Requirements Engineering (RE) is one of the prime areas in software development. Since agile software development englobes several emerging techniques and advocates for continuous improvement, it urges the question of which agile RE practices are currently most used, their characteristics, and the challenges in their employment. The aim of this work is to investigate and categorize the collection and specification of agile requirements practices based on how professionals perceive their importance for a software project that applies agile methodologies. Thus, a survey was carried out with forty-six (46) Brazilian software development professionals, inquiring which methods are used for the collection and specification of agile requirements, as well as the features, benefits, and difficulties when employing the methods. The responses allowed us to perform data analysis and identify the relationships between the respondents’ experience and the viewpoints on the collection methods and the agile requirements specification. In addition, it was noted that the adoption of these methods is still very recent. They have mainly been used for less than five years. Moreover, it was noted that, for most respondents, there are yet significant challenges and advances to be made for better efficiency in applying the informed methods.
The social distancing practices adopted to contain the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic led many companies to migrate to remote work in a compulsory and unplanned way. This sudden transition to working from home has caused profound changes in personal and professional relationships. In this paper, we present the results of a qualitative observational study about the adaptations made in the software process activities of a software development coordinator of a Brazilian university. These adaptations aimed to support the transition to remote work during the pandemic, without letting the organization lose its essence in adopting agile practices. These adaptations were analyzed based on the technical aspects (hard skills) and behavioral aspects (soft skills) of the employees of the researched organization.
Due to concerns with agile testing scenario in Brazil, this paper presents the mapping (2010–2019) and analysis of the research on software testing published on Agile Methodology Brazilian Workshop (WBMA), Agile Brazil throughout these years. Such work aims to verify the development, the diversity of papers related to software testing and arising from the concerns with the studies of the testing scenario in agile methods in Brazil; this paper presents the mapping (2010–2019) and analysis on the development of research in software testing in papers published in the Brazilian Workshop on Agile Methods (WBMA), Agile Brazil. The paper used systematic literature review practices, enabling qualitative and quantitative analysis of the collected evidence. This effort aims to verify the growth, the diversity of approaches linked to the use of testing in the broader context of agile methodologies and to make notes on the profile of the papers, given the strengthening of studies in the area in the last decade, in spaces of academic discussion and applications in industry. We conclude that the number of publications has been growing over the years. However, the absolute number of papers published in all event editions is still not so expressive, especially considering the large number of software testing topics that exist or need improvement. As a result of this work, some points emerge about the relationship of authors and institutions with software testing research.
The work in communities has been expanding since the ascensus of technology-based companies, today called startups. Whether created informally or having a supporting company behind, it's hard to find any company that does not have at least a internal discussion group on the topic or support external initiatives related to topics and practices of interest. Today, events, formal and exclusive groups and meetups exist within this collaborative environment. This work aims to understand the motivations that these communities have to adopt Agile Methods in their management and how beneficial this can become for the management of knowledge transfer. 68 respondents stated that safe learning environments make the best positioned companies in their ecosystems and allow that new products are developed in a more collaborative way, even if unofficially, it can generate financial savings and learnings journeys.
Agile Software Development (ASD) has become the most chosen development method. The core fundamentals of ASD are based on Teamwork factors and how valuable it considers individuals and their interactions over processes and tools. Researchers have shown the positive impact of teamwork quality in ASD and the importance of assessing it to increase the chances of succeeding projects in this context. Based on this, some researchers have proposed instruments that can assess ASD teamwork quality. One of these instruments is a bayesian network-based model (TWQ-BN), with its practical utility assessed in a case study presented in previous work. However, there is a lack of practical use cases documented using TWQ-BN to identify process improvement opportunities. This paper addresses this gap by presenting two industry-based use cases to help potential users understand how to use TWQ-BN to define action items to improve the team’s effectiveness. This paper provides better guidance toward adopting TWQ-BN and shows how it can be used as a tool on iteration retrospectives to diagnose the teamwork quality.
