Techniques and Practices for Software Architecture Work in Agile Software Development

Since the publishing of Agile Manifesto in 2001, the agile software development has taken the world by storm. Agile software development does not emphasize the importance of software architecture, even though software architecture is often seen as a key factor for achieving the quality goals set for the software system. It has been even said that agile software development and software architecture are a clash of two cultures.In many software projects there is no need to consider software architecture anymore. For example, when designing a mobile application, the ecosystem forces the developer to use certain architecture style provided by the platform. In web development ready-made frameworks and project templates are available offering complete software architecture designs for the application developer.There are still domains and systems where careful architecture design is needed. When developing complex systems or systems with a long lifecycle, diligent software architecture design is a key to avoid massive rework during the development. It cannot be a coincidence that companies developing these kinds of systems struggle with agile software development the most.On the one hand, the goal of this thesis was to study software architecture practices used in agile software development in the industry. On the other hand, the goal was to develop new methods and techniques to support incremental software architecture working practices which can be aligned with agile methods such as Scrum. The study applied case study, interviews and design science as the main research methods.The results show that there are four main ways to carry out software architecture work while using agile methods. Basing on this result, models for aligning software architec-ture knowledge management were developed. These models can be used as guidelines for selecting the appropriate software architecture practices in an organization.As a part of the research work, an architecture knowledge repository was developed for sharing the knowledge in agile projects and for automatic software architecture document generation. Additionally, the results of this study show that by taking a decision-centric approach to software architecture evaluation, the evaluation method can be lightweight enough to make incremental evaluation a viable option. Similarly, existing software architecture evaluation methods can be boosted to fit agile software development by utilizing domain knowledge

Agile Processes in Software Engineering and Extreme Programming – Workshops

This open access book constitutes papers from the 5 research workshops, the poster presentations, as well as two panel discussions which were presented at XP 2021, the 22nd International Conference on Agile Software Development, which was held online during June 14-18, 2021. XP is the premier agile software development conference combining research and practice. It is a unique forum where agile researchers, practitioners, thought leaders, coaches, and trainers get together to present and discuss their most recent innovations, research results, experiences, concerns, challenges, and trends. XP conferences provide an informal environment to learn and trigger discussions and welcome both people new to agile and seasoned agile practitioners. The 18 papers included in this volume were carefully reviewed and selected from overall 37 submissions. They stem from the following workshops: 3rd International Workshop on Agile Transformation 9th International Workshop on Large-Scale Agile Development 1st International Workshop on Agile Sustainability 4th International Workshop on Software-Intensive Business 2nd International Workshop on Agility with Microservices Programmin

Integration of Industry 4.0 with Lean Management in large German manufacturing firms - a dynamic capabilities perspective

This research is concerned with how large German manufacturing firms can realise the integration of Lean Management and Industry 4.0. This is relevant for companies that are engaged in a semi-matured Lean transformation and have not yet realised all key principles but, at the same time, are confronted with a fourth industrial revolution. Building on mature but primarily separate research streams of Lean and Industry 4.0, this study employs an exploratory sequential mixed-methods design to derive a framework for integrating these important themes of Operations Management and to support firms that are unwilling to approach a sequential integration of Lean or Industry 4.0 first, as typically advised by previous research and seeking advice on concurrent integrations. Based on a review of existing academic literature, the main themes of Operations Management as the setting for this research, Dynamic Capabilities as the theoretical lens, and Lean and Industry 4.0 as the subject focus are synthesised, research questions derived and a conceptual framework formulated. The research design utilised an exploratory qualitative strand, which derived major integration themes and 201 potential modes of action through a Thematic Analysis of 16 semi-structured interviews with German subject matter experts. The subsequent quantitative strand evaluated and prioritised six dimensions and 43 potential modes of action through a triangulating exploratory survey with 256 subject matter experts from Germany. Finally, the validating strand utilised a Delphi study with 15 subject matter experts. It derived a refined and validated framework consisting of 50 items organised in the six dimensions of ‘initiating’, ‘sensing’, ‘seizing’, ‘transforming’, ‘resources’, and ‘capabilities’ to execute an integration of Lean and Industry 4.0. Consequently, the findings are influenced by the geographical focus, firm size, theoretical lens of Dynamic Capabilities, and methodological design, which opens up exciting possibilities for future research contributions. This research contributes practically to the field of Operations Management by proposing executable modes of action and a concurrent pathway as an alternative for firms intending to integrate Lean and Industry 4.0. It theoretically contributes to advancing Dynamic Capabilities theory by proposing a novel dimension derived from an application and concretisation in a new research area

D7.5 FIRST consolidated project results

The FIRST project commenced in January 2017 and concluded in December 2022, including a 24-month suspension period due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Throughout the project, we successfully delivered seven technical reports, conducted three workshops on Key Enabling Technologies for Digital Factories in conjunction with CAiSE (in 2019, 2020, and 2022), produced a number of PhD theses, and published over 56 papers (and numbers of summitted journal papers). The purpose of this deliverable is to provide an updated account of the findings from our previous deliverables and publications. It involves compiling the original deliverables with necessary revisions to accurately reflect the final scientific outcomes of the project