate the delivery of remarkable software with increased user satisfaction and reduced cost. However, in recent years, due to the emergence of green software engineering, software developers are compelled to focus more on green and sustainable aspects of software. Green software engineering aims to design, develop, and use the software with confined energy and computing resources. Recently, software engineers in global software development have adapted agile methods for quick, interactive, and environment‐friendly software development. In this study, we have identified 16 success factors, through systematic literature review (SLR) and applied contrived search criteria derived from the research questions; 80 relevant papers were identified and reviewed. Findings of the SLR study were then empirically validated through questionnaire survey in global software development industry, in which 106 experts from 25 different countries participated. The findings of our industrial survey are mostly in coherence with the SLR findings. However, there is a difference in ranks of the various success factors across the 2 data sets (SLR and industrial survey). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Background: Agile development shows benefits for software‐developing companies, eg, shorter time to market or stronger customer connections. Nonetheless, agile methods and practices are most often adapted to a specific context. Especially in regulated domains such as automotive, avionics, or medical, domain‐specific constraints need to be considered, and hence, Agile is often used only partially or not at all. Objective: The goal of this study was to identify the state of the practice in using agile development as part of the development process in regulated embedded domains. Method: We conducted a study using a combination of a series of interviews and an online questionnaire as data collection methods. Results: The responses of 50 participants showed that Agile, mostly in the form of an adapted form of Scrum, has already arrived in those domains, but mainly in noncritical projects and/or early project phases. This means there is further improvement potential, which was also confirmed by the participants regarding future usage. Conclusions: The results of our state‐of‐the‐practice study provide a good stage for future work, especially for new approaches bringing more “agility” into regulated embedded domains. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objectives: To describe the essential components of an Agile Implementation (AI) process, which rapidly and effectively implements evidence‐based healthcare solutions, and present a case study demonstrating its utility. Design: Case demonstration study. Setting: Integrated, safety net healthcare delivery system in Indianapolis. Participants: Interdisciplinary team of clinicians and administrators. Measurements: Reduction in dementia symptoms and caregiver burden; inpatient and outpatient care expenditures. Results: Implementation scientists were able to implement a collaborative care model for dementia care and sustain it for more than 9 years. The model was implemented and sustained by using the elements of the AI process: proactive surveillance and confirmation of clinical opportunities, selection of the right evidence‐based healthcare solution, localization (i.e., tailoring to the local environment) of the selected solution, development of an evaluation plan and performance feedback loop, development of a minimally standardized operation manual, and updating such manual annually. Conclusion: The AI process provides an effective model to implement and sustain evidence‐based healthcare solutions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Medical device software development organizations are bound by regulatory requirements and constraints to ensure that developed medical devices will not harm patients. Medical devices have to be treated as complete systems and be evaluated in this manner. Instead of manufacturers having to ensure compliance to various regulatory standards individually, the authors previously developed a medical device software process assessment framework called MDevSPICE® that integrates the regulatory requirements from all the relevant medical device software standards. The MDevSPICE® was developed in a manner that suits plan‐driven software development. To improve the usability of MDevSPICE® in agile settings, we extended the assessment approach. The hybrid assessment approach described here combines the MDevSPICE®‐based process assessment method with steps for prioritization of improvement needs through value stream mapping and enabling process improvement through the use of KATA technique. This approach integrates agile methods into the medical device software development process while adhering to the requirements of the regulatory standards. This paper describes the implementation of the approach within 4 organizations that develop software in line with medical device regulations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the fifth generation (5G) era, the radio internet protocol capacity is expected to reach 20 Gb/s per sector, and ultralarge content traffic will travel across a faster wireless/wireline access network and packet core network. Moreover, the massive and mission‐critical Internet of Things is the main differentiator of 5G services. These types of real‐time and large‐bandwidth‐consuming services require a radio latency of less than 1 ms and an end‐to‐end latency of less than a few milliseconds. By distributing 5G core nodes closer to cell sites, the backhaul traffic volume and latency can be significantly reduced by having mobile devices download content immediately from a closer content server. In this paper, we propose a novel solution based on software‐defined network and network function virtualization technologies in order to achieve agile management of 5G core network functionalities with a proof‐of‐concept implementation targeted for the PyeongChang Winter Olympics and describe the results of interoperability testing experiences between two core networks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Today, the growth of medical devices and mobile medical applications is increasing enormously, thanks to the efficiency and enhancement of new technology. When it comes to mobile medical apps, developers need to understand what is required when a mobile application fulfils the definition of a medical device. Such applications have to be developed in compliance with medical device regulations. This can be a challenge for mobile medical application developers, as medical device software is normally developed in a manner that will also ensure the production of regulatory documentation that is essential to market such devices. In this paper, we identify the need for a mobile medical application development framework, the key criteria for such a framework, and describe how the results were collected through performing a Medical Device Software Development workshop. Furthermore, we describe how MDevSPICE together with an agile software development approach can be tailored to support a mobile medical applications development framework. We detail one of the key criteria for mobile medical application development framework-traceability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Effort estimation is more challenging in an agile context, as instead of exerting strict control over changes in requirements, dynamism is embraced. Current practice relies on expert judgment, where the accuracy of estimates is sensitive to the expertise of practitioners and prone to bias. To improve the effectiveness of the effort estimation process, the goal of this research is to investigate and understand the estimation process with respect to its accuracy in the context of agile software development from the perspective of agile development teams. Using case study research, 2 observations and eleven interviews were conducted with 3 agile development teams at SAP SE, a German multinational software corporation. The results reveal that factors such as the developer's knowledge, experience, and the complexity and impact of changes on the underlying system affect the magnitude as well as estimation accuracy. Furthermore, there is a need for a tool that incorporates expert knowledge, enables explicit consideration of cost drivers by experts and visualizes this information to improve the effectiveness of the effort estimation. On the basis of the findings of the case study, a framework, inspired by the quality improvement paradigm is proposed to improve effort estimation in agile development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Code review in practice is often performed change-based, ie, using the code changes belonging to a task to determine which code to review. Previous studies found that 2 variations of this process are used in industry: pre-commit review and post-commit review. The choice between these has implications not only for practitioners deciding on a code review process to use but also for the development of review tools and for experimentation with review processes. In some situations, a specific variant is clearly preferable due to the nature of the development process or team. In other situations, there are conflicting opinions. So we asked: Are there practically relevant performance differences between pre and post-commit reviews? How are these differences influenced by contextual factors? To assess these questions, we designed a parametric discrete event simulation model of certain agile development processes. We validated this model with practitioner's feedback and in part also with empirical data from industry. Our analysis indicates that the best choice does depend on the context but also that there are many situations with no practically relevant difference between both choices. We identified the main influencing factors and underlying effects and condensed our findings into heuristic rules. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The increasing flexibility in industry leads to an ecosystem of change, affecting the balance of processes and technology as well as the developers who have to cope with the change. Furthermore, the change itself might impact the ability to use quantitative methods to learn from previous experience. The goal of this study is to better understand the ecosystem of mutual impacts and changes of process and technologies as well as how developers perceive a technology setting and deal with its change. Therefore, we conducted a case study at Ericsson, performing a series of interviews among 6 employees (senior developers and architects). We identified a time line of changes that happened over 7 years. A set of observations about the relation between processes and tooling, and observations about developer's perceptions of the technology settings, and their strategy to deal with these changing technology settings. We discuss how the observed change impacts the ability to perform quantitative evaluations of technology and processes. The findings show that a bad choice of technologies can lead to unexpected impact on team dynamics. Furthermore, change happens so regular that it needs to be considered when collecting data for a quantitative evaluation of, eg, productivity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

From its earliest days, software development has been beset with challenges in relation to timely delivery, appropriateness of features, and quality of deliverables. Many advances in software development processes have helped to address these concerns. For example, agile software development has helped to deliver working software more frequently, and capability maturity frameworks have brought about improved consistency in quality levels. However, the age-old challenge of better, cheaper, faster software has continued to beguile developers. In this paper, we discuss an emerging approach to software development, continuous software engineering (CSE), wherein software of operational quality may be delivered on a very frequent basis, up to many times in a given day. This approach uses a complex set of independent tools that together reduce the lead time in delivering commercial-grade software. Having examined the situational context of one industrial organization applying CSE, we conclude that the approach may not presently be appropriate to all manners of software development. Nonetheless, the authors are of the view that CSE represents a significant progression in software engineering and that software development settings of all types stand to gain from aspects of the CSE approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We present an empirically grounded and theoretically informed model for the assessment and mitigation of risks to effective knowledge sharing in agile development. The model is anchored in empirical insights from four agile projects across two software companies and in extant research on risk-strategy analysis and knowledge sharing in software development. We develop the model as part of the long-standing tradition of presenting risk management models dedicated to specific issues in software development and confirm its practical usefulness in one of the software companies studied. The model offers concepts and processes to assess a project's knowledge sharing risk profile and articulate an overall resolution strategy plan to mitigate the risks. The results highlight how different knowledge sharing risk management profiles can lead to different project performance outcomes. We conclude with a discussion of research opportunities that the results offer software development scholarship. © 2016 John Wiley & Sons Ltd [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses the applicability of agile methods to aircraft embedded software development. It presents the main results of an experiment that combines agile practices from Scrum with model-based development and distributed development. The experiment consists of the development of an aircraft cockpit display system divided in five distributed teams. Three features are analysed and quantified, using the output artefacts of each team: the artefacts' quality, the adherence to agile methods, and the adherence to standard DO-178C. The main conclusion of the experiment is that there is a high correlation between the adherence to agile methods and the artefacts' quality, motivating the use of agile methods in aircraft industry. Also, the experiment evinced that agile methods does not specifically address the integration of distributed teams and the hardware/software integration. This lacuna affects the artefacts' quality. The results of the experiment emphasize the importance of concentrating future work in the proposal of specific agile practices for these activities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A known problem in large software companies is to balance the prioritization of short-term and long-term business goals. As an example, architecture suboptimality (Architectural Technical Debt), incurred to deliver fast, might hinder future feature development. However, some technical debt generates more interest to be paid than other. We conducted a multi-phase, multiple-case embedded case study comprehending 9 sites at 6 large international software companies. We have investigated which architectural technical debt items generate more interest , how the interest occurs during software development and which costly extra-activities are triggered as a result. We presented a taxonomy of the most dangerous items identified during the qualitative investigation and a model of their effects that can be used for prioritization, for further investigation and as a quality model for extracting more precise and context-specific metrics. We found that some architectural technical debt items are contagious, causing the interest to be not only fixed, but potentially compound, which leads to the hidden growth of interest (possibly exponential). We found important factors to be monitored to refactor the debt before it becomes too costly. Instances of these phenomena need to be identified and stopped before the development reaches a crises. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Change has been recognized as the distinguishing feature that makes software different from any other human-produced artifacts. Initial reflections on the urgent and unavoidable need to master change date back to the 1970s. However, despite the continuous progress that characterized software technology since, in practice, software change is still often handled as an afterthought, in an ad hoc and unprincipled manner. Agile development methods have been proposed and are now widely adopted to accommodate change during development. Recent extensions to also include operation-known as DevOps-are increasingly and successfully adopted by industry. Still, principled and rigorous foundations that can be taught, practiced, and replicated systematically are lacking. This paper argues that change has to become a first-class concept and that the development tools used by engineers and the runtime environment supporting software execution should be structured in a way that naturally accommodates change. It also provides a perspective along which several research approaches that were investigated by the community in the past decade might be integrated and extended to make this vision become true. Two main change categories are identified-evolution and adaptation-along with the forces that drive them. The paper discusses when and how the developed software can be designed in a way that it can self-adapt. It also discusses how the software itself can cooperate with humans in-the-loop to help them in their design and development efforts. Finally, it outlines a roadmap of future work needed to progress in the direction of supporting and automating software change that would lead to dependable adaptation and evolution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An introduction is presents in which the editor discusses various reports within the issue on topics including use of Bayesian networks for assisting continuous improvement of Scrum projects, portfolio management and adoption level of scaled agile development.

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]

Although the agile software development approaches have gained wide acceptance in practice, the concerns regarding the scalability and integration of agile practices in traditional large-scale system development projects are prevailing. Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe) has emerged as a solution to address some of these concerns. Despite few encouraging results, case studies indicate several challenges of SAFe adoption. Currently, there is a lack of a well-structured gradual approach for establishing SAFe. Before and during SAFe adoption, organizations can benefit greatly from a uniform model for assessing the current progress, and establishing a roadmap for the initiative. To address this need, we developed a maturity model that provides guidance for software developing organizations in defining a roadmap for adopting SAFe. The model can also be used to assess the level of SAFe adoption. We took an existing agile maturity model as a basis for agile practices and extended it with practices that are key to SAFe. The model was developed and refined with industry experts using the Delphi technique. A case study was conducted in a large organization where we evaluated the model by applying it to assess the level of SAFe adoption. © 2016 The Authors. Journal of Software: Evolution and Process Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Innovation in both industry and academia increasingly depends on the fast evolution of software and software services. Adoption of agile software development methodologies has reduced time to market and improved success rates; however, deployment obstacles often impede the quick delivery of the new and improved features to end users. This paper deals with DevOps, a new methodology that extends agile processes to include operations. DevOps methodology adopted with cloud computing could immediately benefit current practitioners from various software development parties while a focus on the young will ensure that DevOps ideals and processes will be taken forward into the longer-term future. Moving towards clouds, adopting DevOps culture, and implementing DevOps tools will produce more innovative services at lower cost and with higher quality. Wider adoption of the cloud DevOps will bring cloud DevOps features, and the benefit of agile software development, automation, and elastic resource provisioning. Additionally, teaching cloud DevOps in university will help to overcome the barriers to its adoption and maximize its indirect socioeconomic impact. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT The federal government has long had a need for highly secure communications. The National Security Agency (NSA) is responsible for the wide range of technologies to secure these communications. They realized, recently, that the development times for government encryption technology was not keeping pace with the rapid evolution of commercial mobile technologies; together with a realization that commercial technologies exist to meet the requirements for the federal government. Specifically, NSA has published specifications on their website to operationalize these capabilities. Commercial Solutions for Classified (CSfC), the NSA term for commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) secure communications, coupled with published capability packages allows a developer to field a secure communications solution rapidly built entirely on COTS technology. The architecture, proposed in this paper, will address the rapidly evolving commercial mobile security market and will address fully leveraging commercial technologies to field the latest technologies in the shortest amount of time and at the lowest cost. With the NSA move to commercial technologies and the commercial market moving to enhanced security for 'standard commercial users,' there is an emerging convergence of these two approaches. The initial work has revealed effective architectural constructs to support the wide range of emerging applications of this promising approach from NSA. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Agile methodologies have been adopted by an increasing number of organizations to improve their responsiveness. However, few studies have empirically analysed the effect of Agile on long-term organizational goals such as learning and innovation. Using an abductive approach, this study examines the relationships between self-regulated teams' social conduct and their resulting learning and innovation. Results indicate that the time pressure induced by the implementation of Agile impedes team engagement in learning and innovation activities. Time pressure is affected by a set of different control strategies, more specifically concertive, belief, diagnostic and boundary controls, and these need to be adequately addressed in order to minimize the potential dark side of Agile. [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]

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 Software engineering means applying engineering principles to software development. In the same way, agile software engineering means applying agile approaches to software engineering. Software engineering courses try to teach software development life cycle using project-based approaches. Also, they endeavor to include real life issues of software engineering to the courses. Moreover, they struggle to teach teamwork in software development because it is a requirement of the real life software development. In robotics education, competition-based learning is efficiently used for years. Competitions can be organized in teams and real-world issues can be simulated with them. In this work, a competition-based learning approach is applied in an agile software engineering course to increase the efficiency of teaching software engineering, and the results of the approach are presented. Real-world issues of agile software development are simulated using competition-based setting. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Comput Appl Eng Educ 24:382-387, 2016; View this article online at ; DOI [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While the literature offers several frameworks that explain barriers to knowledge sharing within software development teams, little is known about differences in how team members perceive these barriers. Based on an in-depth multi-case study of four software projects, we investigate how project managers, developers, testers and user representatives think about barriers to effective knowledge sharing in agile development. Adapting comparative causal mapping, we constructed causal maps for each of the four roles and identified overlap and divergence in map constructs and causal linkages. The results indicate that despite certain similarities, the four roles differ in how they perceive and emphasize knowledge-sharing barriers. The project managers put primary emphasis on project setting barriers, while the primary concern of developers, testers and user representatives were project communication, project organization and team capabilities barriers, respectively. Integrating the four causal maps and the agile literature, we propose a conceptual framework with seven types of knowledge-sharing barriers and 37 specific barriers. We argue that to bridge communication gaps and create shared understanding in software teams, it is critical to take the revealed concerns of different roles into account. We conclude by discussing our findings in relation to knowledge sharing in agile teams and software teams more generally. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The adoption of Agile Software Development in large companies is a recent phenomenon of great interest both for researchers and practitioners. Although intra-team interaction is well supported by established agile practices, the critical interaction between the agile team and other parts of the organization is still unexplored in literature. Such interactions slow down the development, hindering the achievement of business goals based on speed: short time to market, quick replication of products of a product-line, and reaction time for product evolution. We have employed a two-year long multiple-case case-study, collecting data through interviews and a survey in three large companies developing embedded software. Through a combination of qualitative and quantitative analysis, we have found strong evidence that interaction challenges between the development team and other groups in the organization hinder speed and are widespread in the organizations. This paper also identifies current practices in use at the studied companies and provides detailed guidelines for novel solutions in the investigated domain. Such practices are called boundary-spanning activities in information system research and coordination theory. We present a comparison between large embedded software companies employing agile and developing a line of products based on reused assets and agile companies developing pure software. We highlight specific contextual factors and areas where novel spanning activities are needed for mitigating the interaction challenges hindering speed. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The combination of Agile methods and distributed software development via remote teams represents an emerging approach to address the challenges such as late feedback, slow project timelines, and high cost, typically associated with software development projects. However, when projects are implemented using an Agile model with distributed human resources, there are a number of challenges that need to be considered and mitigated. The objectives of our work are multifold. First, we would like to understand the reasons and conditions that lead to the adoption of distributed Agile software engineering (DASE) practices. Second, we would like to investigate and find out the most important risks that threaten a DASE approach and what mitigation strategies exist to address them. Finally, we would like to highlight which of the available approaches among the existing Agile methodologies has been successfully adopted by the community. We intend to solidify our findings by exploring the strength of the evidence that has been reported in the literature. We carried out a systematic literature review of DASE techniques and approaches. This systematic literature review found time zone difference, knowledge of resources, lack of infrastructure, missing roles, and responsibilities as being the primary challenges that needed to be addressed. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT In this work, a novel multiband, four-element, meandered-line reconfigurable planar F-shaped multiple-input-multiple-output antenna is presented. The proposed design includes chassis mode reconfigurability option as well. A combination of PIN and varactor diodes is used to achieve the frequency tuning over a wide-band. The proposed design covers several well-known frequency bands between 0.7 and 3 GHz. The design is compact and realized on a single commercial substrate board with dimensions 65 × 120 × 1.56 mm3 that can be used in small wireless handheld devices for cognitive radio applications. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Microwave Opt Technol Lett 57:1933-1938, 2015 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Agile development processes are more flexible than conventional ones. They emphasize iterative development and learning over feedback loops. Nevertheless, we experienced some pitfalls in the application of agile processes in dependable software systems. We present here the experiences we gathered in the construction of high-quality industrial software. Moreover, we will digest our experiences into a conceptual model of waste creation. This model will be refined to a case study where we take appropriate measurements in order to provide empirical evidence for it. Finally, we discuss the implications of the developed model, which helps to estimate the trade-off between agile and traditional software processes. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Agent technology plays an important role in today's software development at the industrial level and brings advantages to the development of educational applications. The main focus of the multi-agent systems community has been on the development of concepts, architectures, interaction techniques, and general approaches to the analysis and specification of multi-agent systems. We introduce herein a novel concept involving the development of an e-Learning system architecture that explores several recent technologies, including multi-agent technology and adaptive e-Learning. The main concern of our research is twofold: to build a multi-agent architecture that provides the ability to adapt to the learner's preferences in the e-Learning environment and to analyze and control the communication and interactions among the different agents of the proposed system. Toward this aim, we present a distributed intelligent blackboard agent that ensures the communication among the participating agents. Furthermore, we describe a formal model that can be used to specify the message exchanges and their synchronization using Object Petri Nets. An exploratory implementation has been developed and conducted in practice. © 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Comput Appl Eng Educ 23:170-190, 2015; View this article online at ; DOI [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Agile methodologies, in particular the framework SCRUM, are popular in software development companies. Most of the time, however, it is not feasible for these companies to apply every characteristic of the framework. This paper presents a hybrid application of verbal decision analysis methodologies in order to select some of the most relevant SCRUM approaches to be applied by a company. A questionnaire was developed and a group of experienced ScrumMasters was selected to answer it, aiming at characterizing every SCRUM approach into criteria values. The hybrid application consists in dividing the SCRUM practices into groups (stage supported by the ORCLASS method application), using the ORCLASSWEB tool. Then, the rank of the preferred practices will be generated by the application of the ZAPROS-LM method. [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]

ABSTRACT Akari Software offers a family of software products supporting curriculum management in higher education. The work started with one specific commission, but within 4 years, a small product suite had been developed, with ten organisations using customised variants of those products. In effect, a product family had been created but without the underlying structure and processes needed to ensure the efficient creation and maintenance of variants. This is a common issue faced by software companies as their product range expands. In 2010, Akari began making internal changes to develop a product range infrastructure that was suitable both for its existing products and its plans for future growth. The purpose of this paper is to describe the product line transition that occurred, both to share the experience involved and to identify a number of general lessons learned. The work was supported by a FUSION project, funded by InterTradeIreland, undertaken in collaboration with the University of Ulster. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT The paper provides an in depth analysis of empirical evidence on the state of practice within the agile domain obtained through a survey conducted in 2012. The context of focus is agile software processes and teams and the particular topics of interest revolve around three axes: (i) communication; (ii) project management; and (iii) quality assurance and validation. The aim of the survey is to deliver the current levels of agile adoption and practices as these are recorded in the responses of professionals in IT services and the software industry. The goal of the survey is to provide evidence-based assessment of the level of agile adoption by software development organizations, in relation to the general profile of the respondents (country of origin, business sectors, roles, etc.) and compared with different types of practices followed, such as agile techniques adopted, team organization and communication techniques, and project management. Particular patterns and trends are identified in the survey connecting the use of the agile paradigm with the aforementioned practices and investigating its relation with the roles of the respondents and the business strategies of their organizations. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT Mobile app markets have experienced a significant growth during the last year. The increasing number of apps available on markets and the profits that developers and companies obtain are relevant enough to seriously consider the way apps are developed. The always-changing environment in which apps are produced makes agile a convenient methodology to follow. Although agile allows the development team to quickly adjust the requisites to the new customer's needs, there is a lack of research on how agile methodologies can be explicitly adapted to develop mass-market applications. Many references explain how to design and code a mobile app, but there is not much knowledge about other stages in the development process. Adapting an agile methodology to the development of mass-market applications would provide project teams with a clear guide to successfully produce an app without missing any step in the process. This paper describes a case study in which an agile mass-market application development process is followed. The proposed process also considers marketing issues as they are necessary to publicize a mass-market application. This process has been followed and refined for several years in the development of the institutional apps at Carlos III University of Madrid. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

SUMMARY Non-safety critical software developers have been reaping the benefits of adopting agile practices for a number of years. However, developers of safety critical software often have concerns about adopting agile practices. Through performing a literature review, this research has identified the perceived barriers to following agile practices when developing medical device software. A questionnaire-based survey was also conducted with medical device software developers in Ireland to determine the barriers to adopting agile practices. The survey revealed that half of the respondents develop software in accordance with a plan-driven software development lifecycle and that they believe that there are a number of perceived barriers to adopting agile practices when developing regulatory compliant software such as being contradictory to regulatory requirements, insufficient coverage of risk management activities and the lack of up-front planning. In addition, a comparison is performed between the perceived and actual barriers. Based upon the findings of the literature review and survey, it emerged that no external barriers exist to adopting agile practices when developing medical device software and the barriers that do exists are internal barriers such as getting stakeholder buy in. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper discusses structure, quality and content of the currently available agile maturity models. It presents two approaches on how to deal with such models. As a first step of the analysis, the paper contains a compilation of maturity level naming used by these agile maturity models because the variety of level naming is a sign of the variety of understanding and of definition of agile maturity. While many papers deal with agile from an inside perspective, this paper is written from the perspective of Software Process Improvement (SPI) and Capability Determination, the European Certification and Qualification Association PI Manager Certification Scheme and also the SPI Manifesto. The paper does not explicitly present its own agile maturity model. The analysis approaches presented in the paper show that the currently available agile maturity models are not fit for industrial use. The synthesis of an acceptable model seems to be feasible as the analysed models address typical organisational processes including life cycle management. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

SUMMARY This paper presents a case study on building a successful agile coaching team focusing on global software development projects in an international Nordic-based software company. We describe how the team of eight coaches was built, and how the coaches work together as a team using agile practices, such as weekly iterations, backlogs, and daily stand-ups. Furthermore, we describe their 'deep and narrow' approach to working closely with case projects, and the benefits to the coached projects. We describe the main challenges in building the coaching activities in a globally distributed company. The paper concludes with a set of lessons learned for coaching globally distributed projects and a discussion of the future plans for scaling up coaching by building a global coaching network within the company. We collected the data using 13 semi-structured interviews of the coaching team members, and personnel from four coached case projects. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a contextual model for software-intensive systems development to guide the adoption and adaptation of agile software development practices. This model was found especially useful when the project context departs significantly from the "agile sweet spot", that is, the ideal conditions in which agile software development practices originated from, and where they are most likely to succeed, "out of the box". This is the case for large systems, distributed development environment, safety-critical systems, system requiting a novel architecture, or systems with an unorthodox business model or governance model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As information systems development (ISD) organisations face increasing market demands, strategies such as agile development have been used to help address these demands. Now, as information systems (IS) research in agile development is gaining in theoretical rigour, this study explores the use of mindfulness as a theoretical framework to examine ISD agility. At its core, the mindfulness theoretical concept promotes a focus on 'continuous attention to detail' and 'vigilance to minimise errors and respond effectively to unexpected events'. Incorporating a sixteen month ongoing longitudinal case study of an ISD organisation, this research provides an insight into the practice of what we term 'doing' agile and 'being' agile, while also providing a number of theoretical contributions around the value of mindfulness for ISD agility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]