Automation and Artificial Intelligence in Software Engineering: Experiences, Challenges, and Opportunities

Automation and Artificial Intelligence have a transformative influence on many sectors, and software engineers are the actors who engineer this transformation. On the other hand, there is little knowledge of how automation and Artificial Intelligence impact software engineering practice. To answer this question, we conducted semi-structured interviews with experienced software practitioners across frontend and backend development, DevOps, R&D, integration, and leadership positions. Our findings reveal 1) automation to appear as micro-automation in the sense of automation of tiny and specific tasks, 2) automation as a side product of work, and bottom-up driven in software engineering, and 3) automation as a possible cause for cognitive overhead due to automatically generated notifications. Furthermore, we notice that our interview participants do not expect automation and artificial intelligence tools to substantially change software engineering\u27s essence in the foreseeable future

PDIA in the Balkans: The Western Balkans Alumni Association (WBAA) as Positive Deviance: EU Enlargement and Regional Cohesion

This chapter aims to portray why and how WBAA, as an organism, organization, entity, agent, actor, network, … produces emergent effects as a regional entity is a Positive Deviance, as recognized in theory, and more specifically within the Problem Driven Iterative Adaptation by Harvard’s Center for International Development. Positive Deviance is one of the core principles in the PDIA strategy—by “creating (and protecting) environments within and across organizations that encourage experimentation and positive deviance.” First we will briefly elaborate on PDIA and its concepts and describe and encode the distinctiveness of WBAA arguing why and how it is a positive deviance for our Balkans. The expected outcome: to inspire leaders, institutions, CSOs, citizens, academia, … to take the regional approach, moves beyond the silos of a country/domain, has functional bridges with developed countries (for knowhow, funding, coopetition, alignment), and shows “how” coopetition within Western Balkans is to be done. If volunteers can do it, others can surely follow. © 2023, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG