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Prior work on leadership in information systems development (ISD) teams has assumed that all developers are treated equally by their team leader and ignored the possibility that differentiated leader-member exchange (LMX) may be an important instrument for team leaders to influence self-organizing, agile ISD teams. We conducted a concurrent mixed methods inquiry to understand how LMX differentiation is associated with developer satisfaction in agile ISD teams and through which team processes agile ISD teams address LMX differentiation. We ran a multilevel, multistage survey of 1,894 software developers in 217 teams and an embedded case study of five ISD teams drawing on qualitative data from 40 interviews of developers and team leaders. Two focus groups (one with 10 developers and one with 10 team leaders) helped to substantiate the meta-inferences from the quantitative and qualitative studies. The results showed that LMX differentiation was positively associated with developer satisfaction, especially in teams with high-quality team-member exchange (TMX). We identify three team processes (i.e., collectivization of resources, visible appreciation of privileges, and freeing up leader capacities) that are enacted through agile ISD practices and allow ISD teams to leverage benefits from LMX differentiation for all their members. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Agile Software Development (ASD) confronts the challenge of effectively measurement and predicting the capabilities of software engineers and teams to improve individual performance, team efficiency, and project success. This study delves into exploring and identifying gaps and research prospects in assessing and predicting human capabilities within ASD. Thus, we conducted a Systematic Literature Review, building upon a prior review from 2001 to 2016 by different authors. To encompass primary studies published after 2016, we extended to 2022. Further, our study extends the scope of the previous SLR with a new research question to identify key attributes in publications focused on agile team formation. Our findings disclosed new attributes for evaluating and predicting the capabilities of professionals engaged in ASD, such as Openness to Creativity and Agile Adaptation. These attributes boost individual performance, contribute to ameliorated team productivity, and facilitate the precise composition of teams. Moreover, this study expands our prior study, providing more details on capability identification and research design, extends the analysis of attributes and prediction models, provides a more granular discussion of discoveries and comparisons with prior review, and more indepth discussion about practical implications and thoroughly examines study validity. We observed that technical metrics were more prevalent than social and innovative aspects. Also, the study identified the prediction of agile capabilities as an emerging research domain necessitating further scrutiny due to the scarcity of existing models. The majority of studies (78%) supplied detailed metric descriptions, facilitating the evolution of the capabilities repository and supporting future investigations in this domain. Ultimately, these findings can aid agile practitioners in formulating team composition decisions based on individuals’ and teams’ appraised and foreseen abilities.

There have been success stories reported regarding the adoption of agile software development methods in the industry. There also exist observations on their limitations. One of these limitations is scalability since agile methods like Scrum were originally designed for small software teams. Scalable agile frameworks were introduced to address this limitation. We conducted an industrial case study on the adoption of such a framework, called Nexus. Our study involves quantitative and qualitative evaluation based on observations within a product development organization over a period of 12 months. Scrum is used for the development of a product during the first 6 months of this period. Nexus is used in the remaining 6 months. Data are collected throughout the whole period for measuring productivity, quality, and team member motivation. Results suggest a significant increase in productivity and product quality after switching to Nexus. Team motivation was slightly improved as well. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Agile software development has reached wide adoption in various countries including Turkey, even though from which its original cultural backgrounds differ. In Turkey, many organizations have started to adopt Agile approaches more and more in their software development processes. This interest in the country's software development is parallel to what the academic literature on Agile in the country exhibits. However, despite the prevalence of Agile in Turkey, there is a lack of sufficient secondary research and comprehensive review on Agile in Turkey, which poses a significant necessity for further investigation. Considering this gap, we performed a quantitative bibliometric analysis of Agile software development publications produced by Turkish organizations in a holistic and broad approach both for scholars and practitioners. We provide a summary of relevant academic studies that emerged in Agile research in Turkey by focusing on many aspects including bibliometric properties of papers, researchers, affiliations, venues, and thematic contents that are separated into 15 sub‐research questions. After delivering results based on the questions, we discuss the results and findings of our study and present implications regarding the findings. The main contributions of our work are twofold. First, the paper may help the readers to have a quick idea, understand the subject, and gain insight from a large volume of scientific data. Second, the paper can help readers to use these analyses to form future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Enterprise architecture is a growing trend that aims to help deal with the complexity of socio‐technical systems such as human organizations, as well as their information technology and systems areas. Nevertheless, the contribution of enterprise architecture to the field of software engineering remains unclear. The purpose of this systematic literature review is to see how enterprise architecture is used in software development and maintenance practice. To this end, we first carried out a search in the SCOPUS database and then organized the papers according to the Software Engineering Body of Knowledge to determine what areas of software engineering are covered by each research study. To understand how enterprise architecture is used, we established a classification based on ISO 42010 and TOGAF. From the systematic literature review, we noticed that the early stages of development are the most impacted by the enterprise architecture. On the other hand, we observed that enterprise architecture is of assistance in the areas of engineering management, engineering processes, and engineering models and methods; these tasks are carried out by teams or managers using different, often agile, development methods or standards. In turn, we found that the most common categories are architecture descriptions; these are often used to facilitate communication and information‐sharing between different stakeholders, in addition to frameworks, which will help to establish common practices in the organization related to the joint use of enterprise architecture and software development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The practices of lean and agile methods are important to manage and guide projects development in different situations. However, selecting the appropriate practices of lean and agile methods is a daunting task, owing to the availability of hundreds of practices. This wide variety of available practices bewilders potential users, in terms of the best practices that may yield satisfactory solution when applied to the project development. Lean and agile practices selection model is necessary to guide both academic and industrial experts to choose the appropriate practices for a specific project development. Thus, this study aimed to develop lean and agile practices selection (LAPS) model that presents a clear picture of how developers can use LAPS model to select and adopt different practices from various lean and agile methods. Qualitative research method (e.g., grounded theory) was used to interview 18 software developers across 13 countries. The validated qualitative analysis results showed that the proposed LAPS model consists of two main components, which are (1) lean and agile practices that include 41 best practices related to lean and agile methods and (2) factors that affect the process of lean and agile practices selection including five main factors and 17 subfactors associated with the five main factors. The two case studies conducted assured the validity and applicability of the lean and agile practices selection model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Software Development based on Scrum Agile in a distributed development environment plays a pivotal role in the contemporary software industry by facilitating software development across geographic boundaries. However, in the past different frameworks utilized to address the challenges like communication and collaboration in scrum agile distributed software development (SADSD) were notably inadequate in transparency, security, traceability, geographically dispersed location work agreements, geographically dispersed teamwork effectiveness, and trust. These deficiencies frequently resulted in delays in software development and deployment, customer dissatisfaction, canceled agreements, project failures, and disputes over payments between customers and development teams. To address these challenges of SADSD, this paper proposes a new framework called ChainAgile, which leverages blockchain technology. ChainAgile employs a private Ethereum blockchain to facilitate the execution of smart contracts. These smart contracts cover a range of functions, including acceptance testing, secure payments, requirement verification, task prioritization, sprint backlog, user story design and development and payments with the automated distribution of payments via digital wallets to development teams. Moreover, in the ChainAgile framework, smart contracts also play a pivotal role in automatically imposing penalties on customers for making late payments or for no payments and penalties on developers for completing the tasks that exceed their deadlines. Furthermore, ChainAgile effectively addresses the scalability limitations intrinsic in blockchain technology by incorporating the Interplanetary File System (IPFS) is used for storage solutions as an off-chain mechanism. The experimental results conclusively show that this innovative approach substantially improves transparency, traceability, coordination, communication, security, and trust for both customers and developers engaged in scrum agile distributed software development (SADSD). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The pace of technological advancements has been rapidly increasing in recent years, with the advent of artificial intelligence, virtual/augmented reality, and other emerging technologies fundamentally changing the way human beings work. The adoption and integration of these advanced technologies necessitate teams with diverse disciplinary expertise, to help teams remain agile in an ever-evolving technological landscape. Significant disciplinary diversity amongst teams, however, can be detrimental to team communication and performance. Additionally, accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic, the adoption and use of technologies that enable design teams to collaborate across significant geographical distances have become the norm in today's work environments, further complicating communication and performance issues. Little is known about the way in which technology-mediated communication affects the collaborative processes of design. As a first step toward filling this gap, the current work explores the fundamental ways experts from distinct disciplinary backgrounds collaborate in virtual design environments. Specifically, we explore the conversational dynamics between experts from two complementary yet distinct fields: non-destructive evaluation (NDE) and design for additive manufacturing (DFAM). Using Markov modeling, the study identified distinct communicative patterns that emerged during collaborative design efforts. Our findings suggest that traditional assumptions regarding communication patterns and design dynamics may not be applicable to expert design teams working in virtual environments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Self-supervised learning (SSL) is a potential deep learning (DL) technique that uses massive volumes of unlabeled data to train neural networks. SSL techniques have evolved in response to the poor classification performance of conventional and even modern machine learning (ML) and DL models of enormous unlabeled data produced periodically in different disciplines. However, the literature does not fully address SSL's practicalities and workabilities necessary for industrial engineering and medicine. Accordingly, this thorough review is administered to identify these prominent possibilities for prediction, focusing on industrial and medical fields. This extensive survey, with its pivotal outcomes, could support industrial engineers and medical personnel in efficiently predicting machinery faults and patients' ailments without referring to traditional numerical models that require massive computational budgets, time, storage, and effort for data annotation. Additionally, the review's numerous addressed ideas could encourage industry and healthcare actors to take SSL principles into an agile application to achieve precise maintenance prognostics and illness diagnosis with remarkable levels of accuracy and feasibility, simulating functional human thinking and cognition without compromising prediction efficacy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scrum is an important and essential technique for developing software. Scrum framework is a project management technique that can emphasize software development teamwork. If you are starting, consider scrum as a method for accomplishing tasks as a team in manageable chunks simultaneously, with ongoing experimentation and feedback loops to learn and improve as you go. Scrum enables individuals and groups to collaboratively and gradually generate value. Being an agile framework, scrum gives people and teams the perfect structure to fit into their workflows while still including the best practices to cater to their requirements. There are some important considerations for security in the agile software development process such as threat modeling, secure coding practices, continuous security testing, authentication, and authorization. In this work, we reviewed various scrum developing techniques to find out the research gaps. This article consider the scrum technique with blockchain technologies for review because it is preferred by most of the software industries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many agile projects use expert judgment-based methods for estimating effort. Commonly, the judgments made during estimating project features are consensual. However, this will hardly be achieved when a conflict arises between estimators. Besides, estimate depends on the experience and skills of the estimator and could be threatened by his uncertainty to make reliable and accurate assessments. To fill these gaps, an intuitionistic fuzzy expert judgment method is proposed. The latter allows making fuzzified assessments and integrates estimators' priorities according to a set of human factors. As well, it provides consensual estimates either by the end of the estimation rounds or automatically using an iterative algorithm. On the other hand, an initial empirical study has been conducted on an agile project in which user stories have been estimated by students and experts. The first findings have revealed that the proposal is more suitable for inexperienced estimators or in the first sprints of the project where disagreement is still significant. Nevertheless, when group agreement is increased during the estimating process, the proposal maintains a null bias toward the overestimation or the underestimation of the user stories. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While agile represents a crucial element of digital transformation, there is limited empirical evidence on how agile is actually implemented. This article presents a longitudinal case study of the agile implementation journey of a large product manufacturer over two years. It shows how the firm was able to achieve a large-scale agile implementation through a mix of top-down and bottom-up approaches. This process entailed continuous adaptations of agile to the firm's circumstances and needs, including ongoing articulations and re-articulations of agile to incorporate local ideas and address emerging challenges. This article also presents a framework for guiding managers undertaking an organization-wide agile implementation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on an in-depth analysis of a successful large-scale agile transformation, this article sheds light on the evolving role of line managers during the transformation. At the beginning of the transformation, line managers act like "missionaries" and leverage influencing mechanisms in their attempts to foster the adoption of agile values. At maturity, the role of line managers evolves into a role similar to "priests" where discipline mechanisms are enacted to maintain and sustain the newly adopted agile values. The social contracts and the organizational conditions that underpin such evolution have implications for selecting suitable line managers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study presents a novel approach to resource allocation in software development teams working with Kanban. The simulation algorithm created in this study takes three types of resources, three types of work, resource capabilities, and a blocking mechanism different from the classic machine breakdown scenario. The data generated by the simulations are used to train a decision tree regression which is integrated into an optimization model as a clearing function. In numerical analysis, the research compares the decision tree clearing function to a straightforward two-step model that only takes the best of the simulation data and finds a resource allocation and a greedy heuristic algorithm which starts from an initial feasible solution and improves it step-by-step. Findings show that the developed decision tree clearing function model outperforms the other two benchmark models in mid and high amounts of data.

Behavior-driven development (BDD) is an Agile testing methodology fostering collaboration among developers, QA analysts, and stakeholders. In this manuscript, we propose a novel approach to enhance BDD practices using large language models (LLMs) to automate acceptance test generation. Our study uses zero and few-shot prompts to evaluate LLMs such as GPT-3.5, GPT-4, Llama-2-13B, and PaLM-2. The paper presents a detailed methodology that includes the dataset, prompt techniques, LLMs, and the evaluation process. The results demonstrate that GPT-3.5 and GPT-4 generate error-free BDD acceptance tests with better performance. The few-shot prompt technique highlights its ability to provide higher accuracy by incorporating examples for in-context learning. Furthermore, the study examines syntax errors, validation accuracy, and comparative analysis of LLMs, revealing their effectiveness in enhancing BDD practices. However, our study acknowledges that there are limitations to the proposed approach. We emphasize that this approach can support collaborative BDD processes and create opportunities for future research into automated BDD acceptance test generation using LLMs.

Privacy requirements engineering acts as a role to systematically elicit privacy requirements from system requirements and legal requirements such as the GDPR. Many methodologies have been proposed, but the majority of them are focused on the waterfall approach, making adopting privacy engineering in agile software development difficult. The other major issue is that the process currently is to a high degree manual. This paper focuses on closing these gaps through the development of a machine learning-based approach for identifying privacy requirements in an agile software development environment, employing natural language processing (NLP) techniques. Our method aims to allow agile teams to focus on functional requirements while NLP tools assist them in generating privacy requirements. The main input for our method is a collection of user stories, which are typically used to identify functional requirements in agile software development. The NLP approach is then used to automate some human-intensive tasks such as identifying personal data and creating data flow diagrams from user stories. The data flow diagram forms the basis for the automatic creation of privacy requirements. Our evaluation shows that our NLP method achieves a fairly good performance in terms of F-Measure. We are also demonstrate the feasibility of our NLP approach in CamperPlus project. Lastly, we are developing a tool to integrate our NLP approach into the privacy requirements engineering pipeline, allowing for manual editing of results so that agile teams can maintain control over the automated approach.

The goal of Digital Transformation of the Public Sector is the achievement of a better quality of life for citizens, via a more responsive and transparent administration and governance. By now it is clear that technological innovation, both in terms of computer architectures and software systems, is a crucial component of it, yet not sufficient. Indeed, a cultural, organizational and legal shift in how public organizations operate and relate to the citizens is also required. Nevertheless, computer scientists can play a key role in such a transformation and, given its impact on Society, it is essential to achieve a broader level of awareness of it and involvement in it of those scientific and professional figures. To this end, a technical map specifically designed for computer scientists, but properly placed in the context of the cultural, organizational and legal changes mentioned above, would be highly beneficial. To date, such a map is missing, to the best of our knowledge. The main contribution of this Tutorial is to provide it, together with a guided tour describing which key technological aspects enable and drive such a transformation. More specifically, based on a careful analysis of the available scholarly literature, that does not seem to include any Computer Science textbook material, a model of such a transformation is proposed, together with carefully selected examples incarnating it to show its validity: the cities of Barcelona and Chicago. Finally, a look at the future of this area is also provided.

Digital transformation in the public sector provides digital services to the citizens aiming at increasing their quality of life, as well as the transparency and accountability of a public administration. Since adaptation to the citizens changing needs is central for its success, Agile methodologies seem best suited for the software development of digital services in that area. However, as well documented by an attempt to use Scrum for an important Public Administration in Italy, substantial modifications to standard Agile were needed, giving rise to a new proposal called improved Agile (in short, iAgile). Another notable example is the Scrum@IMI method developed by the City of Barcelona for the deployment of its digital services. However, given the importance of digital transformation in the public sector and the scarcity of efforts (documented in the scholarly literature) to effectively bring Agile within it, a strategically important contribution that Computer Science can offer is a general paradigm describing how to tailor Agile methodologies and, in particular, Scrum, for such a specific context. Our proposal, called Scrum@PA, addresses this strategic need. Based on it, a public administration has a technically sound avenue to follow to adopt Scrum rather than a generic set of guidelines as in the current state of the art. We show the validity of our proposal by describing how the quite successful Scrum@IMI approach can be derived from Scrum@PA. Although iAgile can also be derived from our paradigm, we have chosen Scrum@IMI as a pilot example since it is publicly available on GitHub. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although there have been some studies on the success factors for IT software projects, there is still a lack of coherent research on the success factors for IT service projects. Therefore, this study aimed to identify and understand the factors and their relationships that contribute to the success of IT service projects. For this purpose, multivariate regressions and structural equation models (SEMs) were developed and analyzed. The regression models included six project management success criteria used as dependent variables (quality of the delivered product, scope realization and requirements, timeliness of delivery, delivery within budget, customer satisfaction, and provider satisfaction) and four independent variables (agile techniques and change management, organization and people, stakeholders and risk analysis, work environment), which had been identified through exploratory factor analysis. The results showed that not all success factors were relevant to all success criteria, and there were differences in their importance. An additional series of exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses along with appropriate statistical measures were employed to evaluate the quality of these four factors. The SEM approach was based on five latent constructs with a total of twenty components. The study suggests that investing in improving people's knowledge and skills, using agile methodologies, creating a supportive work environment, and involving stakeholders in regular risk analysis are important for project management success. The results also suggest that the success factors for IT service projects depend on both traditional and agile approaches. The study extensively compared its findings with similar research and discussed common issues and differences in both the model structures and methodologies applied. The investigation utilized mathematical methods and techniques that are not commonly applied in the field of project management success modeling. The comprehensive methodology that was applied may be helpful to other researchers who are interested in this topic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores historians' role in shaping public policy amid crises through the programs of the Idaho State Historical Society (ISHS). ISHS navigated the post-2008 recession, aligning with the History Relevance Campaign to redefine history's societal value and develop a legislative outreach program. This article encapsulates the ISHS's journey and history's power--through the agency's new briefing paper program--to inform, unite, guide policy, and promote informed governance. The article describes the author's workflow, which features traditional research methodology and adaptable projectmanagement philosophies and stresses the value of searchable research libraries as a framework for historians to manage multiple projects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many organizations have adopted agile values and principles in their products and services to provide increasing value to their customers. Although agile started with software development, it has been applicable and used in different industries and disciplines, including the space industry. This article presents the practical implications of teams transitioning to be agile teams using a general inductive analysis of 33 individuals from different NASA agile teams. The findings and recommendations are part of a larger effort performed as part of the development of a model for agile leadership. Some organizations may see agile as very risky and costly, and this article provides some guidance derived from the data to help support planning for agile transformation efforts. • Agile transformations of NASA Agile teams. • Being Agile with a continuous learning mindset. • Ability to create sustainable value to the customer in a technology-driven organization. • Recommendations to becoming Agile organizations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Data Mine at Purdue University is a pioneering experiential learning community for undergraduate and graduate students of any background to learn data science. The first data‐intensive experience embedded in a large learning community, The Data Mine had nearly 1300 students in academic year (AY) 2022–2023 and nearly 1700 students for AY 2023–2024. The Data Mine embodies data‐infused education, research, and collaboration. Students learn Python, R, SQL, and shell‐scripting, while working on weekly projects within a high‐performance computing (HPC) cluster. In the Corporate Partners cohort, students work on teams of 5–15 students, led by a paid student team leader. Each cohort follows an Agile approach, working on data‐intensive projects provided by industry partners and mentored by company employees. Students develop professional and data skills throughout the academic year, from August through April. Many students return in subsequent years to the program, increasing their tenure with a Corporate Partner. Student teams are inherently interdisciplinary; students from 133 different majors are involved in the program, ranging from new incoming students through PhD level students. These interdisciplinary teams of students bring new perspectives to challenging problems in which data science is a key part of the solution. The interdisciplinary teams foster an environment of synthesis with ideas and solutions. Students come together with different life experiences, different levels of technical skill, but also varying ways they navigate paths to solutions because of the variety of majors represented, resulting in a more creative and robust solution than a traditional data science program. This article is categorized under:Applications of Computational Statistics > Education in Computational Statistics [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Agile software development companies considered small entities (VSE) face a new reality of remote development. However, remote communication has generated many videos because video calls are often recorded for later reference. The architectural knowledge contained in videos, derived from virtual meetings, is essential for companies facing the knowledge vaporization problem. However, only some proposals in the literature can potentially manage AK in videos. The present article proposes a solution to recover this architectural knowledge contained in videos, using an ontology as a classification scheme. We based our proposal on the concept of architectural knowledge condensation and proposed a condensation cycle from it. Finally, we validated our ontology to manage architectural knowledge following the Methontology guidelines. Implementing an ontology as a classification scheme represents a step forward to achieving the condensation of architectural knowledge in an agile development environment for VSE. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Agile methodologies are adopted extensively by many of the software industries as it is flexible in nature as well as can address the required changes in any phase of development. Authentic estimation of the software products is not an easy task as it requires continuous attention of the product owner. Effort and cost can be estimated in a proper manner to ensure the success of the project. In this article, we considered the Scrum-based Agile projects that are developed into several Sprints. We proposed an extension to an existing algorithm, based on a total of 36 success factors; that estimate the development cost and effort required to complete the project. For estimation and computations, we have taken a dataset of 12 projects that are validated through experienced professionals. We also compared our results with the existing approach and it is found that our results are cost-effective even after considering more success factors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present trend of automation and digitization of jobs has made the skills gap even more pronounced, indicating that graduates are not sufficiently prepared for the challenges they will face in their careers. The educational process needs to adapt quickly to the demands made by employers and the job market. Learning tasks, assignments, and activities should mimic the practice environment as far as possible, to best prepare students for practice. One of the best approaches appears to be the incorporation of agile project management techniques and project-based learning into the educational process. The primary aim of this research is to examine the effects of implementing agile management techniques and project-based learning into education on students' skill sets and performance improvement rates. The activities and results that the students produced throughout the semester were gathered and assessed over two academic years. The course feedback was also gathered to investigate students' opinions about the course and their involvement during the semester. An exploratory study was conducted in order to achieve the results. The influence of implemented innovations on the course was addressed, and the acquired outcomes were contrasted and appraised. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As the size and complexity of projects grows, estimates are increasingly used, especially in the agile community. Software development cannot begin without first conducting thorough planning and estimation. Estimating how much work a project will take is a common first step in the software development life cycle. By employing ensemble techniques, we integrate multiple learning algorithms to build a more accurate predictive model. The core elements of our proposed stacked ensemble strategy include Decision Tree, Principal Components Regression, Random Forest, NeuralNet, GLMNET, XGBoost, Earth, and Support Vector Machine. Moreover, we augment the model's performance by incorporating a blend of these foundational algorithms with other ensemble regression methods. Extensive testing in the suggested research work with a number of Super Learners demonstrates that Regression is the best technique for judging effort. The evaluation of the different estimators involved the use of various metrics, including Mean Absolute Error, Root Mean Squared Error, Mean Squared Error, Percentage of Close Approximations within 25% of the True Values (PRED (25)), R-Squared Coefficients, Precision, Recall, and F1-Score. The proposed method yields more trustworthy predicted performance than either single-model approaches or stacked ensembles. Effort estimation serves as the foundation for the rest of the project management process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary: The importance of the team, its internal dynamics, and its performance are widely recognized within the software engineering community. While popular frameworks identify wholeness, stability over time, and smallness as important factors, they offer little guidance on how to form teams that achieve these three characteristics. The objective of this study is to investigate how these team characteristics interact in large‐scale software development contexts, particularly focusing on the impact of stable and dynamic teaming approaches. This was done through a multivocal study of literature, followed by individual semi‐structured interviews with 19 engineers from two companies and validation workshops with an additional two companies from unrelated industry segments. The study results show that the question of stable versus dynamic approaches to forming software engineering teams is largely unaddressed in industry, with stable teams representing a habitual default option. Meanwhile, both stable and dynamic teams clearly have respective strengths and weaknesses, calling for careful consideration of the most suitable approach in any given situation. To support such consideration, this paper presents a model of how team stability, wholeness, and smallness interact. This model is found relevant, accurate, generalizable, and useful by practitioners. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The term agile is frequently used in IT especially in the area of software engineering. The broad pervasiveness of the term agile is astonishing, because it is not well defined in the area of software engineering. The fuzziness of the term agile comes with the danger of ill‐founded decisions and ideological discussions. Both slow down the gain in knowledge in the domain of software engineering. The term agile should therefore not be used either in science nor in the industry. This article provides a critical discussion of the term agile. By using a three‐layered abstraction concept for software development processes, the use of the term agile can be avoided. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: This study aims to investigate the effects of organizational culture factors on the selection of software process development models and develops a conceptual model for selecting and adopting process development models with an organizational culture approach, using 12 criteria and their sub-criteria defined in Fey and Denison's model (12 criteria). Design/methodology/approach: The research hypotheses were investigated using statistical analysis, and then the criteria and sub-criteria were selected based on Fey and Denison's model and the experts' viewpoints. Afterward, the organizational culture of the selected company was measured using the data from 2016 and 2017, based on Fey and Denison's questionnaire. Due to the correlation between the criteria, using the decision-making trial and evaluation technique, the correlation between sub-criteria were determined, and by analytical network process method and using Super-Decision software, the process development model was preferred to the 12 common models in information systems development. Findings: Results indicated a significant and positive effect of organizational culture factors (except the core values factor) on the selection of development models. Also, by changing the value of organizational culture, the selected process development model changed either. Sensitivity analysis performed on the sub-criteria implied that by changing and improving some sub-criteria, the organization will be ready and willing to use the agile or risk-based models such as spiral and win-win models. Concerning units where the mentioned indicators were at moderate and low limits, models such as waterfall, V-shaped and incremental worked more appropriately. Originality/value: While many studies were performed in comparing development models and investigating their strengths and weaknesses, and the impact of organizational culture on the success of information technology projects, literature indicated that the impact of organizational sub-culture prevailing in the selection of development process models has not been investigated. In this study, new factors and indicators were addressed affecting the selection of development models with a focus on organizational culture. Correlation among the factors and indicators was also investigated and, finally, a conceptual model was proposed for proper adoption of the models and methodologies of system development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The primary objective of this investigation is to explore the key factors within a large corporation that facilitate the transition from a conventional hierarchical organizational structure to a more agile one. Although there are studies in the literature on the different agile organizational structures, there are no clear guidelines for a large company to transform to an agile framework. This study employs contingency theory as its framework and specifically focuses on the financial sector to identify both opportunities and challenges encountered during this transformation process. Qualitative research methods were employed, involving an analysis of five case studies in which managers served as respondents. This research contributes to the identification of a model as a guideline for the transformation of the organizational structure towards agility that can provide valuable information for companies undergoing such a transformation. The managers surveyed provided their experience and the competencies of their profiles were validated, in addition to the application of the Delphi method to obtain more objective information. The findings underscore that large companies should refrain from adopting a completely flat hierarchical structure. Moreover, there exists a set of strategic-level elements that serve as a guiding framework for the transformation process. Furthermore, it is essential to acknowledge that the transformation process itself does not follow a one-size-fits-all approach; rather, it is contingent upon the unique context of each individual case, and it is also a cultural challenge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Technological innovations, such as artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML), have the potential to expedite the goal of precision medicine, especially when combined with increased capacity for voluminous data from multiple sources and expanded therapeutic modalities; however, they also present several challenges. In this communication, we first discuss the goals of precision medicine, and contextualize the use of AI in precision medicine by showcasing innovative applications (e.g., prediction of tumor growth and overall survival, biomarker identification using biomedical images, and identification of patient population for clinical practice) which were presented during the February 2023 virtual public workshop entitled "Application of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning for Precision Medicine," hosted by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and University of Maryland Center of Excellence in Regulatory Science and Innovation (M‐CERSI). Next, we put forward challenges brought about by the multidisciplinary nature of AI, particularly highlighting the need for AI to be trustworthy. To address such challenges, we subsequently note practical approaches, viz., differential privacy, synthetic data generation, and federated learning. The proposed strategies – some of which are highlighted presentations from the workshop – are for the protection of personal information and intellectual property. In addition, methods such as the risk‐based management approach and the need for an agile regulatory ecosystem are discussed. Finally, we lay out a call for action that includes sharing of data and algorithms, development of regulatory guidance documents, and pooling of expertise from a broad‐spectrum of stakeholders to enhance the application of AI in precision medicine. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The impact of projects is vital, from business operations to research to the national economy. Therefore, management science and operation research have extensively studied project scheduling and resource allocation for over six decades. Project databases were proposed to test algorithms, including simulated or real, single or multiprojects, and single-mode or multi-mode projects. However, the dozens of project databases are extremely heterogeneous regarding the file structure and the features of the modeled projects. Furthermore, the efficiency and performance of project scheduling and resource allocation algorithms are susceptible to the characteristics of projects. Therefore, the proposed Compound Matrix-Based Project Database (CMPD) collects and consolidates the most frequently used project databases. The proposed Unified Matrix-Based Project-Planning Model (UMP) sparse matrix-based model enables the addition of new features to existing project structures, such as completion priorities, structural flexibility, and quality parameters, to broaden the scope of considered projects and to take account of flexible approaches, such as agile, extreme, and hybrid projects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An agile approach to the EU AI Act and its surrounding ecosystem of hard and soft law can promote more dynamic AI governance in the EU. Agile has powered the rise of AI; it originates from the field of software development and is a style of working that embraces change and brings fast, tangible value to stakeholders through iterative product development. In this opinion I highlight two challenges that the AI Act faces and discuss how an agile mindset can be applied to mitigate their negative effects. I advocate that the AI Act ecosystem can, and should, be improved in iterations based on real-life testing, informed by the EU's own Better Regulation toolbox and international best practices in innovative, agile regulation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Agile Software Development (ASD) confronts the challenge of effectively measurement and predicting the capabilities of software engineers and teams to improve individual performance, team efficiency, and project success. This study delves into exploring and identifying gaps and research prospects in assessing and predicting human capabilities within ASD. Thus, we conducted a Systematic Literature Review, building upon a prior review from 2001 to 2016 by different authors. To encompass primary studies published after 2016, we extended to 2022. Further, our study extends the scope of the previous SLR with a new research question to identify key attributes in publications focused on agile team formation. Our findings disclosed new attributes for evaluating and predicting the capabilities of professionals engaged in ASD, such as Openness to Creativity and Agile Adaptation. These attributes boost individual performance, contribute to ameliorated team productivity, and facilitate the precise composition of teams. Moreover, this study expands our prior study, providing more details on capability identification and research design, extends the analysis of attributes and prediction models, provides a more granular discussion of discoveries and comparisons with prior review, and more indepth discussion about practical implications and thoroughly examines study validity. We observed that technical metrics were more prevalent than social and innovative aspects. Also, the study identified the prediction of agile capabilities as an emerging research domain necessitating further scrutiny due to the scarcity of existing models. The majority of studies (78%) supplied detailed metric descriptions, facilitating the evolution of the capabilities repository and supporting future investigations in this domain. Ultimately, these findings can aid agile practitioners in formulating team composition decisions based on individuals’ and teams’ appraised and foreseen abilities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Society today is moving towards rapid digitalization of almost every aspect of our lives. From healthcare and transport to work or entertainment, we depend on software products that need to function properly. The adequate construction of these software products can be evaluated and certified by means of quality standards. However, adopting quality standards is a complex and time-consuming task that requires experienced practitioners with advanced knowledge about standards and development practices. This presents a dichotomy for development companies that are transitioning to more agile schemes, where the necessary quality knowledge is scarce and poorly documented, and is slowly learnt and applied by novel practitioners. To overcome these issues, this paper presents a model-driven approach to automate the analysis of software development processes that must be aligned to quality standards. The approach has been implemented in an open-source tool and applied to a case study to automatically generate a gap analysis by reusing expert knowledge related to the ISO 9001 standard. The application has demonstrated it is possible to reduce the effort required from expert practitioners to perform the analysis and improve development processes to ensure the fulfillment of specific quality standards. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In real-time production planning, there are exceptional events that can cause problems and deviations in the production schedule. These circumstances can be solved with real-time production planning, which is able to quickly reschedule the operations at each work centre. Mobile autonomous robots are a key element in this real-time planning and are a fundamental link between production centres. Work centres in Industry 4.0 environments can use current technology, i.e., a biomimetic strategy that emulates echolocation, with the aim of establishing bidirectional communication with other work centres through the application of agile algorithms. Taking advantage of these communication capabilities, the basic idea is to distribute the execution of the algorithm among different work centres that interact like a parasympathetic system that makes automatic movements to reorder the production schedule. The aim is to use algorithms with an optimal solution based on the simplicity of the task distribution, trying to avoid heuristic algorithms or heavy computations. This paper presents the following result: the development of an Industrial Sonar algorithm which allows real-time scheduling and obtains the optimal solution at all times. The objective of this is to reduce the makespan, reduce energy costs and carbon footprint, and reduce the waiting and transport times for autonomous mobile robots using the Internet of Things, cloud computing and machine learning technologies to emulate echolocation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent works have achieved considerable success in improving the concurrency of backscatter network. However, they do not optimize the balance between throughput and spectrum occupancy, both of which serve as pivotal parameters in concurrent transmissions. Moreover, these works also introduce complex components on tag thereby increasing both power consumption and deployment costs. In this article, we propose Spray, a tag-lightweight system to achieve high throughput and narrow-band occupancy with low power. The key idea is to incorporate an agile channel allocating and scheduling mechanism into the backscatter network. This approach allows for efficient spectrum utilization and concurrency without the need for energy-intensive components. To optimize throughput in the presence of the challenge of harmonic interference, we introduce a novel algorithm that determines the channels with an optimal combination of central frequencies and bandwidths. Additionally, we propose a fair scheduling strategy to ensure equitable transmission opportunities for all tags. We prototype the Spray tag using commercial off-the-shelf components and implement the excitation and receiver with software-defined radio platform. Our evaluation shows that the system supports 30 parallel tags transmitting in the bandwidth of 600 kHz and the throughput can reach more than 280 kbps. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: Agile principles have been widely used in software development team practice since the creation of the Agile Manifesto. Studies have examined variables related to agile principles without systematically considering the relationships among key team, agile methodology, and process variables underlying the agile principles and how these variables jointly influence the achievement of software development agility. In this study, the authors tested a team/methodology–process–agility model that links team variables (team autonomy and team competence) and methodological variable (iterative development) to process variables (communication and collaborative decision-making), which are in turn linked to software development agility (ability to sense, respond and learn). Design/methodology/approach: Survey data from one hundred and sixty software development professionals were analyzed using structural equation modeling methods. Findings: The results support the team/methodology–process–agility model. Process variables (communication and collaborative decision-making) mediated the effects of team (autonomy and competence) and methodological (iterative development) variables on software development agility. In addition, team, methodology and process variables had different effects on the three dimensions of software development agility. Originality/value: The results contribute to the literature on organizational IT management by establishing a team/methodology–process–agility model that can serve as a basis for developing a core theoretical foundation underlying agile principles and practices. The results also have practical implications for organizations in understanding and managing holistically the different roles that agile methodological, team and process factors play in achieving software development agility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Developing, implementing, and maintaining a multi-intelligent body collaboration system necessitates significant investments in finances, time, and expertise. While multi-intelligent body collaboration has the potential to enhance power system stability significantly, it also comes with challenges related to interoperability, security, system complexity, and resource allocation. Resource allocation and training costs can be substantial. Addressing these challenges is crucial to harnessing the full benefits of this approach and ensuring the reliable and efficient operation of power systems. Effective communication and coordination strategies among intelligent agents are integral to maintaining power system stability. Timely information exchange, load balancing, disturbance management, and the integration of AI contribute to a more resilient and adaptive energy grid. As technology advances, refining these strategies will be essential to meet the growing demands of an ever-evolving power landscape. As technology marches forward, it becomes increasingly evident that the refinement of these strategies is paramount. The dynamism of the power landscape, driven by technological advancements and evolving needs, necessitates an agile and adaptable power system. The fusion of multiintelligent bodies and modern technology stands as a testament to our collective pursuit of a more reliable, efficient, and sustainable energy future. In this ever-evolving landscape, the innovation and enhancement of these strategies are our compass, guiding us toward a brighter and more efficient future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]