Risks in Distributed Agile Development: A Review

AbstractThere has been is a growing trend in software development through distributed agile approach and so, the study of risks in such environments becomes imperative. A number of studies have discussed about the problems faced by distributed agile teams. This study attempts to consolidate the existing studies on risks in distributed agile development. It helps in uncovering the areas of risk management in distributed agile, in which extensive work has been done and also presents the type of work that needs further consideration

Thematic review and analysis of grounded theory application in software engineering

We present metacodes, a new concept to guide grounded theory (GT) research in software engineering. Metacodes are high level codes that can help software engineering researchers guide the data coding process. Metacodes are constructed in the course of analyzing software engineering papers that use grounded theory as a research methodology. We performed a high level analysis to discover common themes in such papers and discovered that GT had been applied primarily in three software engineering disciplines: agile development processes, geographically distributed software development, and requirements engineering. For each category, we collected and analyzed all grounded theory codes and created, following a GT analysis process, what we call metacodes that can be used to drive further theory building. This paper surveys the use of grounded theory in software engineering and presents an overview of successes and challenges of applying this research methodology

Muutokset ohjelmistonkehityksen dokumentointiin yrityksen siirtyessä käyttämään ketteriä ohjelmistonkehitysmenetelmiä

Tiivistelmä. Ketterät ohjelmistonkehitysmenetelmät ovat tämän vuosituhannen puheenaihe ohjelmistojen kehityksen alueella. Monet suuret ohjelmistoalan yritykset tutkivat menetelmien käyttöönottoa. Ketterät ohjelmiston sisältävät paljon uusia elementtejä varsinkin organisatorisen tiedon hallintaan. Ketterissä ohjelmistonkehitysmenetelmissä tiedonkulkua on yritetty parantaa kasvokkain kommunikoinnin avulla. XP-ohjelmistonkehitysmenetelmässä on käytössä pariohjelmointi, Scrum-ohjelmistonkehitysmenetelmässä on käytössä päiväpalaverit ja jaettu työskentelytila. Myös ketterien ohjelmistonkehitysmenetelmien iteraatiosyklit parantavat kommunikaatiota. Vaikka ketterissä ohjelmistonkehitysmenetelmissä on pohjimmiltaan ollut alusta saakka paljon tiedon johtamisen elementtejä, käytännössä on menetelmien käyttö keskittynyt vielä ratkaisemaan teknisiä ongelmia ja tiedon johtamisen näkökulmat ovat olleet hyvin toissijaisia. Käytännön tekijät ketterissä ohjelmistotiimeissä ovatkin yleensä pohjakoulutukseltaan suuntautuneet enemmän tekniikkaan kuin johtamiseen tai tiedon johtamiseen. Tutkimuksen mielenkiinto onkin, kuinka ketterät menetelmät käytännössä toteuttavat niihin liitettyjä tiedon hallinnan elementtejä, ja kuinka vuosia perinteiseen dokumentointiin luottaneet yritykset ovat pystyneet muuttamaan toimintatapojaan ketterien menetelmien aatteita hyödyntäviksi. Tässä tutkimuksessa tutkittiin ketterän ohjelmistonkehityksen räätälöityjä prosesseja. Tutkimuksessa paneuduttiin yksinkertaisilla haastatteluilla yritysten kehittämiin ketteriin ohjelmistonkehitysprosesseihin ja siihen, mitenkä prosessit huomioivat ketterien ohjelmiston kehitysmenetelmien taustalla olevat tiedon hallinnan teoriat. Oliko ketteriin ohjelmistonkehitysmenetelmiin siirtyminen muuttanut tämän tutkimuksen kohteena olleiden yritysten dokumentointi käytäntöjä? Haastattelut kertoivat aika selvästi, että tieto projekteissa välittyy yhä dokumenttien avulla. Yllättävää ei ollut, ettei ketteriin menetelmiin siirtyminen ole oikeastaan tuonut mitään muutosta dokumentoinnin tarpeeseen. Jopa kasvua erilaisten raporttien muodossa ilmeni. Kaksi kolmesta haastatelluista perusteli, että virtuaalitiimit ja offshore-toiminta vaativat korostetun tarkkaa dokumentointia. Lisäksi oli yleistä, että dokumentointia ei suunniteltu projektikohtaisesti, vaan turvauduttiin vanhoihin käytäntöihin ja malleihin. Dokumentointia tehtiin turhaan, eikä aina edes tiedetty mihin tietoa tullaan käyttämään. Dokumenteissa keskityttiin kertomaan vain suunnitteluratkaisut, eri vaihtoehtojen ja taustojen selvittely oli harvinaista

Assessing BPM’s role in a digital innovation project

Dissertation presented as the partial requirement for obtaining a Master's degree in Information Management, specialization in Information Systems and Technologies ManagementThe world is changing. In the digitalization era, digital devices are everywhere, enabled by the quick proliferation of smart and connected products. The transformation we are witnessing is not only about the new digital artefacts, but also includes the alignment of the operations, business processes, strategy and organizational, and IT structures, resulting in the so-called maturity. Although it might not be trivial, this increased efficiency is closely connected with the processes, of how to create opportunities for optimizing and redesigning them. However, the combination of digital innovation and business process management, and how one benefits the other, is not very explored in the literature, which constitutes a research gap. Given this, the importance of business process management practices and their relationship with the remaining organisation’s dimensions was studied and assessed through a comprehensive and systematic literature review. Hence, insights were gathered to create a framework that allows answering the research question “What is the BPM’s role in a digital innovation project?”. It was expected to understand the challenges associated with digital transformation, what core requirements are the most valuable, and what is the role of process management in all of it. A focus group has confirmed the usefulness of the artefact, by showing the correlation between the different elements in scope and allowing an understanding of the capabilities needed in the organisation. Nonetheless, the feedback suggested the adaptation of the framework to include a maturity assessment pre-stage and cost evaluation per digital transformation category, so it can be completely transversal to all types of organisations and all budgets

Learning in the digital age: skill gap and training methods.

This thesis aims at stydying what are the impacts of digitalization on workers. In particular, it investigates what is the skill gap and which training methods could effectively support workers

ICSEA 2022: the seventeenth international conference on software engineering advances

The Seventeenth International Conference on Software Engineering Advances (ICSEA 2022), held between October 16th and October 20th, 2022, continued a series of events covering a broad spectrum of software-related topics. The conference covered fundamentals on designing, implementing, testing, validating and maintaining various kinds of software. Several tracks were proposed to treat the topics from theory to practice, in terms of methodologies, design, implementation, testing, use cases, tools, and lessons learned. The conference topics covered classical and advanced methodologies, open source, agile software, as well as software deployment and software economics and education. Other advanced aspects are related to on-time practical aspects, such as run-time vulnerability checking, rejuvenation process, updates partial or temporary feature deprecation, software deployment and configuration, and on-line software updates. These aspects trigger implications related to patenting, licensing, engineering education, new ways for software adoption and improvement, and ultimately, to software knowledge management. There are many advanced applications requiring robust, safe, and secure software: disaster recovery applications, vehicular systems, biomedical-related software, biometrics related software, mission critical software, E-health related software, crisis-situation software. These applications require appropriate software engineering techniques, metrics and formalisms, such as, software reuse, appropriate software quality metrics, composition and integration, consistency checking, model checking, provers and reasoning. The nature of research in software varies slightly with the specific discipline researchers work in, yet there is much common ground and room for a sharing of best practice, frameworks, tools, languages and methodologies. Despite the number of experts we have available, little work is done at the meta level, that is examining how we go about our research, and how this process can be improved. There are questions related to the choice of programming language, IDEs and documentation styles and standard. Reuse can be of great benefit to research projects yet reuse of prior research projects introduces special problems that need to be mitigated. The research environment is a mix of creativity and systematic approach which leads to a creative tension that needs to be managed or at least monitored. Much of the coding in any university is undertaken by research students or young researchers. Issues of skills training, development and quality control can have significant effects on an entire department. In an industrial research setting, the environment is not quite that of industry as a whole, nor does it follow the pattern set by the university. The unique approaches and issues of industrial research may hold lessons for researchers in other domains. We take here the opportunity to warmly thank all the members of the ICSEA 2022 technical program committee, as well as all the reviewers. The creation of such a high-quality conference program would not have been possible without their involvement. We also kindly thank all the authors who dedicated much of their time and effort to contribute to ICSEA 2022. We truly believe that, thanks to all these efforts, the final conference program consisted of top-quality contributions. We also thank the members of the ICSEA 2022 organizing committee for their help in handling the logistics of this event. We hope that ICSEA 2022 was a successful international forum for the exchange of ideas and results between academia and industry and for the promotion of progress in software engineering advances

Lean Pre-production for Independent Game Development

Going indie is a video game industry term for moving from whatever one is doing now to being a full-time independent game developer. With the ease of digital distribution and the availability of game development tools, practically anyone is free to start making games professionally. Developing a successful video game takes a great deal of work, however. Many prospective developers bury themselves in code, burn out, and yet fail to turn a profit. Independent developers often don’t have the resources to take on the development process by sheer force. This makes proper planning indispensable: Making a successful game is much easier if as many informed design and project management decisions as possible are made in advance. Most of the hard choices are made during pre-production, which is the first stage in the process of video game development.Indie-pelikehitys on omatoimista, itsenäistä videopelikehitystä jonka tarkoituksena on tehdä tuottoa omakustanteisella peliprojektilla. Nykyaikana kynnys ryhtyä omatoimiseksi pelikehittäjäksi on erittäin pieni: sähköiset jakelukanavat ja pelkistetyt kehitystyökalut mahdollistavat sen, että kuka tahansa voi alkaa kehittää videopelejä. Menestyksekkään pelin tekeminen on kuitenkin erittäin haastavaa. Moni innokas pelikehittäjä lannistuu, sillä jo peliprojektin loppuun vieminen on äärimmäisen työlästä – puhumattakaan liikevoiton tavoittelusta. Omatoimisilla kehittäjillä ei yleensä ole voimavaroja selviytyä tuotantovaiheesta omin voimin. Tästä syystä huolellinen valmistautuminen on äärimmäisen tärkeää. Kehitysprosessi on huomattavasti helpommin hallittavissa, mikäli pelikehittäjä tekee oikeat toimenpiteet ennen tuotantovaiheen alkua. Monta tärkeää päätöstä pystytään tehdä esituotantovaiheessa ennen kuin riviäkään koodia on kirjoitettu

ME-EM 2015-16 Annual Report

Table of Contents Alumni: Leading with Simulation Education: Simulating the Future Faculty: Advancing Simulation Graduate Seminar Series Enrollment & Degrees Graduates Department News Faculty & Staff Alumni Donors Contracts & Grants Patents & Publicationshttps://digitalcommons.mtu.edu/mechanical-annualreports/1003/thumbnail.jp

The role of supplier relationship platforms in supply chain management- the case of Ecratum

Dissertation presented as the partial requirement for obtaining a Master's degree in Information Management, specialization in Information Systems and Technologies ManagementThe term supply chain can be defined as a process in which suppliers, manufacturers, distributors, and retailers are working together during the whole process of manufacturing the product and delivering it to the end-user. More specifically, all parties are involved in various phases from getting the raw material, transforming this material into a product that will satisfy users' needs and make sure this product reaches the end customer (La Londe & Masters, 1994). However, even though supply chains are created with the main aim to reduce costs, find the right partners to deliver the products and stay competitive on the market, proper management is crucial for the successful operation. Supply chain management (hereinafter: SCM), is all about the right optimization and strategic planning to identify, acquire, gain, allocate and manage all the needed resources that are involved in the workflow of achieving strategic objectives (Flynn, Harding, Lallatin, Pohlig & Sturzl, 2006)