Challenges (and Opportunities!) of a Remote Agile Software Engineering Project Course During COVID-19

COVID-19 and its immediate impacts on teaching activities have required changes from computer science educators worldwide. We switched our on-site courses to remote setups without detailed knowledge of what tools, techniques, and methods would work in different teaching contexts. A growing amount of experience reports on general best practices for remote teaching in higher education are available. However, university courses featuring practical software development projects present unique challenges regarding remote learning, as effective student collaboration is vital. In these courses, students tackle situations in the project and their team meetings that would also occur in real software projects experienced in industry settings. In this paper, we share our experiences on how we successfully adapted our software engineering project course to a remote setup, which challenges we observed in student teams and how they can be mitigated, and what (surprisingly) worked better than expected. Finally, we propose improvements that we expect will be beneficial not only for future remote-only but also for hybrid or on-site courses

Learning in an Agile Setting: A Multilevel Study on the Evolution of Organizational Routines

Recognizing a serious lack of research on routinized individual actions and organizational adaptation in the stability-change paradox, we intend to provide an in-depth explanation of the way in which agile methods affect organizational learning in self-managed, team-based organizations, taking a multi-level evolutionary approach. We explore learning in agile organizations by breaking the analysis of organizational routines down into different levels \u2013 individual, team and organization \u2013 and describing the process of variation, selection and retention of routines at each level. Leveraging on multiple case studies, we discuss how team members learn and gain knowledge, from both direct and indirect experience, and analyze how teams develop conceptual frameworks and interpret those experiences. Finally, we discuss how organizational memory develops and how teams in agile organizations adapt simultaneously within an ecological structure that also comprises the changing environment. Our findings reveal substantial flaws in the capacity of agile methods to foster organizational learning

Improving the Software Development Process in a Software Development Team - a Case Study

Changes in the context in which software engineering practices are carried out also initiate the need to change in the practices to effectively work as a development team while delivering the software product with the highest possible values. While the thesis was initiated to improve the continuous integration and delivery practices in the case company, the context and the need for the changes in the practices highlighted the need for enhancing the Scrum practices within the software development team. With the design science research methodology approach, the problems in the software development team were drawn during the current state analysis phase followed by a workshop to discuss the findings and select the challenges to tackle as part of the thesis work - both from the case company and development team members’ perspective. The results from the current state analysis highlight five core problem areas from which problem area ’Process and Tools’ was selected for solving in this project after the discussion with the development team. Despite already utilizing some practices of Scrum, the development team decided to evolve the Scrum adoption with the utmost goal of solving concrete problems in the problem area captured during the current state analysis phase. Semi-structured interviews and surveys were utilized to collect the data, and the findings reveal the potential of the process while suggesting further improvements. Scrum is easier to understand but challenging to master. The process exposes the potential, offers the possibility to respond to the challenges in an agile way while emphasizing the importance of context in shaping the practices and tools which is utilized for software construction

INTEGRATING MACHINE LEARNING WITH SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT LIFECYCLES: INSIGHTS FROM EXPERTS

This paper examines the challenges related to integrating machine learning (ML) development with software development lifecycle (SDLC) models. Data-intensive development and use of ML are gaining popularity in information systems development (ISD). To date, there is little empirical research that explores the challenges that ISD practitioners encounter when integrating ML development with SDLC frameworks. In this work we conducted a series of expert interviews where we asked the informants to reflect upon how four different archetypal SDLC models support ML development. Three high level trends in ML systems development emerged from the analysis, namely, (1) redefining the prescribed roles and responsibilities within development work; (2) the SDLC as a frame for creating a shared understanding and commitment by management, customers, and software development teams: and (3) method tailoring. This study advances the body of knowledge on the integration of conceptual SDLC models and ML engineering

Application of Agile Project Management in Kuwait Oil and Gas Capital Projects

The extreme challenges and substantial volatility associated with oil and gas projects reflect the need for a more flexible, responsive, and adaptable framework than the Traditional Project Management approaches usually found in the sector. This study explores Agile Project Management best practices merged into the existing frameworks within Kuwaiti’s oil and gas sector to create a Hybrid Project Management framework. It also investigates whether project managers understand this hybrid framework's value and believe it can benefit their organisations. This study applies explanatory sequential mixed-methods. The quantitative method surveys agile best practices and Oil and Gas projects' delay of 106 project management professionals. The quantitative method was followed by qualitative in-depth interviews with eight consultants who worked with both Traditional and Agile Project Management. The results suggest six best practices to reduce project delays and address project complexity: Iteration Planning, Retrospective Meetings, Daily Stand-Up Meetings, Communication and Collaboration, Enhancing Team Skills, and Solving Contractual Issues. Project delays are due to contractual problems, communication issues, poor planning and coordination, and a traditional approach. The findings further indicate that the identified best practices can reduce these delays by strengthening their weaknesses. The outcome of this study is a hybrid framework consisting of the proposed agile best practices, that are integrated as part of phase- gate project management. The framework includes the improved clarity and trackability of the waterfall methodology with the flexibility, smooth functioning, and adaptability of the Agile Project Management framework; hence the framework is recommended for Kuwait’s oil and gas sector. Potential implementation challenges are then identified, including project managers who may not possess the experience and expertise to apply the hybrid framework. These are countered with recommendations for the best possible application of the hybrid framework. In the future, the framework will be applied in real case capital projects development

Organizing risk: organization and management theory for the risk society

Risk has become a crucial part of organizing, affecting a wide range of organizations in all sectors. We identify, review and integrate diverse literatures relevant to organizing risk, building on an existing framework that describes how risk is organized in three ‘modes’ – prospectively, in real-time, and retrospectively. We then identify three critical issues in the existing literature: its fragmented nature; its neglect of the tensions associated with each of the modes; and its tendency to assume that the meaning of an object in relation to risk is singular and stable. We provide a series of new insights with regard to each of these issues. First, we develop the concept of a risk cycle that shows how organizations engage with all three modes and transition between them over time. Second, we explain why the tensions have been largely ignored and show how studies using a risk work perspective can provide further insights into them. Third, we develop the concept of risk translation to highlight the ways in the meanings of risks can be transformed and to identify the political consequences of such translations. We conclude the paper with a research agenda to elaborate these insights and ideas further

Transdisciplinarity seen through Information, Communication, Computation, (Inter-)Action and Cognition

Similar to oil that acted as a basic raw material and key driving force of industrial society, information acts as a raw material and principal mover of knowledge society in the knowledge production, propagation and application. New developments in information processing and information communication technologies allow increasingly complex and accurate descriptions, representations and models, which are often multi-parameter, multi-perspective, multi-level and multidimensional. This leads to the necessity of collaborative work between different domains with corresponding specialist competences, sciences and research traditions. We present several major transdisciplinary unification projects for information and knowledge, which proceed on the descriptive, logical and the level of generative mechanisms. Parallel process of boundary crossing and transdisciplinary activity is going on in the applied domains. Technological artifacts are becoming increasingly complex and their design is strongly user-centered, which brings in not only the function and various technological qualities but also other aspects including esthetic, user experience, ethics and sustainability with social and environmental dimensions. When integrating knowledge from a variety of fields, with contributions from different groups of stakeholders, numerous challenges are met in establishing common view and common course of action. In this context, information is our environment, and informational ecology determines both epistemology and spaces for action. We present some insights into the current state of the art of transdisciplinary theory and practice of information studies and informatics. We depict different facets of transdisciplinarity as we see it from our different research fields that include information studies, computability, human-computer interaction, multi-operating-systems environments and philosophy.Comment: Chapter in a forthcoming book: Information Studies and the Quest for Transdisciplinarity - Forthcoming book in World Scientific. Mark Burgin and Wolfgang Hofkirchner, Editor