4,461 research outputs found
Bridging the Gap Between Research and Practice: The Agile Research Network
We report an action research-oriented approach to investigating agile project management methods which aims to bridge the gap between academic research and agile practice. We have set up a research network of academics from two universities, through which we run focussed project-based research into agile methods. Organisations are invited to suggest an āagile challengeā and we work closely with them to investigate how challenge affects them. Our approach is both academic and practical. We use appropriate research methods such as interviews, observation and discussion to clarify and explore the nature of the challenge. We then undertake a detailed literature review to identify practical approaches that may be appropriate for adoption, and report our findings. If the organisation introduces new practices or approaches as a result of our work, we conduct an academic evaluation. Alternatively, if we uncover an under-researched area, we propose undertaking some basic research. As befits the topic, we work iteratively and incrementally and produce regular outputs.
In this paper we introduce our approach, overview research methods used in the agile research literature, describe our research model, outline a case study, and discuss the advantages and disadvantages of our approach. We discuss the importance of producing outputs that are accessible to practitioners as well as researchers. Findings suggest that by investigating the challenges that organisations propose, we uncover problems that are of real relevance to the agile community and obtain rich insights into the facilitators and barriers that organisations face when using agile methods. Additionally, we find that practitioners are interested in research results as long as publications are relevant to their needs and are written accessibly. We are satisfied with the basic structure of our approach, but we anticipate that the method will evolve as we continue to work with collaborators
Overcoming challenges in collaboration between research and practice: the agile research network
There is wide acceptance in the software engineering field that industry and research can gain significantly from each other and there have been several initiatives for encouraging collaboration between the two. However there are some often-quoted challenges in this kind of collaboration. For example, that the timescales of research and practice are incompatible, that research is not seen as relevant for practice, and that research demands a different kind of rigour than practice supports. These are complex challenges that are not always easy to overcome. For the last year we have been using an approach designed to address some of these challenges and to bridge the gap between research and practice, specifically in the agile software development arena. So far we have collaborated successfully with two partners and have investigated two practitioner-driven challenges with agile. In this short paper we will introduce the approach, how it addresses the collaboration challenges between research and practice, and describe the lessons learned from our experience
Bridging the gap between research and agile practice: an evolutionary model
There is wide acceptance in the software engineering field that industry and research can gain significantly from each other and there have been several initiatives to encourage collaboration between the two. However there are some often-quoted challenges in this kind of collaboration. For example, that the timescales of research and practice are incompatible, that research is not seen as relevant for practice, and that research demands a different kind of rigour than practice supports. These are complex challenges that are not always easy to overcome. Since the beginning of 2013 we have been using an approach designed to address some of these challenges and to bridge the gap between research and practice, specifically in the agile software development arena. So far we have collaborated successfully with three partners and have investigated three practitioner-driven challenges with agile. The model of collaboration that we adopted has evolved with the lessons learned in the first two collaborations and been modified for the third. In this paper we introduce the collaboration model, discuss how it addresses the collaboration challenges between research and practice and how it has evolved, and describe the lessons learned from our experience
Targeting beliefs and behaviours in misophonia: a case series from a UK specialist psychology service.
Misophonia, a disorder of decreased sound tolerance, can cause significant distress and impairment. Cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) may be helpful for improving symptoms of misophonia, but the key mechanisms of the disorder are not yet known. This case series aimed to evaluate individual, formulation-driven CBT for patients with misophonia in a UK psychology service. A service evaluation of one-to-one therapy for patients with misophonia ( =19) was conducted in a specialist psychology service. Patients completed an average of 13 hours of therapy with a focus on the meaning applied to their reactions to sounds and associated behaviours. Primary outcome measures were the Misophonia Questionnaire (MQ) and the Amsterdam Misophonia Scale (A-MISO-S). Repeated measures -tests were used to compare scores from pre-treatment to follow-up, and reliable and clinically significant change on the MQ was calculated. Scores significantly improved on both misophonia measures, with an average of 38% change on the MQ and 40% change on the A-MISO-S. From pre-treatment to follow-up, 78% of patients showed reliable improvement on the MQ and 61% made clinically significant change. Limitations included a lack of control group, small sample size, and the use of an outcome measure that had not been thoroughly validated for a treatment-seeking sample. These results suggest that one-to-one, formulation-driven CBT for misophonia is worth exploring further using experimental design. Potential mechanisms to explore further include feared consequences of escalating reactions, the role of safety-seeking behaviours and the impact of early memories associated with reactions to sounds
Using Active Shape Modeling Based on MRI to Study Morphologic and Pitch-Related Functional Changes Affecting Vocal Structures and the Airway
Copyright Ā© 2013 The Voice Foundation. Published by Mosby, Inc. All rights reserved.Peer reviewedPostprin
Social and Communication Challenges for Agile Software Teams
Agile methods are being widely used in industry and government projects as a way of delivering IT software projects. We report results from a survey about agile team work and a follow-up interview study. Themes emerging from the interviews were team tension, method adaptation and cultural change. We discuss the implications of practitionersā experiences and views, and highlight some of the social and ethical challenges for IT developers working in organisations that adopt agile methods. We take as the focus of our work, a view that cultural shifts are essential to agile working, and that these require an intensive commitment from individuals, teams and organisations
Revolutionaries and spies: Spy-good and spy-bad graphs
We study a game on a graph played by {\it revolutionaries} and
{\it spies}. Initially, revolutionaries and then spies occupy vertices. In each
subsequent round, each revolutionary may move to a neighboring vertex or not
move, and then each spy has the same option. The revolutionaries win if of
them meet at some vertex having no spy (at the end of a round); the spies win
if they can avoid this forever.
Let denote the minimum number of spies needed to win. To
avoid degenerate cases, assume |V(G)|\ge r-m+1\ge\floor{r/m}\ge 1. The easy
bounds are then \floor{r/m}\le \sigma(G,m,r)\le r-m+1. We prove that the
lower bound is sharp when has a rooted spanning tree such that every
edge of not in joins two vertices having the same parent in . As a
consequence, \sigma(G,m,r)\le\gamma(G)\floor{r/m}, where is the
domination number; this bound is nearly sharp when .
For the random graph with constant edge-probability , we obtain constants
and (depending on and ) such that is near the
trivial upper bound when and at most times the trivial lower
bound when . For the hypercube with , we have
when , and for at least spies are
needed.
For complete -partite graphs with partite sets of size at least , the
leading term in is approximately
when . For , we have
\sigma(G,2,r)=\bigl\lceil{\frac{\floor{7r/2}-3}5}\bigr\rceil and
\sigma(G,3,r)=\floor{r/2}, and in general .Comment: 34 pages, 2 figures. The most important changes in this revision are
improvements of the results on hypercubes and random graphs. The proof of the
previous hypercube result has been deleted, but the statement remains because
it is stronger for m<52. In the random graph section we added a spy-strategy
resul
Frog and Toad at the Academy: Gareth B. Matthews on How Childrenās Literature Goes Philosophical
Gareth B. Matthews (1929ā2011) inaugurated the study of philosophy in childrenās literature by simultaneously arguing (1) that philosophy is essentially an encounter with certain kinds of perplexities, (2) that genuine philosophical perplexities are readily found in many childrenās stories, and (3) that many children are capable of appreciating and enjoying them. He wrote 58 reviews of philosophical childrenās stories and co-authored a series of teacher guides for using such stories. Following Matthewsā example, others have produced resources recommending childrenās stories as stimuli for intergenerational philosophical dialog. In our research, we study and systematize the different ways that Matthews understood childrenās stories to go philosophical. Here, we introduce five of those ways: philosophical story irony, philosophical story fancy, thought experiment, philosophical fable, and philosophical story realism. For each of these ways, we define a set of literary elements and describe the kind of philosophical perplexity they invite, illustrating with examples from childrenās literature reviewed and discussed by Matthews. We intend our article to shed new light on Matthewsā scholarship, to guide (ourselves and others) in locating some of the elements in childrenās stories that occasion different types of philosophical perplexity, and to spark new conversations among philosophers and educators about this promising field
Relationships Between Vocal Structures, the Airway, and Craniocervical Posture Investigated Using Magnetic Resonance Imaging
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