Supporting agile team composition: a prototype tool for identifying personality (in)compatibilities

Extensive work in the behavioral sciences tells us that team composition is a complex activity in many disciplines, given the variations inherent across individuals' personalities. The composition of teams to undertake software development is subject to this same complexity. Furthermore, the building of a team to undertake agile software development may be particularly challenging, given the inclusive yet fluid nature of teams in this context. We describe here the development and preliminary evaluation of a prototype tool intended to assist software engineers and project managers in forming agile teams, utilizing information concerning members' personalities as input to this process. Initial assessment of the tool's capabilities by agile development practitioners suggests that it would be of value in supporting the team composition activity in real projects

Catching up with Method and Process Practice: An Industry-Informed Baseline for Researchers

Software development methods are usually not applied by the book.companies are under pressure to continuously deploy software products that meet market needs and stakeholders\u27 requests. To implement efficient and effective development processes, companies utilize multiple frameworks, methods and practices, and combine these into hybrid methods. A common combination contains a rich management framework to organize and steer projects complemented with a number of smaller practices providing the development teams with tools to complete their tasks. In this paper, based on 732 data points collected through an international survey, we study the software development process use in practice. Our results show that 76.8% of the companies implement hybrid methods.company size as well as the strategy in devising and evolving hybrid methods affect the suitability of the chosen process to reach company or project goals. Our findings show that companies that combine planned improvement programs with process evolution can increase their process\u27 suitability by up to 5%

A prototype tool to support extended team collaboration in agile project feature management

In light of unacceptable rates of software project failure agile development methodologies have achieved widespread industry prominence, aimed at reducing software project risks and improving the likelihood of project success. However, the highly collaborative processes embedded in agile methodologies may themselves introduce other risks. In particular, the fluid and diverse nature of agile team structures may mean that collaboration regarding what is to be delivered becomes more challenging. We have therefore developed a prototype tool intended to enable all stakeholders to have greater access to the features of the emerging system irrespective of their location, via remote feature management functionality. Software engineering experts have evaluated the initial prototype, verifying that it would enhance collaboration and is likely to assist teams in their handling of feature management

Co-existence of the \u27technical debt\u27 and \u27software legacy\u27 concepts

\u27Technical debt\u27 and \u27software legacy\u27 are concepts that both discuss a state of software that is sub-optimal, time constrained, and explain how this state can decrease an organization\u27s development efficiency. However, there is significant confusion in the way the software engineering community perceive these concepts. In this paper we perform an initial examination of technical debt and software legacy concepts, and examine their somewhat challenging co-existence. In motivating our work, we discuss previous survey results which show that practitioners believe that technical debt largely emerges from software legacy. We then identify sources of confusion in comparing popular definitions of both concepts. Finally, we map the use of the \u27technical debt\u27 and \u27software legacy\u27 concepts in existing research. We conclude that structured co-existence of these terms can be pursued with mutually beneficial gains

HVOF-Sprayed Al2O3-TiO2 Coatings Using Hybrid (Nano+Submicron) POwders: an Enhanced Wear Performance

Peer reviewed: YesNRC publication: Ye