Certification as a Service

The development of industry 4.0 and smart energy IT-Components relies on highly standardized communication protocols to reach vendor-independent interoperability. In innovative and fast-changing environments, the support of standard protocols increases the time to market significantly. In the energy domain, the business models and the regulatory frameworks will be updated more often than the protocols. Thus agile development and supporting standardized protocols at the same time seems to be an issue. Here we will present a new proposal for standardization and certification processes as well as an architecture for a certification platform. Both will improve the support of agile development in the industry and energy domain.

Is It Possible to Apply Agile Methods to Contribute to the Linux Kernel?

In this document, we describe the experience of teaching Agile Methods for developing projects related to the Linux Kernel, during the XP Lab course. In 2018, the first project related to this context emerged. This project had the objective of making adjustments to the driver for Linux IIO subsystem. The second project was developed in 2019 and aimed to refactor the Ethernet driver used in the kernel of a Brazilian Single Board Computer. Based on 19 years of experience offering the XP Lab course, we consider the development of these projects to be a challenging teaching activity, which deserves to be presented and discussed with students, educators, and professionals. Our aim is to show that it is possible to adapt Agile Values to different software development settings.

Towards Specific Software Engineering Practices for Early-Stage Startups

In this position paper, our goal is to argue the need for specific software development practices to early-stage startups. In order to reach this goal, we discuss the consequences of innovative and market-driven contexts, which are two of the key elements when describing software startups. We also argue that these practices could be applied to innovative initiatives within established companies since they share similar characteristics and challenges as those from startups.

Product Roadmap Alignment – Achieving the Vision Together: A Grey Literature Review

Context: A product roadmap is an important tool in product development. It sets the strategic direction in which the product is to be developed to achieve the company’s vision. However, for product roadmaps to be successful, it is essential that all stakeholders agree with the company’s vision and objectives and are aligned and committed to a common product plan. Objective: In order to gain a better understanding of product roadmap alignment, this paper aims at identifying measures, activities and techniques in order to align the different stakeholders around the product roadmap. Method: We conducted a grey literature review according the guidelines to Garousi et al. Results: Several approaches to gain alignment were identified such as defining and communicating clear objectives based on the product vision, conducting cross-functional workshops, shuttle diplomacy, and mission briefing. In addition, our review identified the “Behavioural Change Stairway Model” that suggests five steps to gain alignment by building empathy and a trustful relationship.

Operationalizing Agile Methods: Examining Coherence in Large-Scale Agile Transformations

Following the highly pervasive and effective use of agile methods for software development, attention has now turned to the much more difficult challenge of applying these methods in large scale, organization-wide development. However, identifying to what extent certain factors influence success and failure of sustaining large-scale agile transformations remains unclear and there is a lack of theoretical frameworks to guide such investigations. By adopting Normalization Process Theory and specifically ‘coherence’, we compare two large-scale agile transformation case studies and the different perspectives individuals and teams had when faced with the problem of operationalizing the agile method as part of their large-scale agile transformation. The key contributions of this work are: (i) this is a first attempt to present the results of a comparison between a successful and failed large-scale agile transformations; and (ii) we describe the challenges in understanding the rationale, differences, value, and roles associated with the methods to support the large-scale agile transformation. We also present future research for practitioners and academics on large-scale agile transformation.

Spotify Tailoring for Architectural Governance

Organisations usually tailor Agile methods to fit their needs best. Spotify has developed its own Agile culture to facilitate software development for hundreds of developers across multiple cities. The Spotify model has become influential among agile proponents and hence formed the basis of methods used in other organisations. We have identified a lack of research into agile architecture using the Spotify model. To explore How can architectural governance increase the autonomy of teams when using the Spotify model?, an intervention embedded case study was conducted in a multinational FinTech organisation, using the Spotify model. New processes were introduced by developing and evaluating an approach to Agile architectural governance. This approach incorporates a structural change and a change management process. We conducted 6 semi-structured open-ended interviews and direct observations of Agile practices. The collected data was analysed using Thematic Analysis and informed by some Grounded Theory techniques. The practitioners in our study report benefits of this evaluated approach. These benefits include transforming architectural based decision into decentralised based decision-making, strengthening the autonomy of squads through aligning architectural based decisions, sharing the architectural knowledge among the squads, and other benefits. We identify the characteristics and benefits of our evaluated approach to Agile architectural governance using the Spotify model. Also, we identify guidelines and challenges for those wishing to adopt this approach.

Crowd Agile Model for Effective Software Development

Crowd Sourced Software Development (CSSD) is becoming popular in software development industries due to reduced cost and efficiency. Many companies are moving towards crowdsourcing, and have already adopted Agile Software Development (ASD). However, CSSD differs from ASD in many ways due to its distributed nature. Although there is little research on the integration of these two approaches, whereas at the same time the combination of the two is advocated by some. It is deemed necessary to identify and resolve the issues emerged while integrating CSSD and ASD. This study hence intends to explore the issues emerged as a result of integrating agile and CSSD and propose a Crowd Agile model that will help in effective software development.

What Key Aspects Do ICOs Reveal About Their Businesses?

Blockchain technologies disrupt industries by enabling decentralized and transactional data sharing across a network of untrusted participants, among others. Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs) are a novel form of crowdfunding through which hundreds of blockchain-enabled businesses manage to raise billions of dollars in total only in United States. However, there is a lack of understanding of the ICO phenomenon especially related to the business aspects. In this paper, we describe the results of an exploratory study of 91 ICOs and identify the key business model elements that ICOs reveal in their websites and whitepapers. Furthermore, we also note the immaturity and lack of transparency of the business aspects of businesses behind the ICO campaigns.

Exploring the Product Owner Role Within SAFe Implementation in a Multinational Enterprise

[Context] Agile development methods are highly popular across software organizations. To leverage benefits in larger enterprises, Agile development methods have to be scaled. Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe) is the most commonly used scaling framework. Performing of the Product Owner role has been identified as crucial in project success in large-scale environments. Staffing the right Product Owner is one of the challenges of adopting SAFe. [Motivation] Research papers focused on Product Owner in SAFe are scarce. Our study outcomes help enterprises to understand the Product Owner role in SAFe and therefore contribute to the removal of challenges with finding the right Product Owners. Additionally, we aim to improve the research community’s understanding of the Product Owner role within the context of SAFe. [Method] Qualitative data were collected through three semi-structured interviews and analyzed using deductive content analysis. [Results] This paper presents the initial results of a single case study. We found out that many activities identified for Product Owners in previous research are not carried out by Product Owners in this particular SAFe implementation.

Understanding Work Practices of Autonomous Agile Teams: A Social-psychological Review

The purpose of this paper is to suggest additional aspects of social psychology that could help when making sense of autonomous agile teams. To make use of well-tested theories in social psychology and instead see how they replicated and differ in the autonomous agile team context would avoid reinventing the wheel. This was done, as an initial step, through looking at some very common agile practices and relate them to existing findings in social-psychological research. The two theories found that I argue could be more applied to the software engineering context are social identity theory and group socialization theory. The results show that literature provides social-psychological reasons for the popularity of some agile practices, but that scientific studies are needed to gather empirical evidence on these under-researched topics. Understanding deeper psychological theories could provide a better understanding of the psychological processes when building autonomous agile team, which could then lead to better predictability and intervention in relation to human factors.