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There is a continuing interest in exploring the impact of operational excellence (OE) on operational performance. Several OE practices such as Lean, Agile, and Six Sigma are well recognized. However, not all OE deployments in firms have been successful, and a failure of such efforts has often been expensive. Past research reveals several critical failure factors (CFFs) that lead to OE deployment failures in firms. We present these CFFs as an integrated model, based on two dominant schools of OE that promote technical and behavioral factors independently. Further, we validate their direct and mediating relationships through an empirical examination of 663 responses collected from 153 manufacturing units across the USA, U.K., China, and India. This article contributes to the OE body of knowledge by examining the significant direct and mediating effects of behavioral and technical CFFs on the OE failures. Our findings reveal that the technical CFFs mediate the impact of behavioral CFFs on OE failures. Consequently, several managerial and theoretical implications are presented.

Manufacturing companies are currently undergoing a digitalization transformation in which digitally enabled, new, and innovative advanced service offerings are being launched. These so-called “digital services” represent a shift in the business logic of manufacturing firms, from up-front product sales to advanced service contracts. This business model shift has profound implications for cost structures, risk management, and revenue streams, providing manufacturing companies with the key challenge of rethinking how to capture value. Using a multiple case study of 11 companies, the purpose of this article is to enhance knowledge on how to design new revenue models for digital services. Results reveal a revenue model design framework of key phases and activities that carries implications for the emerging literature on digital servitization, as well as the business model innovation literature. The findings reveal a highly customer-centric, iterative, and agile process where close collaboration with key customers during the early stages guides the framing of revenue models for digital services. For practitioners, it provides hands-on advice on how to implement the design, development, and scaling processes for revenue models in the context of new digital services. Validerad;2023;Nivå 2;2023-04-18 (joosat)

Planning-performance theory suggests that formal planning has a positive impact on performance. Accordingly, traditional project management methodologies advocate formal planning as an essential process in any project. However, alternative recent project management methodologies (e.g., Agile) promote less focus on a formal planning process at the start of a project. In this article, we question when formal planning is effective, when it is counterproductive, and which planning approach (strategic or tactical) is more effective for various project risk levels and performance dimensions (efficiency and effectiveness). Results from analyzing 2002 projects suggest that strategic planning has a higher value than tactical planning. Furthermore, tactical planning has a negative impact on project efficiency in low-risk projects as it increases project duration and cost but adds little value. In practice, in low-risk projects, managers may limit their focus on counterproductive tactical practices, such as risk, and procurement planning, and focus instead on long-term strategic planning, such as human resources planning. Theoretically, this article sets boundaries of effectiveness for planning-performance theory and advances the literature on the planning fallacy.

The DoD’s artificial intelligence (AI) strategy requires the delivery of transformative and disruptive capabilities that impact the “character of the future battlefield and the pace of threats” that US forces must be prepared to handle. Candidate frameworks must also address key mission areas while enabling partnerships with the private sector, academia, and global allies. To meet these challenges, a flexible, cost-effective, and scalable computing infrastructure that incorporates cutting edge technologies and complies with stringent information assurance requirements is necessary. The DoD AI strategy mandates the agile employment of innovative AI capabilities that “rapidly and iteratively” execute experimentation with new operating concepts, and leverage lessons learned in subsequent experiments. Using cloud computing, we present a flexible approach to solve complex systems problems. Promoting “rapid experimentation” and collaboration on problems such as recursive algorithm implementation, deep learning, and inference in neural networks has enabled inherent advantages over existing computing frameworks. Leveraging the cloud to implement shared responsibility security models, serverless architectures, and high-performance virtual machines, aspects of the AI lifecycle including build, deploy, and monitor have resulted in an adaptable and scalable computing framework that is not only disruptive to the current computing paradigm but also promotes enhanced and productive collaboration.

Compared with traditional observation satellites, agile earth observation satellites are capable of prolonging observation time windows (OTWs) for targets, which significantly alleviates observation conflicts, thereby facilitating imaging data collection. However, it also leads to more uncertainties in determining the start time to image targets within these longer OTWs for an agile satellite network (ASN) to collect imaging data. Furthermore, these collected data is offloaded only within short transmission time windows between data collectors and data sinks, thus resulting in a transmission scheduling problem. Toward this end, this paper investigates joint observation and transmission scheduling in ASNs, aiming at accommodating more imaging data to be collected and offloaded successfully. Specifically, we formulate the studied problem as integer linear programming (ILP) to maximize the weighted sum of scheduled imaging tasks. Then, we explore the hidden structure of this ILP and transform it into a special framework, which can be solved efficiently through semidefinite relaxation (SDR). To reduce computation complexity, we further propose a fast yet efficient algorithm by combining the advantages of the devised SDR method and a genetic algorithm with special population initialization. Finally, simulation results demonstrate that the proposed algorithm can significantly increase the weighted sum of scheduled tasks.

Dealing with an uncertain and dynamic environment when facing multiple and fast-paced challenges forces professionals to adopt agile practices in different environments, resulting in the use of hybrid project management models. However, identifying the right practice to adopt can be challenging, given the variety of project types and environmental factors. In this article, a recommendation method that would allow for the identification of patterns of project management practices for different environments—using an agility indicator—is proposed. The proposed method is tested with a dataset of 856 projects. A cluster analysis is applied to divide the projects into three groups according to environmental characteristics, called scenarios: waterfall, agile, and hybrid. Then, we apply the association rule technique for each group separately, identifying specific patterns of practice for each group. Through a comparative analysis, we verify the consistency between the recommendations of the proposed method for each scenario and the literature on project management. The results indicate the feasibility of the proposed method, thus opening up new research opportunities for hybrid models that can be customized for different projects. This article can help project management professionals apply the agile method beyond its use in software development and improve the process of combining project management practices. We also suggest directions for new research to advance the knowledge of useful decision support tools for hybrid model customization.

Previous literature addressed organizations’ adaptiveness to ever-changing business environments and investigated the concept of agility. However, extant agility research primarily covers the corporate and project levels and is typically located in the information systems and operations management fields. Relatively little quantitative research in innovation management literature exists, and those studies approached the concept solely from an outcome perspective (i.e., increased adaptiveness) instead of elucidating how organizations should organize themselves to be agile (i.e., a capability perspective). This article addresses these shortcomings and adopts a capability perspective since no empirical studies have examined agile R&D units’ organization (ARDO). Drawing on dynamic capabilities theory, we develop a measure of ARDO, conceptualizing it as a second-order construct, consisting of six dimensions: a culture of agile values, customer integration, autonomy, an iterative work method, cross-functional capabilities, and flat hierarchies. We validated the measurement by conducting three studies to ensure content, structural, and nomological validity. We applied structural equation modeling on a sample of 175 R&D managers and cross validated our findings on different hierarchical levels via a sample of 454 R&D employees. The results confirm the second-order nature of the ARDO measure and provide evidence of its positive relationship with front-end success. We advance scarce quantitative research on agility's neglected capability perspective and contribute to the innovation management field by facilitating further empirical research on agile R&D units’ antecedents and outcomes in the context of physical product development.

Although many companies pursue agile projects, extant literature reveals a lack of research on project agility determinants. This study examines the project team characteristics' impact on project agility and success using cross-sectional survey data from 292 agile projects. Using agile principles and complex adaptive systems theory, we find that project team autonomy, team diversity, and client collaboration have significant positive relationships with project agility. Project agility, in turn, has a significant positive relationship to project success. We measure project success by on-time completion, on-budget completion, specifications' attainment, and success rating by the project sponsor, client, and project team members. We find that project team members' adaptive performance partially mediates the relationship between project agility and success. These results guide agile project managers while facilitating team members to independently schedule their work, determine effective work methods, and develop innovative solutions. Moreover, they help agile managers recruit team members with relevant, diverse skill sets, domain knowledge, and expertise. Agile project managers must emphasize client collaboration in requirements gathering, designing, testing, and project reviews.

An increasing number of companies aim to enable their development teams to work in an agile manner. When introducing agile teams, companies face several challenges. This paper explores the kind of leadership needed to support teams to work in an agile way. One theoretical agile leadership concept describes a Scrum Master who is supposed to empower the team to lead itself. Empirical findings on such a leadership role are controversial. We still have not understood how leadership unfolds in a team that is by definition self-organizing. Further exploration is needed to better understand leadership in agile teams. Our goal is to explore how leadership changes while the team matures using the example of the Scrum Master. Through a grounded theory study containing 75 practitioners from 11 divisions at the Robert Bosch GmbH we identified a set of nine leadership roles that are transferred from the Scrum Master to the Development Team while it matures. We uncovered that a leadership gap and a supportive internal team climate are enablers of the role transfer process, whereas role conflicts may diminish the role transfer. To make the Scrum Master change in a mature team, team members need to receive trust and freedom to take on a leadership role which was previously filled by the Scrum Master. We conclude with practical implications for managers, Product Owners, Development Teams and Scrum Masters which they can apply in real settings., Robert Bosch Automotive Steering GmbH, Projekt DEAL

Following the highly pervasive and effective use of agile methods at the team level, many software organisations now wish to replicate this success at the organisational level, adopting large-scale agile methods such as SAFe, Scrum-at-Scale, and others. However, this has proven significantly challenging. An analysis of the extant literature reveals a disparate set of studies across each individual method, with no cross-method comparison based on empirical evidence. This systematic literature review compares the main large-scale agile methods, namely SAFe, LeSS, Scrum-at-Scale, DAD, and the Spotify model. It is the first study to analyse and compare each of the method's principles, practices, tools, and metrics in a standardised manner. For each method, it presents not just the original method specifications but also all extensions and modifications to each method proposed by subsequent empirical research. It includes in this comparison not just commercial large-scale methods but also those that have been custom-built in organisations such as Nokia, Ericsson, and others. Based on the findings reported in this study, practitioners can make a more informed decision as to which commercial method or method component or, indeed, custom-built method is better suited to their needs. Our study reveals a number of theoretical and practical issues in the current literature, such as an emphasis on the practices of commercial frameworks at the expense of their underlying principles, or indeed any of the custom method. A set of challenges and success factors associated with the use of large-scale agile methods are identified. The study also identifies a number of research gaps to be addressed across methods.

Estimating the cost and schedule of agile software projects is critical at an early phase to establish baseline budgets and schedules for the selection of competitive bidders. The challenge is that common agile sizing measures such as story points and user stories are not practical for early estimation as these are often reported after contract award in DoD. This study provides a set of effort and schedule estimation models for agile projects using a sizing measure that is available before proposal evaluation based on data from 36 DoD agile projects. The results suggest that initial software requirements, defined as the sum of functions and external interfaces, is an effective sizing measure for early estimation of effort and schedule of agile projects. The models accuracy improves when application domain groups and peak staff are added as inputs.

To reinforce competitiveness, companies must focus on competitive priorities including cost, quality, delivery, and flexibility. The competitiveness also depends on the adherence to environmental requirements and the ability of companies to survive unforeseen disruptions. Lean, agile, resilient, and green (LARG) paradigm is a hybrid supply chain paradigm, which can enhance competitiveness in today's complex markets. In this article, we propose a new conceptual decision-making model to evaluate LARG supply chain performance in medical equipment companies. In this regard, supply chain operations reference model attributes were utilized as performance evaluation criteria. Furthermore, the appropriate practices of LARG supply chain are selected through fuzzy Delphi method. Also, an extension of decision making trial and evaluation laboratory-based analytic network process method is proposed to uncover network relationships and obtain the weights for dimensions and elements. According to the results, the agile paradigm, responsiveness, and quick introduction of new products are determined as the most prioritized elements in their corresponding dimensions, which emphasize the importance of the customer satisfaction. Finally, the extended hesitant fuzzy linguistic VIKOR (Vlsekriterijumska Optimizacija I Kompromisno Resenje) is applied to rank LARG performance of Iranian needles and syringes companies via qualitative group decision-making process. The results of this study are conformed to conventional selection results of needles and syringes suppliers conducted by Iran's Ministry of Health.

Blockchains can be public, permissionless networks implementing novel cryptocurrency-based technology features or permissioned, interorganizational networks championed by industry consortia. Some ventures operationalize a hybrid of these two network types to enhance adoption of their blockchain platforms by broadening their base of stakeholders or facilitating interoperability between heterogeneous blockchains. In this article, we synthesize literature and industry writings to identify four hybrid blockchain architectures: hybrid blockchain approach, connected hybrid blockchain, interoperable blockchain architecture, and hard-forked blockchain for enterprise use. We then analyze these architectures along dimensions of semantic modeling support between private and public networks, data connectivity between networks, syntactic interoperability support between networks with heterogeneous codebases, governance model, and technical features. We find that hybrid blockchain ventures make trade-offs: support API's, tools, and customized development so that a codebase is useful for private and public networks or provide such support for interoperation between heterogeneous codebases. We then conduct a case study of an exemplar for a hybrid blockchain approach, the startup Insolar. We identify characteristics that have led Insolar to be idiosyncratically agile and effective in its blockchain development, which together with our architecture analysis may be timely and prescriptive as enterprises grow interested in addressing blockchain hybridity and interoperability.

As valuable assets of corporations, governments and not-for-profit organizations, brands have attracted considerable research attention. We know a lot about how brands create knowledge in their target consumers’ minds, which leads to an attitude towards or relationship with the brand that translates into a number of favorable outcomes. The resultant brand equity is often associated with improved performance of the organization in reaching its objectives such as increasing market value. We know less about the dynamic nature of brand equity and, in particular, how it may interact with turbulence in the external environment in which the brand competes, both positively and negatively. We examine three key dimensions of brand equity—brands’ access to their target markets, perceived differentiation, and level of brand engagement with their target consumers—that influence the effect environmental turbulence has on diminishing equity or providing future opportunities for brand equity growth. Borrowing from the strategy literature, we suggest ways in which agile and resilient firms can use brand equity to resist environmental turbulence, recover from any damage that may result from it, and reinvent themselves to leverage opportunities created by a radically altered external environment. We close with a set of propositions intended to guide managers in anticipating and responding to environmental turbulence and inform and shape future research in this area.

Are agile information systems development practices (AISDPs), such as pair programming or daily stand-ups, universally beneficial to developer well-being? Given that agile information systems development project success is only as good as its developers’ productiveness, taking care of developer well-being is of utmost importance to organizations. Using daily survey responses of 131 agile developers spread over two workweeks, we show that the daily use of AISDP is a double-edged sword rather than a silver bullet. Although AISDPs can be motivating and activate energy resources on some days, they can be disturbing and deplete energy on others—two stress responses with opposing effects on developer well-being. As a potential antidote to the detrimental effects of AISDP, we investigate the moderating role of information technology (IT) mindfulness, a dynamic trait that captures the mindful usage of IT. We find that IT mindfulness can serve as a facilitator of positive stress responses and as a buffer against negative stress responses. A key takeaway of this study is in finding ways to influence developers (via awareness programs, time-sensitive recovery interventions, or mindfulness practices) to increase the functional and decrease the dysfunctional stress responses from daily AISDP use.

Waste management leads to the demolition of waste conducted by recycling and landfilling. Deep learning and the Internet of things (IoT) confer an agile solution in classification and real-time data monitoring, respectively. This paper reflects a capable architecture of the waste management system based on deep learning and IoT. The proposed model renders an astute way to sort digestible and indigestible waste using a convolutional neural network (CNN), a popular deep learning paradigm. The scheme also introduces an architectural design of a smart trash bin that utilizes a microcontroller with multiple sensors. The proposed method employs IoT and Bluetooth connectivity for data monitoring. IoT enables control of real-time data from anywhere while Bluetooth aids short-range data monitoring through an android application. To examine the efficacy of the developed model, the accuracy of waste label classification, sensors data estimation, and system usability scale (SUS) are enumerated and interpreted. The classification accuracy of the proposed architecture based on the CNN model is 95.3125%, and the SUS score is 86%. However, this smart system will be adjustable to household activities with real-time waste monitoring.

In this interview Andreas Hinterhuber and Michael Nilles, CDIO of Henkel, discuss the game-changing opportunities that the digital transformation opens to companies that embed a digital core into their business models. Michael Nilles sees digital transformation as the Holy Grail: a force that is not easy to find, not easy to capture and that has the potential to dramatically improve the customer experience. In B2C, the Holy Grail for Henkel’s Beauty Care business is for instance the beauty tech ecosystem, a series of connected devices harnessing big data and augmented reality allowing to create meaningful, personalized and direct relationships with consumers. In B2B, the Holy Grail is Henkel’s digital twin along the digital thread. Henkel builds a digital twin along the entire value chain of the customer – starting with the initial customer request via deployment, until and after sales service – in order to sell outcomes to customers. In B2B the digital twin enables outcome-based servitization. Digital technologies are thus more than enabling technologies: digital technologies allow the creation of fundamentally new, disruptive business models. The digital transformation needs small, agile teams with end-to-end responsibility for project delivery, start-up mentality and customer obsession. Finally, key metrics of the digital transformation are digital efficiency/productivity, digital revenues and digital growth (net of cannibalization).

This paper follows a research project meant to focus on understanding how universities and public research organisations (PRO) collaborate with firms in order to innovate and develop products or services using the same technology, an invention called Controlled Radical Polymerisation (CRP). We say ‘meant to’ quite deliberately as this project was plagued with a range of data collection issues. We aim to give the reader a sense of the complications our research team faced as we share and highlight the issues we did not properly consider in the process of collecting our data, and the strategies we implemented to save the project and collect useful data. These issues included the benefits of the choice of a face-to-face methodology, using our own networks to recruit participants, the underestimated influence of secrecy when collaborating with industry on an innovation project, the value of having a “local champion” and having specific procedures in place for operational matters; but most of all the importance of being flexible and agile. We share the lessons we learned during this journey. Importantly, we seek to give some practical advice and a sense of the reality of data collection – a reality which is often smoothed over and written up as unproblematic in academic publications.

An edge-cloud collaborative intelligent (ECCI) platform is of great significance for the agile development and rapid deployment of ECCI applications, which are essential for realizing smart industry in the era of Industry 4.0. However, the existing platforms lack considering the high real-time latency demand of industrial operations, which severely hinders the development of smart industry and may even lead to severe industrial accidents. To effectively reduce the response latency of industrial applications, we propose an ECCI platform IndustEdge. It takes time-sensitive networking (TSN) as the deterministic transport for the link layer, and provides an extensible ECCI orchestration component to reduce the system level latency. Furthermore, IndustEdge has an ECCI algorithm library for different collaborative modes and provides the complete lifecycle management for ECCI applications. We implement platforms for both the real-world prototype and emulated-world emulation, and conduct two case studies to evaluate the effectiveness of IndustEdge.

Agile quadrotor flight in challenging environments has the potential to revolutionize shipping, transportation, and search and rescue applications. Nonlinear model predictive control (NMPC) has recently shown promising results for agile quadrotor control, but relies on highly accurate models for maximum performance. Hence, model uncertainties in the form of unmodeled complex aerodynamic effects, varying payloads and parameter mismatch will degrade overall system performance. In this paper, we propose L1-NMPC, a novel hybrid adaptive NMPC to learn model uncertainties online and immediately compensate for them, drastically improving performance over the non-adaptive baseline with minimal computational overhead. Our proposed architecture generalizes to many different environments from which we evaluate wind, unknown payloads, and highly agile flight conditions. The proposed method demonstrates immense flexibility and robustness, with more than 90% tracking error reduction over non-adaptive NMPC under large unknown disturbances and without any gain tuning. In addition, the same controller with identical gains can accurately fly highly agile racing trajectories exhibiting top speeds of 70 km/h, offering tracking performance improvements of around 50% relative to the non-adaptive NMPC baseline., 8 Pages, 6 figures, Accepted RAL 2021

Multi-domain networking slice orchestration is an essential technology for the programmable and cloud-native 5G network. However, existing research solutions are either based on the impractical assumption that operators will reveal all the private network information or time-consuming secure multi-party computation which is only applicable to limited computation scenarios. To provide agile and privacy-preserving end-to-end network slice orchestration services, this paper proposes NetChain, a multi-domain network slice orchestration architecture based on blockchain and trusted execution environment. Correspondingly, we design a novel consensus algorithm CoNet to ensure the strong security, scalability, and information consistency of NetChain. In addition, a bilateral evaluation mechanism based on game theory is proposed to guarantee fairness and Quality of Experience by suppressing the malicious behaviors during multi-domain network slice orchestration. Finally, the prototype of NetChain is implemented and evaluated on the Microsoft Azure Cloud with confidential computing. Experiment results show that NetChain has good performance and security under the premise of privacy-preserving.

We investigate a general solution based on reinforcement learning for the agile satellite scheduling problem. The core idea of this method is to determine a value function for evaluating the long-term benefit under a certain state by training from experiences, and then apply this value function to guide decisions in unknown situations. First, the process of agile satellite scheduling is modeled as a finite Markov decision process with continuous state space and discrete action space. Two subproblems of the agile Earth observation satellite scheduling problem, i.e., the sequencing problem and the timing problem are solved by the part of the agent and the environment in the model, respectively. A satisfactory solution of the timing problem can be quickly produced by a constructive heuristic algorithm. The objective function of this problem is to maximize the total reward of the entire scheduling process. Based on the above design, we demonstrate that Q-network has advantages in fitting the long-term benefit of such problems. After that, we train the Q-network by Q-learning. The experimental results show that the trained Q-network performs efficiently to cope with unknown data, and can generate high total profit in a short time. The method has good scalability and can be applied to different types of satellite scheduling problems by customizing only the constraints checking process and reward signals.

Self-selection–based division of labor has gained visibility through its role in varied organizational contexts such as nonhierarchical firms, agile teams, and project-based organizations. Yet, we know relatively little about the precise conditions under which it can outperform the traditional allocation of work to workers by managers. We develop a computational agent-based model that conceives of division of labor as a matching process between workers’ skills and tasks. This allows us to examine in detail when and why different approaches to division of labor may enjoy a relative advantage. We find a specific confluence of conditions under which self-selection has an advantage over traditional staffing practices arising from matching: when employees are very skilled but at only a narrow range of tasks, the task structure is decomposable, and employee availability is unforeseeable. Absent these conditions, self-selection must rely on the benefits of enhanced motivation or better matching based on worker’s private information about skills, to dominate more traditional allocation processes. These boundary conditions are noteworthy both for those who study as well as for those who wish to implement forms of organizing based on self-selection.

The traditional paradigm for pharmaceutical manufacturing is focused primarily upon centralized facilities that enable mass production and distribution. While this system reliably maintains high product quality and reproducibility, its rigidity imposes limitations upon new manufacturing innovations that could improve efficiency and support supply chain resiliency. Agile manufacturing methodologies, which leverage flexibility through portability and decentralization, allow manufacturers to respond to patient needs on demand and present a potential solution to enable timely access to critical medicines. Agile approaches are particularly applicable to the production of small-batch, personalized therapies, which must be customized for each individual patient close to the point-of-care. However, despite significant progress in the advancement of agile-enabling technologies across several different industries, there are substantial global regulatory challenges that encumber the adoption of agile manufacturing techniques in the pharmaceutical industry. This review provides an overview of regulatory barriers as well as emerging opportunities to facilitate the use of agile manufacturing for the production of pharmaceutical products. Future-oriented approaches for incorporating agile methodologies within the global regulatory framework are also proposed. Collaboration between regulators and manufacturers to cohesively navigate the regulatory waters is ultimately needed to best serve patients in the rapidly-changing healthcare environment.

Background aims The novelty of cell and gene therapies (CGTs) has introduced unique supply chain challenges and considerations not seen by chemically synthesized (small-molecule) drugs. These complexities increase during the clinical phases, where drug safety and efficacy milestones are still underdeveloped. For example, for autologous therapies such as chimeric antigen receptor T-cell therapies, in which the treatment is developed from the patient's own cells, supply chain management plays an integral role in chemistry, manufacturing and control processes. Supply chain management requires proactive planning because of the strict cold chain requirements and time sensitivity of CGTs. This research examines strategies and responses to challenges experienced by industry stakeholders (e.g., sponsors and manufacturers) during the implementation phases of clinical supply chain management. This research further evaluates the adequacy of the current regulatory framework for distribution and supply chain management of CGTs in the US. Methods A survey methodology was used to query subject matter experts from the biopharmaceutical industry who were familiar with the clinical supply management of CGTs in the US. The survey instrument was developed using an implementation framework and disseminated electronically to mid- and senior-level subject matter experts who had experience with clinical trials, supply chain management and CGTs. Results A total of 128 respondents accessed the survey, and 105 respondents answered at least one question. Seventy-five respondents completed the survey. Results showed that a lack of harmonization in regulations across the supply chain, limited resources, challenges with vendor management, high costs and complexities in the supply chain due to product specificity and customization proved to be impediments for the industry. In addition, the coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic had a significant impact on supply chain implementation. The results revealed that less than half of the respondents had business continuity plans in place. These challenges increased for smaller and mid-size organizations. Thirty percent of small and mid-size organizations were less prepared to scale up than larger companies. Conclusions Suggestions from industry stakeholders were to adopt and enforce Good Distribution Practices in the US (81%), pre-plan distribution strategies with internal and external stakeholders along the supply chain and develop agile systems and robust processes end to end. Hurdles in scaling up and scaling out from the clinical to commercial phases for time- and temperature-sensitive CGT products make it difficult to predict the supply chain's long-term feasibility. Although there are initiatives to improve these impediments, such as improving industry partnerships and creating global CGT transportation standards, there are still regulatory knowledge gaps present for CGTs. Therefore, it is essential to establish a baseline and foundation for CGT supply chains extending beyond the loading dock.

Several large organizations underwent agile transformation processes over the past few years, despite limited theory and empirical research on agile working. The present study draws from the taskwork–teamwork distinction and the proactivity literature to develop a new multilevel model of agile working. We tested this model in a sample of 114 teams ( N = 476 individuals) undergoing an agile transformation at a large German transport and logistics organization. Teams at the end of the agile transformation scored significantly higher on agile work practices, proactivity norms, and team performance than teams at the beginning of the transformation. Results of multigroup structural equation modeling indicated that agile taskwork related indirectly to team performance through a positive relationship with proactivity norms. The positive relationship of agile teamwork with team performance was not mediated by proactivity norms, unlike hypothesized. Finally, we found that agile taskwork increased the likelihood that individual employees benefited from engaging in proactive behavior (specifically, employee intrapreneurship) in terms of in-role performance (i.e., cross-level interaction). This was presumably because of the favorable proactivity norms of teams practicing agile taskwork (i.e., mediated moderation). We discuss the implications of our findings for the literature on proactive behavior in teams.

The research focuses on the problem of acceptability of applicants with the minimal level of the Unified State Exam (the USE) to teacher training programs, and coinage of language teachers with under-developed language competency, the latter being fated to turn insufficient for preparing school students for the USE. In the article the author answers the following two research questions: what level of language competency should be demonstrated by a teacher who works in a Russian regular secondary school; what the initial level of language mastery of applicants of teacher training programmes, measured with the USE and demonstrated with its results, would be adequate for them to be academically and linguistically agile for passing the exam which is known as the Certificate in Advanced English (CAE). The methods of the research included the content analysis of official documents regulating the requirements towards teacher competency and examination procedures and assessment; longitudinal observations on language competency development (330 students were observed throughout six years); comparative analysis of examination results. The outcomes of this research may be of high value to teacher training institutions in terms of the determination of categories of programme applicants who have stronger or weaker chances to graduate as competent (job market relevant) teachers.

This paper provides practical insights into the success criteria in agile projects in the Norwegian software industry. We conducted 32 interviews with practitioners working with agile projects. The findings revealed two fundamental differences that distinguish the perception of success in agile projects from that in projects that are based on the waterfall approach. Firstly, the evaluation is carried out on a regular basis after each increment. This regular and continuous measurement of success contributes several advantages, including greater commitment and involvement from the customer and a higher level of mutual trust between the supplier and the customer; and thus leads to better knowledge sharing and reduced task uncertainty. The reduction of task uncertainty provides more predictability about the direction of the project and better grounds for change control; not least, it allows room to consider multiple and subjective assessments by various stakeholders. Secondly, there is a stronger emphasis on customer satisfaction. Customer satisfaction is measured in terms of how quickly the customer obtains value from the project. The continuous assessment of success at the end of each iteration also has a significant, positive impact on the customer’s evaluation of the project outcome.

Agile development methods are widely used among business enterprises. Since the introduction of the Agile Manifesto in 2001, several agile methods have been implemented, first in single-team set-ups and later in larger multi-team set-ups for complex Information Technology (IT) system development. However, the adoption of agile methods has been slow in the public sector. This is also reflected in the academic literature, as there are only a few studies discussing agile adoption in public organizations. This paper contributes to research on the use of agile practices specifically in the context of public organizations, and sheds light on the challenges a public organization may face while adopting these practices. The aim of this paper is to identify and categorize the challenges that may hinder efficient adoption and use of agile methods in public IT projects that include private software vendors. This research is based on a case study of a large governmental office. As a result, this paper presents several categories of identified challenges, the root causes of these challenges, and a discussion of the characteristics of these challenges for the public sector.

Contribution: This article presents agile software engineers stick together (ASEST+), an improved version of a framework called ASEST that aims to develop team cohesion, leading to better team learning and software engineering student teams. Background: Effective teamwork is crucial for agile software development's success and is, therefore, a key topic of current software engineering education. In the previous work, a preliminary proposal for ASEST+ was presented. Here, an improved version, more suitable for agile practice education and considering cohesion antecedents, is described. Intended Outcome: A teaching-learning framework to support teamwork in agile software education. Application Design: ASEST+ is built around Scrum teams and combines learning strategies to train students in collaborative and technical agile practices. ASEST+ establishes policies for role allocation and team rule agreements to regulate communication and address conflict management agile practices. ASEST+ addresses personality traits, conflict resolution, and task interdependence as the antecedents identified as the most important. Findings: A quasiexperiment showed that the use of ASEST+ significantly increases the students' positive perceptions on team cohesion, team performance, and team learning compared with the control group.

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\ud 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\ud 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\ud 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.

In the recent years, the advances in mobile technology have brought an exorbitant change in daily lifestyle of individuals. Smartphones/mobile devices are rampant in all aspects of human life. This has led to an extreme demand for developing software that runs on mobile devices. The developers have to keep up with this high demand and deliver high-quality app on time and within budget. For this, estimation of development and testing of apps play a pivotal role. In this paper, a Systematic Literature Review (SLR) is conducted to highlight development and testing estimation process for software/application. The goal of the present literature survey is to identify and compare existing test estimation techniques for traditional software (desktop/laptop) and for mobile software/application. The characteristics that make mobile software/application different from traditional software are identified in this literature survey. Further, the trend for developing the software is towards agile, thus this study also presents and compares estimation techniques used in agile software development for mobile applications. The analysis of literature review suggests filling a research gap to present formal models for estimating mobile application considering specific characteristics of mobile software.

How to adapt and still get the full potential of roadmapping to the context of Digital Entrepreneurship (DE)? To answer this question and design an agile roadmapping approach to support highly incremental planning done by startups, this article unfolded through a three-phase action research program that lasted 40 months and involved three startups and two startup accelerators. Typically, startups are not complex organizations but operate in turbulent markets—requiring constant changes in strategy, organization, and product decisions. Such an environment is notably adherent to the assumptions of agile methods, but not so to roadmapping, an approach typically tuned for larger companies. Thus, the DE context is explored to adapt the roadmapping approach to agile principles aiming at offering a nimble, living, and integrated process that can enhance business, product, and organizational decisions in startups. Finally, the resulting method helps to support 1) strategic to operational management by continuous planning of small teams dealing with constant changes; 2) better communication between investors, technical, and business members; 3) better absorption of roadmapping and its benefits by teams already proficient in agile approaches, and 4) better balance between plan and action in startups.

The implementation of paying zakat is obligatory for every Muslim. Generally, there are problems that are lacking in the recording of zakat management. Currently, many still use the manual method which is of course very risky for loss and damage to the recording of zakat. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to design a website that facilitates the payment and recording of zakat. With this research, it is expected to ease the mosque management to manage zakat to be more efficient. In this study applying the Agile SDLC model, this study has four stages, namely, timebox planning, iteration, demonstration, and retrospective meeting. Based on the research that has been done, namely the Implementation of Agile Methods on a Website-Based Zakat Management System with the Laravel Framework at the Al-Ijabah Mosque Amil Zakat Agency, the researcher concludes that the system built has met the administrative needs to input data such as Muzakki data (zakat givers). , Mustahiq data (zakat recipients), daily transaction reports. With the construction of this system, zakat transaction data can be stored in the database. So that zakat transaction data is not easily lost/damaged.

Crisis Management is a critical and challenging function across various forms of government. Crisis situations hardly give much time to the individuals and organizations for preparation. Accordingly, it is more likely that an agile workforce will better manage crisis in government organizations. This study explores the influence of workforce agility, on crisis management by government departments and examines the probable role of higher administrative support, and job characteristics over crisis management. Data were collected through a questionnaire survey from 263 government administrative officers of Odisha, India. Structural Equation Modelling was used to analyse the data with the help of AMOS. The results indicate that workforce agility, higher administrative support, and enriched job characteristics contribute towards better crisis management. Furthermore, higher administrative support, and enriched job characteristics were found to be antecedents of workforce agility and influence crisis management through the mediator workforce agility. The findings of this study will be helpful for government agencies and departments in creating an agile workforce for effective management of crisis.

Healthcare is one of the fastest growing sectors in India. To mitigate the challenges of COVID-19, the small healthcare start-ups have changed the pave for rethinking their existing SCM practices by implementing sustainable Supply Chain Management (SCM) practices, introducing the awareness and advantages of adapting reverse innovation and provide the same to global SCM giants. This strategic approach has helped the manufacturers to optimize their network agile supply chain to provide a value based healthcare products or services to various supply chain partners. Thus in this paper we have made an attempt to propose a conceptual framework of the impact of the three interventions in manufacturing namely sustainable SCM practices, implementing Reverse innovation at plant level and to figure out the swiftness of using agile supply chain during the various pandemic waves. Data were collected using a structured questionnaire from 56 respondents which include the middle level Professionals or the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) in start-ups located in the clusters of Tamil Nadu. The data was analyzed using SPSS 19.0 and Smart-PLS software. The findings have concluded that the practices of sustainable SCM, structuring supplier parners using reverse innovation practices along with network agile SCM thriving the end customer in the supply chain led to offer value based health care products or services as resulted in analysis.

In large-scale industrial applications, goods must be continuously transported between locations, which in the absence of conveyor systems is by a fleet of individual vehicles. This article introduces flow-achieving scheduling tree (FAST), an online dispatching algorithm that allows vehicles to efficiently operate as a team to maximize the system's throughput while meeting a production schedule. A high-performance model is developed for high-fidelity prediction of vehicle interactions and system performance. It is subsequently optimized using a self-tuning variant of Monte Carlo tree search (MCTS) to make agile dispatch decisions in real time. The method is validated using an open-cut mine site and is shown to outperform a commonly used algorithm in this domain. Note to Practitioners - This article was motivated by the problem of dispatching autonomous haul trucks on open-cut mine sites. The proposed method is suited to any industrial transportation system where a continuous stream of goods must be efficiently transported between the load and unload stations by a potentially heterogeneous fleet of automated vehicles. The system makes decisions in real time while reacting to performance variations and disturbances by using a receding horizon approach. Off-the-shelf software commonly used in this domain is based on heuristics with limited ability to optimize, leading to myopic decision making without taking vehicle interactions into account. Here, flow-achieving scheduling tree (FAST) overcomes this by optimizing over possible schedules and thereby implicitly accounting for knock-on effects. Future work will incorporate additional constraints into the optimization process and validate FAST in other industrial domains.

Proponents of the agile approach to project management describe this new way of working as more efficient, more productive, liberating, and one in which the team has greater control. We examine the experience of implementing agile practices within project management through nine agile teams in the financial services sector. Using grounded theory analysis of data from semi-structured interviews, several thematic categories emerge including accountability, team-based perceptions of their place in the organization, human factors in agile teams, and technical factors with the implementation of agile practice. As a result of these findings, we propose a framework describing how IT project teams experience accountability arrangements when transitioning into agile practices. The accountability experience is a result of the fit between the teams’ perception of how they are viewed as agile teams in their organizations, their experience of technical practices of agile implementation, and their experience of interaction and exchanges in their teams. We conclude with a call towards recognizing the dissonance between different expectations of accountability and a call for further empirical research into this phenomenon.

Sustainability in the post pandemic era is very challenging. Every business entity including small medium enterprises (SMEs) needs a more valuable strategy to adapt to dramatic changes, such as strengthening digitization to improve SME performance. The industrial revolution 4.0 confirms digitalization as a strategic plan for SMEs in realizing a digital-based work culture. Digital skills are one of the skills to maximize the use of information and communication technology (ICT) in business. As an illustration, using social media to build brand reputation, promote and interact with customers. We also believe that digitalization can make SMEs more agile, as they are more adaptive to all changes and pressures from the external environment. This article aims to describe and analyze models for improving the performance of SMEs through agility, social media, and digitalization-based strategic planning. Data were collected from 239 SMEs in creative industry. The data were analyzed using SmartPLS analysis. The results showed that digital skills can increase the use of ICT, social media engagement, and organizational agility in SMEs. This article provides practical insights for SMEs to be more sustainable and competitive in the future.

Life in the current era of technology is almost every line connected to the internet, as well as when doing business. Website is a container used for business development and improvement. One form of this is to create an attractive website display as a strategy to increase product quality and quantity. This research aims to; 1) The creation of a marketing information system facility with the application of CRM using the web-based React.JS framework as the main purpose of the research, and 2) Understanding and describing the benefits of implementing a Marketing Information System with CRM Applications using the web-based React.JS framework as a marketing strategy to improve quality and product quantity. To implement this research, the researcher uses the Agile method. A website-based marketing system with the implementation of Customer Relationship Management (CRM) at Reswara Digital printing produces structured and detailed data storage and the delivery of product information to consumers can be carried out optimally.

The development of Information Technology (IT) is growing very rapidly. The rapid development of IT makes internet technology the main communication tool that is in great demand by the public. With the internet technology will facilitate and speed up the search for information, information is very important in supporting the course of a company to achieve the desired goals. Online transactions are a necessity that answers the problems that arise today. In online transactions, a person can freely make purchases, sales and find things he wants to do without having to meet with buyers or sellers through laptops, computer devices, or smartphones. For this reason, the authors design a web-based musical instrument sales system so that people can easily get information about selling musical instruments online quickly and precisely both regarding products, profiles, prices, and also how to shop at online stores and can directly make sales transactions. The author makes the design of this information system using UML (Unified Modeling Language), the Waterfall method, and Agile the author implements to create a website-based E-commerce application. As a result, users can shop and view information about musical instruments.

The linear frequency‐modulated frequency agile radar (FAR) can be used for synthesizing high‐range‐resolution profiles (HRRP), and also has excellent electronic counter‐countermeasures performance. Similar to the Newtonalized orthogonal matching pursuit (NOMP) for line spectral estimation problem, the NOMP for the FAR radar termed as NOMP‐FAR is designed to process each coarse range bin to extract the HRRP and velocities of multiple targets, including the guide for determining the oversampling factor and the stopping criterion. In addition, it is shown that the target will cause false alarm in the nearby coarse range bins, and a post‐processing algorithm is proposed to suppress the ghost targets. Numerical simulations are conducted to demonstrate the effectiveness of NOMP‐FAR.

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.

We discuss the extent to which Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI) v2.0 addresses Agile alignment challenges. We identify the two most significant CMMI v2.0 artifacts for integration, and highlight important issues that organizations need to tackle.

The concept of “solution spaces” is used to explore the potential future of forestry under climate change for different types of forestry management structures. We base the analysis in New Zealand, where forestry plays an increasingly critical role in the nation’s climate policy, but the concept could be applied to any region. Understanding solution spaces and the ways in which they can be influenced at different levels of ownership is a critical step towards effective climate change adaptation. Building on the base of existing climate projections, scenarios, and economic and social science literature, we form an assessment of the capacity of each forest owner typology to influence their solution spaces into the future. Different management structures have strengths in different areas – while industrial forest managers may be able to utilise emerging technologies better than their smaller scale counterparts for example, they may be less agile and flexible. The sector as a whole may benefit from working collectively to draw on the respective strengths of each typology. Critically, planning now to expand the space into the future will be essential.

In an environment with digital disruptions, retailers must adopt a customer-centric approach to survive and compete effectively. Retailers need to be agile and forward-looking in adopting the relevant analytics and performance metrics to bring a customer-centric approach across upstream and downstream activities in the retail value chain. However, retailers in emerging markets (EMs) need clarity on the specific analytics and performance metrics in the value chain that will enable them to transition from their current product-centric state to the desired customer-centric state. Employing a triangulation approach (i.e., literature review, marketplace evidence, and managerial interviews) in the fragmented retail landscape of EMs, this study provides an organizing framework that explains: (i) the need for a customer-centric approach across the retail value chain, (ii) the specific performance metrics that need to be adopted across upstream and downstream activities in the retail value chain to enable EM retailers to achieve their desired customer-centric state, and (iii) the role of analytics in providing insights to achieve these performance metrics and improving monetary and non-monetary firm performance outcomes. We also provide firm-specific and macro-level conditions that can influence the EM retailers’ adoption of relevant analytics and explain the different paths retail formats can follow to adopt analytics. We present a strategy matrix that enables retail managers to identify the appropriate analytics to be adopted at different retail value chain stages to achieve desired performance metrics. We also highlight future research opportunities in retailing in EMs.

Over the last 3 decades, researchers have attempted to shed light into the requirements traceability problem by introducing tracing tools, techniques, and methods with the vision of achieving ubiquitous traceability. Despite the technological advances, requirements traceability remains problematic for researchers and practitioners. This study aims to identify and investigate the main challenges in implementing (semi‐)automated requirements traceability, as reported in the recent literature. A systematic literature review was carried out based on the guidelines for systematic literature reviews in software engineering, proposed by Kitchenham. We retrieved 4530 studies by searching five major bibliographic databases and selected 70 primary studies. These studies were analysed and classified according to the challenges they present and/or address. Twenty‐one challenges were identified and were classified into five categories. Findings reveal that the most frequent challenges are technological challenges, in particular, low accuracy of traceability recovery methods. Findings also suggest that future research efforts should be devoted to the human facet of tracing, to explore traceability practices in organisational settings, and to develop traceability approaches that support agile and DevOps practices. Finally, it is recommended that researchers leverage blockchain technology as a suitable technical solution to ensure the trustworthiness of traceability information in interorganisational software projects.