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Developing the empathy of a technical team for target users has been a practice to innovate solutions centered on the experience they can provide to their users. However, there are few studies focused on the impact of empathy practices on solution design. In order to contribute to the study of the art regarding the construction of empathy in technical teams to improve the user experience quality in developing technical solutions, this research analyzes the effectiveness of building empathy in technical teams in a case study of the electricity sector, which was based on a process concerning validations with users. The results showed that, in the perception of a group of technicians, there was an improvement in the quality of empathy for their target users and had an impact on the team's engagement to carry out human-computer interaction practices and, consequently, on the quality of use of the developed solution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many factors have a significant impact on producing high-quality software products. Development team members are among the most important factors. Paying attention to the quality from this perspective will be a good innovation in the software development industry. Given that team members play a very important role in software products, this study tries to focus specifically on team characteristics in software product quality and provide a qualitative model based on this. The required data were collected through observations and interviews with project managers and development team members in several companies under study. Then, data were analyzed through hierarchical analysis. According to the results, the use of this model led to the improvement of the software development process so that the team members were satisfied with it. Also, time management was improved, and the customer expressed his satisfaction with the use of this model. Finally, data analysis showed that this model may lead to faster product delivery. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Packaging is regarded as a major contributor to the environmental impact of products and supply chains. This is largely infused by the role of packaging in the use and post-use stages of a life cycle, which leads to packaging being regarded as superfluous or excessive. Simultaneously, within the current (product-packaging) development landscape, an erosion of the connotation of 'sustainable development' is discerned, combatting the inherent complexities of product-packaging development. In addition, there is a mismatch between sustainability desires (the strategic level) and materializations of it (the operational level) in industry, and a lack of academic or legislative solutions to this. These issues lead to product-packaging development processes in which sustainability-related considerations are subordinate to other decision-making criteria, and which therefore yield suboptimal solutions. The main contribution of this article is the proposition of a reference model as an instrument aiming at streamlining the integration of sustainability-related considerations in decision-making in product-packaging development. This model aims for the tenable integration of such considerations by recognizing the complexity of sustainable development and multiple levels of sustainability. With this, the reference model simultaneously aims to address key characteristics of packaging development cycles in daily practice and the intertwinement of life cycles of product and packaging in the design and engineering domain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A major programme is a combination of projects that together deliver a defined outcome, for example urban regeneration, major infrastructure investment, or an urban extension. It takes time and it needs a good plan. But circumstances change over time. That same good plan must have in place the flexibility to respond to change. The intention of this paper is to provide a practitioner’s reflection on plans for major programmes. It explores the theme of effectively setting and maintaining an authentic vision, drawing on learning from engineering and business sectors and considering experiences of the Adamstown Strategic Planning Zone (SPZ) in the Republic of Ireland. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study aims to investigate the presence of the relative age effect (RAE) in (semi-)professional cycling, especially within selecting cyclists for Continental (CT) development teams. Data were collected from (PCS). Cyclists out of the top-25 countries of the PCS ranking that were part of a CT team between 2005 and 2016 and born between January 1986 and December 1997 were included (n = 2854). Distributions of cyclists in different birth quarters (Q1, Q2, Q3 and Q4) as well as for different starting years at CT level (U23year1, U23year2, U23year3 and U23year4) and reaching professional level or not were investigated using the Chi-square goodness-of-fit test. A RAE was found for cyclists that did not reach professional level, which can be explained by cyclists starting at CT level U23year1 and U23year2 (19 and 20 years old). Meaning that for cyclists at 19 and 20 years old, there is a selection bias towards relatively older (Q1) cyclists at the expense of relatively younger (Q4) cyclists. Within the cyclists that reached professional level, no RAE was found, indicating that the RAE diminishes at professional level. This study provides insight into possible selection errors while selecting cyclists for CT development teams. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Developing the empathy of a technical team for target users has been a practice to innovate solutions centered on the experience they can provide to their users. However, there are few studies focused on the impact of empathy practices on solution design. In order to contribute to the study of the art regarding the construction of empathy in technical teams to improve the user experience quality in developing technical solutions, this research analyzes the effectiveness of building empathy in technical teams in a case study of the electricity sector, which was based on a process concerning validations with users. The results showed that, in the perception of a group of technicians, there was an improvement in the quality of empathy for their target users and had an impact on the team’s engagement to carry out human-computer interaction practices and, consequently, on the quality of use of the developed solution.

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. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Requirements communication is essential in software development projects since customer needs must be communicated to the development team clearly and effectively. Although the use case (UC) specifications are used to communicate requirements in detail, developers do not always follow them. This study presents an empirical study carried out to understand the reasons why developers do not follow UC specifications and their difficulties using UC specifications in generating prototypes. Results show that the four reasons why developers fail to follow UC specifications are the existence of specification errors, ambiguous information, lack of detailed specification, or incomplete information, and due to improvement suggestions. Also, the specification defects types that impacted prototypes creation the most were an omission, ambiguity, and incorrect fact. The authors noted that 6 out of 25 (24%) defects in the UC specifications caused discrepancies in prototypes, 12 (48%) were corrected during the prototypes creation, and 7 (28%) were not propagated to the prototypes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]