Scrum's Methodology adaptations to meet the teleworking needs experienced by Software Development Teams

Among the different approaches to implementing Agility, the Scrum, created in the late 1980s, has stood out as the most used tool by the software development industry. Understand how the concepts underlying this approach, such as ceremonies and time boxes, have been adapted to meet the situation of telework imposed by social distancing to prevent the spread of the COVID-19 virus, experienced by the elements of the software development teams, presents an opportunity to learn what are the most efficient ways to use its process. It was observed how Scrum was applied in practice by software development teams during the mandatory telework period and from there, it will be look for better ways to do it, either by developing new technological tools, or using existing tools, to support the ceremonies, or, by creating new processes to support such evolution on methodology's process. © 2022 IEEE.

Criticism of the Risk Management Process in Scrum Methodology

Risk management in software engineering projects describes an integrated design to prevent project failure with methods, processes, and artifacts that continually identify, analyze, control, and monitor risks. For example, changes in people's lifestyles during the COVID-19 pandemic pose unexpected risks to the information technology industry. Agile is known as a methodology that is responsive and adapts quickly to change. Scrum is the most frequently used method based on the 2016 Agile development survey results. Many studies have produced a risk management framework for Scrum in recent years. However, repeating the risk analysis process and selecting a response to risk becomes a burden for stakeholders, so a framework is needed that can become a support system to help make decisions. This paper used a comparative study of risk management framework literature and literature that utilizes risk management tools and a case study of risk classification using 34k GitHub Issues for data mining. This study proposed a new framework that integrates datasets and machine learning into a risk management framework. The novelty in this paper is that the risk priority scheme is carried out using Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) and Multinomial Naive Bayes (MNB). Further analysis can be carried out to test the overall effectiveness of the framework. © 2022 IEEE.

Evaluation of Online Field Practice Information Systems Refer to Agile Method

The company participates in fulfilling the relevance of education and industry through field practice programs. To avoid the risk of spreading the covid-19 virus and ensure the program continues, the implementation of field practice is changed from face-to-face offline activities to online activities. The purpose of the research is to develop an online field practice information system using the agile scrum method and evaluate the effect of the information system (online mentoring activities (X1) and features contained in the application (X2)) on the level of availability of field practice activities (Y) in the company. The information system development method uses the agile scrum method was chosen because it is able to produce quality software and can adapt to changes continuously. The information system is intended to better organize field practice activities for participants and companies so that all parties can benefit from field practice activities. A survey was carried out by distributing questionnaires to respondents with a respondent profile of 90% of students, 8% of employees who became supervisors for field practices, and 2% of employees who became admins of field practices. This survey is distributed via a google form with 100% of respondents filling out and returning the survey results. The questionnaire distributed contained questions about online mentoring activities (X1) and the features in the application (X2) to measure the level of availability of the implementation of field practice through the information system (Y). Based on the evaluation results, it was found that online mentoring activities (X1) and features in the application (X2) have an influence of 63.4% on the availability of field practice activities (Y) in the company. © 2022 IEEE.

Little Stakeholder Communication in Distributed Scrum Projects During the Covid-19 Period

Agile methods have recently been popular by software development teams, with Scrum being the prominent process over the last decade. In Scrum, the Scrum Master serves the developers, the Product Owner, and the organization by coaching, leading, mentoring, planning, removing impediments, etc. Additionally, the Scrum Master is accountable for establishing the developer’s effectiveness. The global pandemic of Covid-19 changed the world unexpectedly in March 2020. Work has mostly shifted to a remote setting, and meetings have mostly transferred to being remote. People have had to adapt to these new circumstances worldwide. This research aimed to explore the changes that Scrum Masters and their teams have had to face during the first year of the Covid-19 period by increasing distributed working and the changes in the Scrum Master’s responsibilities. The results indicate that the most significant change has been decreasing communication with stakeholders and users after working more distributed. Additionally, not meeting socially, as the teams did before, has been a big challenge for the Scrum Teams. © 2022, IFIP International Federation for Information Processing.

A Playful Approach to Learn Scrum through Distant Collaboration using Online Whiteboards

We present an approach for teaching introductory Scrum concepts through a playful online collaborative activity. It was conducted with 1st-semester students who never had any in-person contact and started their course under emergency online teaching during the Covid-19 pandemic. We adapted the Lego4Scrum approach and instead of plastic bricks, we combined an online whiteboard (Miro) with a communication tool (Discord) for teams. © 2022 Owner/Author.

Evaluating students' perception of Scrum through a learning game

Games for learning help students and professionals to incorporate new knowledge through a playful experience. With the popularization of virtual education (partially due to COVID-19), there is a need for new tools that complement virtual educational environments. To deal with this need, we present Scrum Game, a mobile application game that aims to support the Scrum software methodology teaching and training. Scrum Game offers 42 activities grouped in levels with specific learning goals. This paper reports on a controlled experiment that evaluates Scrum Game in a course with more than 160 students. We assessed Scrum Game's effectiveness in terms of (i) user performance (i.e., students' marks and number of levels/activities completed) and (ii) user experience (i.e., usability). We found that students who used Scrum Game outperformed those who did not use it. We also found that students think that Scrum Game exhibits an enjoyable user experience. © 2022 Wiley Periodicals LLC.

Optimizing Scrum's Effectiveness in Distributed Software Development Environment during the Pandemic Era: A Systematic Literature Review

The event of the Covid-19 pandemic and the prerequisite for social distance has caused significant disturbances in the realm of work, including software development companies, including software development companies. The implementation of Work From Home (WFH) is a step taken by the government and private organizations to remain productive in the pandemic era. Currently, there are many methods that companies can implement to support the software development process. The Scrum method is part of agile methods that can speed up and adaptability in software development project management. This study discusses a systematic literature review on optimizing the effectiveness of Scrum in a distributed software development environment during the pandemic era. Using data systematically extracted from this work, we offer a strategy to increase the effectiveness of Scrum implementations in a distributed software development environment during the pandemic era. This approach helps practitioners and researchers to better understand the problems of distributed software development projects and develop more effective project management solutions. © 2022 IEEE.

Impact of Remote Working During Covid-19 Pandemic on Scrum Team: Experts View on Indonesian E-Commerce Companies Case

The Covid-19 pandemic has changed many things in our activities, including how we work. Almost all countries, including Indonesia, require remote working or working from home, including technology companies. Many technology companies use Scrum as a framework for their software development. Because of Scrum framework flexibility, organizations with different work cultures can adapt. However, the Covid-19 pandemic forced the team to work remotely and adjust to this separation situation. In this research, we want to determine how this situation influences software development activities in Scrum-based software development in Indonesia. We interview Scrum Experts in three leading e-commerce companies in Indonesia during the pandemic in 2021. Experts found no significant obstacles or impacts when running Scrum during the Covid-19 pandemic remote working. As the research result, the organization needs to consider technical and non-technical aspects to maintain the Scrum team's productivity during the Covid-19 pandemic. Based on interview and survey, as many as 37% of expert Scrum Team state that the product backlog management needs attention because most Scrum teams don't regularly manage the tasks on the product backlog item, so old tasks are drowned out with lots of new tasks added to the list. The Scrum team must also pay more attention to self-discipline to stay focused while working from home. As many as 73% of expert Scrum Team express that the Indonesian E-Commerce Companies must also provide the Scrum team with self-development initiatives to remain motivated. © 2022 ACM.

Agile Teams Working from Home During the Covid-19 Pandemic: A Literature Review on New Advantages and Challenges

Whilst co-location is the common and preferred kind and key standard for self-organizing agile teams, this option is not always possible for some organizations that have to lead to the distribution of teams and/or individuals in one or another form, especially because of Sars-Cov-2 pandemic (Covid-19) today. The pandemic has forced a shift to virtual working for many organizations, which makes it necessary to investigate its possible effects on the self-organizing agile teams. In this manner, this study aims to investigate emergent challenges and advantages arising from working at home for self-organizing agile teams where every team member works from home with the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic by systemically reviewing the literature. Finally, all the findings, derived from the literature, were discussed from coordination, collaboration and communication, agile practices, agility, emotions and feelings, leadership, productivity, and quality aspects. The results demonstrate that along with some specific challenges for the agile teams during the pandemic, there are several advantages of working at home for them. © 2022, Springer Nature Switzerland AG.

Digital Ecosystem for Children’s Rehabilitation with Psychomotor Deficit

Introduction. In this paper we review the change that the psychomotor deficit’s children rehabilitation system has had to further adapt due to the COVID-19 pandemic, explaining the importance of early care with the support of computer technologies. Because of the health emergency, many patients with a motor disability couldn’t assist to the places that provided therapy services of various kinds, joined to the fact that therapists also had to avoid crowds in their rehabilitation centers and thus not spread the virus in this vulnerable population. Methodology. The approach used is a mixed approach, with children of 0 to 5 years old diagnosed with psychomotor deficit due to a development disorder which are coursing initial education as the objects of study. The instruments used have been observation with action research. Results. A solution is shown creating a digital ecosystem model that inserts Scrum agile methodology for the children’s rehabilitation process, that allows interaction between all the actors in the process, such as children, parents or guardians, therapists, doctors, and specialists. Some related works are mentioned that offer a broader perspective of the scope that this technological approach has been generating. The proposed solution is tested in a study case at the APPAC Association. Discussion-Conclusion. The proposed model needs a lot of iterations to consider his value and get more detailed information about user experience and the perceived benefits at psychomotor deficit. It discloses important results with technologies’ use to work in the future. © 2021, Springer Nature Switzerland AG.

Gamification of strategic thinking: A COTS boardgame for learning scrum, strategy development and strategy implementation

The Bundeswehr Command and Staff College (BCSC) facilitated the Gamification of Strategic Thinking seminar from 11. Nov 2020 - 24. March 2021 with students from the Hamburg University of Technology (TUHH) and Staff Officers from the Bundeswehr Office for Defence Planning. This paper describes the seminar from construction to end, the sophisticated online facilitation, and the results and evaluation. Thereby, it contributes to discussing how to implement commercial of the shelf (COTS) conflict simulations (wargames) to education, particularly for political science and management. The seminar used the COTS board game 'Scythe' as the strategy development and strategy implementation environment. Seminar goals were applying management tools like SWOT-Analysis, Kanban Board, and the OODA-Loop (Observe, Orient, Decide, Act) to strategy development and strategy implementation in a competitive environment characterised by volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity (VUCA). Six Teams consisting of five players each competed at the end of the seminar for three days, had to use the decision-making process several times, and faced the consequences of past decisions. Furthermore, four team members had to Red-Team other competitors and learned how to implement this (business) Wargaming technique into the decision-making cycle. Finally, all participants had to develop a strategy, either their own or their adversary's strategy. The seminar was conducted in eight sprints, following the Scrum framework for agile project management in an agile education approach. Students had to practice an agile mindset, followed the scrum events Sprint Planning, Daily Scrums, Sprint Review and Sprint Retrospective, taking care of the Project Backlog, honouring the Scrum Values courage, focus, commitment, respect, and openness. The lead author planned the seminar as a distributed learning experience with an on-premises final. However, due to COVID-19, the TUHH and the BCSC cancelled the on-premises final. As a result, the lead author had to facilitate the complete seminar entirely distributed using various web 2.0 collaboration tools like Slack, Trello, Zoom and, of course, WhatsApp. The seminar was evaluated regarding the Learning Objective-Game Design framework and the Agile Education approach. This paper provides a new perspective on combining agile education, using a Scrum framework as the organisational overlay over the curriculum, and explicit gamification, using a COTS wargame. It is an update to the ECGBL 2020's paper. In comparison to serious games, explicit gamification is supposed to provide the element of fun by design. © The Authors, 2021. All Rights Reserved.