Misaligned Values in Software Engineering Organizations

The values of software organizations are crucial for achieving high performance; in particular, agile development approaches emphasize their importance. Researchers have thus far often assumed that a specific set of values, compatible with the development methodologies, must be adopted homogeneously throughout the company. It is not clear, however, to what extent such assumptions are accurate. Preliminary findings have highlighted the misalignment of values between groups as a source of problems when engineers discuss their challenges. Therefore, in this study, we examine how discrepancies in values between groups affect software companies' performance. To meet our objectives, we chose a mixed method research design. First, we collected qualitative data by interviewing fourteen (\textit{N} = 14) employees working in four different organizations and processed it using thematic analysis. We then surveyed seven organizations (\textit{N} = 184). Our analysis indicated that value misalignment between groups is related to organizational performance. The aligned companies were more effective, more satisfied, had higher trust, and fewer conflicts. Our efforts provide encouraging findings in a critical software engineering research area. They can help to explain why some companies are more efficient than others and, thus, point the way to interventions to address organizational challenges.Comment: accepted for publication in Journal of Software: Evolution and Proces

Development of an incompressible smoothed particle hydrodynamics method for electrohydrodynamics of immiscible fluids and rigid particles

An incompressible smoothed particle hydrodynamics method for modeling immiscible and isothermal flow of two- and three-phase Newtonian fluids and solid particles subject to an external electric field has been developed. Continuum surface force method is used to calculate the surface tension forces on fluid-fluid interfaces. The materials are assumed to be either perfect or leaky dielectrics. Solid particles are modeled using viscous penalty method coupled with rigidity constraints. The equations are discretized using corrected derivatives and artificial particle displacement is used to ensure homogeneous particle distribution. The projection method is used to advance the governing equations of the flow and electric field in time. The components of the scheme are tested in three stages of two- and three-phase hydrodynamics, multiphase electrohydrodynamics and fluid-structure/solid interaction. The results of each stage is compared to experimental and numerical data available in literature and their validity is established. The combination of the individual elements of the numerical method is used to simulate the motion of rigid particles submerged in Newtonian fluids subject to an external electric field. The behavior of the particles are found to be in agreement with experimental and numerical observations found in the literature. This shows the applicability of the proposed incompressible smoothed particle hydrodynamics scheme in simulating such complex and relatively unexplored phenomena