Exploring Norms in Agile Software Teams

The majority of software developers work in teams and are thus influenced by team norms. Norms are shared expectations of how to behave and regulate the interaction between team members. Our aim of this study is to gain more knowledge about team norms in software teams and to increase the understanding of how norms influence teamwork in agile software development projects. We conducted a study of norms in four agile teams located in Norway and Malaysia. The analysis of 22 interviews revealed that we could extract a varied set of both injunctive and descriptive norms. Our results suggest that team norms have an important role in enabling team performance.acceptedVersio

Challenges in Survey Research

While being an important and often used research method, survey research has been less often discussed on a methodological level in empirical software engineering than other types of research. This chapter compiles a set of important and challenging issues in survey research based on experiences with several large-scale international surveys. The chapter covers theory building, sampling, invitation and follow-up, statistical as well as qualitative analysis of survey data and the usage of psychometrics in software engineering surveys.Comment: Accepted version of chapter in the upcoming book on Contemporary Empirical Methods in Software Engineering. Update includes revision of typos and additional figures. Last update includes fixing two small issues and typo

J Med Genet

was previously implicated in periventricular nodular heterotopia (PVNH) in only five individuals and systematic clinical characterisation was not available. The aim of this study is to provide a comprehensive description of the phenotypic and genotypic spectrum of -related neurodevelopmental disorder. We collected detailed phenotypes of an international cohort of individuals (n=17) with variants assembled through the GeneMatcher platform. Missense variants were structurally modelled, and the impact of several were functionally validated. De novo variants (10 missense, 1 frameshift, 1 splice altering resulting in 9 residues insertion) in were identified among 17 unrelated individuals. Detailed phenotypes included intellectual disability (ID), microcephaly, seizures and PVNH. No specific facial characteristics were consistent across all cases, however microretrognathia was common. Various hearing and visual defects were recurrent, and interestingly, some inflammatory features were reported. MRI of the brain frequently showed abnormalities consistent with a neuronal migration disorder. We confirm the role of in an autosomal dominant syndrome with a phenotypic spectrum including severe ID, microcephaly, seizures and PVNH due to impaired neuronal migration

Do agile managed information systems projects fail due to a lack of emotional intelligence?

YesAgile development methodologies (ADM) have become a widely implemented project management approach in Information Systems (IS). Yet, along with its growing popularity, the amount of concerns raised in regard to human related challenges caused by applyingADMare rapidly increasing. Nevertheless, the extant scholarly literature has neglected to identify the primary origins and reasons of these challenges. The purpose of this study is therefore to examine if these human related challenges are related to a lack of Emotional Intelligence (EI) by means of a quantitative approach. Froma sample of 194 agile practitioners, EI was found to be significantly correlated to human related challenges in agile teams in terms of anxiety, motivation, mutual trust and communication competence. Hence, these findings offer important new knowledge for IS-scholars, project managers and human resource practitioners, about the vital role of EI for staffing and training of agile managed IS-projects

Implementing Ethics in AI : Initial Results of an Industrial Multiple Case Study

Artificial intelligence (AI) is becoming increasingly widespread in system development endeavors. As AI systems affect various stakeholders due to their unique nature, the growing influence of these systems calls for ethical considerations. Academic discussion and practical examples of autonomous system failures have highlighted the need for implementing ethics in software development. However, research on methods and tools for implementing ethics into AI system design and development in practice is still lacking. This paper begins to address this focal problem by providing elements needed for producing a baseline for ethics in AI based software development. We do so by means of an industrial multiple case study on AI systems development in the healthcare sector. Using a research model based on extant, conceptual AI ethics literature, we explore the current state of practice out on the field in the absence of formal methods and tools for ethically aligned design.peerReviewe

Implementing AI Ethics in Practice : An Empirical Evaluation of the RESOLVEDD Strategy

As Artificial Intelligence (AI) systems exert a growing influence on society, real-life incidents begin to underline the importance of AI Ethics. Though calls for more ethical AI systems have been voiced by scholars and the general public alike, few empirical studies on the topic exist. Similarly, few tools and methods designed for implementing AI ethics into practice currently exist. To provide empirical data into this on-going discussion, we empirically evaluate an existing method from the field of business ethics, the RESOLVEDD strategy, in the context of ethical system development. We evaluated RESOLVEDD by means of a multiple case study of five student projects where its use was given as one of the design requirements for the projects. One of our key findings is that, even though the use of the ethical method was forced upon the participants, its utilization nonetheless facilitated of ethical consideration in the projects. Specifically, it resulted in the developers displaying more responsibility, even though the use of the tool did not stem from intrinsic motivation.peerReviewe

Soft Competencies and Satisfaction Levels for Software Engineers : A Unified Framework

The importance of software engineers’ competency has long been established as a key pillar for the development of robust software in order to achieve quality software. Software engineering competency research is not necessarily lacking. Nevertheless, the satisfaction derived from using software competency needs more investigation. The aim of this study is to identify soft competencies from empirical data and create satisfaction levels for software engineers’ soft competencies. The result shows 63 soft competencies with three different satisfaction levels consisting of basic, performance and delighters. The paper contributes to the SEC research by highlighting the satisfaction levels of soft competency for the benefit of the educators (academia), software engineers (possessor) and users of software competency (practitioner).peerReviewe