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Sustainable agriculture is the backbone of food security systems and a driver of human well-being in global economic development (Sustainable Development Goal SDG 3). With the increase in world population and the effects of climate change due to the industrialization of economies, food security systems are under pressure to sustain communities. This situation calls for the implementation of innovative solutions to increase and sustain efficacy from farm to table. Agricultural social networks (ASNs) are central in agriculture value chain (AVC) management and sustainability and consist of a complex network inclusive of interdependent actors such as farmers, distributors, processors, and retailers. Hence, social network structures (SNSs) and practices are a means to contextualize user scenarios in agricultural value chain digitalization and digital solutions development. Therefore, this research aimed to unearth the roles of agricultural social networks in AVC digitalization, enabling an inclusive digital economy. We conducted automated literature content analysis followed by the application of case studies to develop a conceptual framework for the digitalization of the AVC toward an inclusive digital economy. Furthermore, we propose a transdisciplinary framework that guides the digitalization systematization of the AVC, while articulating resilience principles that aim to attain sustainability. The outcomes of this study offer software developers, agricultural stakeholders, and policymakers a platform to gain an understanding of technological infrastructure capabilities toward sustaining communities through digitalized AVCs.
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The objective of this research paper is to investigate the impact of COVID-19 on the factors influencing on-time software project delivery in different Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC) models such as Agile, Incremental, Waterfall, and Prototype models. Also to identify the change of crucial factors with respect to different demographic information that influences on-time software project delivery. This study has been conducted using a quantitative approach. We surveyed Software Developers, Project Managers, Software Architect, QA Engineer and other roles using a Google form. Python has been used for data analysis purposes. We received 72 responses from 11 different software companies of Bangladesh, based on that we find that Attentional Focus, Team Stability, Communication, Team Maturity, and User Involvement are the most important factors for on-time software project delivery in different SDLC models during COVID-19. On the contrary, before COVID-19 Team Capabilities, Infrastructure, Team Commitment, Team Stability and Team Maturity are found as the most crucial factors. Team Maturity and Team Stability are found as common important factors for both before and during the COVID-19 scenario. We also identified the change in the impact level of factors with respect to demographic information such as experience, company size, and different SDLC models used by participants. Attentional focus is the most important factor for experienced developers while for freshers all factors are almost equally important. This study finds that there is a significant change among factors for on-time software project delivery before and during the COVID-19 scenario. Copyright © 2023 by SCITEPRESS - Science and Technology Publications, Lda. Under CC license (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)
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The software industry is adopting the DevOps paradigm to an increasingly frequent extent. In addition, the trend of developing software in a distributed manner greatly increased as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, which forced team members from software companies to work remotely. We present the results of a Systematic Mapping Study (SMS) of how DevOps has been applied in distributed and global settings that adopts Global Software Development (GSD). The results were obtained from analysing 27 papers. The main conclusions obtained after carrying our SMS show that adopting DevOps in such settings by implementing certain practices brings several advantages to software companies, even though there are difficulties to be confronted when adopting DevOps in global and distributed contexts. Moreover, we (1) proposed definition of DevOps in distributed and global settings, (2) mapped the challenges detected with a list of well-known GSD risks and (3) mapped the benefits that can be obtained from applying certain practices identified and the challenges that should be overcame to obtain such benefits.
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The prolonged COVID-19 pandemic reduced the performance of the software developer team in the Indian IT industry because of numerous psychosocial challenges while working in a non-dedicated workspace. Therefore, using the lens of self-determination theory (SDT), the present study investigated the indirect effect of mindfulness on team performance via psychological safety and active remote engagement under the bounded condition of adhocracy culture. The web-based responses of 604 team members nested in 99 teams from 10 Indian IT companies were used to perform a multilevel analysis. The analyses were conducted using Mplus 8.0 version to test the hypothesis. The results showed a significant serial mediation role of psychological safety and remote engagement in the relationship between the mindfulness of software developers and team performance. The relationship between mindfulness and psychological safety becomes stronger when the adhocracy culture is high. Similarly, the relationship between mindfulness and team performance via the serial mediation of psychological safety and active remote engagement becomes stronger when the adhocracy culture is high. Similar to many psychological approaches, this study supports the postulates advocated by SDT, while emphasising the central role played by mindfulness.
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Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, there was a massive migration from working in the office to working from home (WFH) and the software development teams had to adapt to the new reality. This paper focused on how the agile teams dealt with the challenges of WFH and how this affected the software development process. To capture the perceptions of the agile teams, we carried out a survey that investigated the following aspects of WFH: work routine, collaboration, communication, productivity, transparency, challenges, and the software development process itself. The survey received 127 valid responses from agile team members and the results revealed that i) most of the members of agile teams considered the work continued as usual regardless of the place (office or remote);ii) 80% of members of agile teams mentioned an increase in productivity during WFH;iii) 85% of participants are using Scrum as management strategy;iv) communication between teams members during the remote working model was perceived as more effective;v) Microsoft Teams and Google Meets were the most used interactions tools by members of agile teams. Copyright © 2023 by SCITEPRESS - Science and Technology Publications, Lda. Under CC license (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)
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The Agile approach is focused on individuals and customer satisfaction, based on the dynamic and streamlined work of a team that is capable of adapting, and adapting the project to changing scenarios and demands. However, amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, Agile teams accustomed to in-person communication have encountered the challenges of working from home. The main objective of this research is to analyze the challenges generated by the pandemic context, and the consequent social distance, for the development of software projects that use Agile approaches within a large state-owned company and identify the effect it had on the course and results of the projects. The research was qualitative in nature and had two exploratory diagnostic stages. The findings indicate that there were no negative impacts of relevance on project deliveries. On the one hand, results indicated losses in socialization, in spontaneous exchanges of knowledge, and in interaction among teams, as well as a demand for greater engagement of professionals. Additionally, limitations were revealed for more complex discussions and knowledge management. The study highlights solutions that were found and/or suggested for many challenges, contributing to the literature on best practices for the Agile approach, and is focused on the unprecedented context of the COVID-19 pandemic. Our findings can contribute to other companies with a similar profile that work with Agile projects, besides contributing to building a dialogue between the academic and business environments. © 2023 Brazilian Institute for Information in Science and Technology. All rights reserved.
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In recent years, the Industry 4.0 concept has gained considerable attention from professionals, researchers and decision makers. For its part, the COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the importance of managing the agri-food supply chain to ensure the food that the population needs. Industry 4.0 and its extensions can address the needs of the agri-food supply chain by bringing new features such as security, transparency and traceability in line with sustainable development goals. This study aims to systematically analyze the literature to address the challenges and barriers against the application of industry 4.0 and its related technologies in the management of an agri-food supply chain. Currently, despite the large number of publications, there is no clear agreement on what Industry 4.0 is, and even less its extensions. The next revolution that includes new technologies and improves several existing technologies brings additional conceptual and practical complexity. Consequently, in this work we first determine the main components of I 4.0 and their extensions by studying the literature, and then, in the second step, define the agri-food supply chain on which I 4.0 technologies are applied. Two well-known databases-Web of Science and Scopus-were chosen to extract data for the systematic review of the literature. For the final evaluation, we identified 24 of 100 reviewed publications. The results provide an exhaustive analysis of the different I 4.0 technologies and their extensions that are applied in regards to the agri-food supply chain. In addition, we find 15 challenges that are classified into five major themes in the agri-food supply chain: technical, operational, financial, social and infrastructure. The four most important challenges identified are technological architecture, security and privacy, big data management and IoT (internet)-based infrastructure. Only a few articles addressed sustainability, which reaffirms and demonstrates a considerable gap in terms of the sustainable agri-food supply chain, with waste management being the one that has attracted the most attention. This review provides a roadmap for academics and practitioners alike, showing the gaps and facilitating the identification of I 4.0 technologies that can help address the challenges facing the efficient management of an agri-food supply chain.
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How integrating DFSS into agile software development can help address the human aspects of these processes A German university of applied sciences with about 5,500 students needed new software due to COVID-19-related laws and decrees that required universities to perform contact tracking in case of potential COVID-19 exposure. Agile is a software development philosophy based on using self-organized teams.2 The goal of agile is to develop a basic working version of the software quickly, and continuously improve the software and add more features in accordance with customer or stakeholder wishes.3 Unlike many other software development methods, agile does not have predefined stages or documents4 and is ideally suited to coping with evolving and changing stakeholder requirements.5 One advantage of agile is discovering software design flaws quicker than classic stage-based software development models.6 Finding design flaws quickly is advantageous because fixing the software design late in the project is costly and time consuming. The problem statement was a verbal "digitize contact tracking," and there were frequent attempts to expand the project to include additional objectives such as ensuring people maintained social distancing, registering students for study spaces and improving carbon dioxide monitoring. Leveraging DFSS While agile is well suited to software development, it is less suited to dealing with many of the organizational problems that were encountered. [...]future projects would benefit from integrating a DFSS framework into such projects.
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Purpose: As the novel coronavirus 2019 (COVID-19) impacts the world, software practitioners are collaboratively working remotely from home. The pandemic has disrupted software practitioners' productivity forcing changes to agile methodology adopted by software practitioners in software organizations. Therefore, this study aims to provide implication on the issues and recommendations for improving software practitioners' productivity and also examine the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on agile software development. Design/methodology/approach: This paper adopts a narrative literature review to provide early assessment based on secondary data from the literature and available document reports from studies published from 2019 to 2022 to explore software practitioners' productivity and agile software development during the working from home directive amidst the COVID-19 pandemic. A total of 60 sources which met the inclusion criteria were used to provide preliminary evidence grounded on secondary data from the literature. Descriptive analysis was used to provide qualitative findings from the literature. Findings: Findings from this study present the significance of working from home directive on agile software development and software practitioners' productivity. More importantly, findings from the secondary data shed light on software practitioners' productivity adopting agile software development amidst the COVID-19 pandemic. Additionally, the findings present virtual collaborative platforms used by software practitioners, technical and social barriers of agile software development during the pandemic and recommendations for remote agile software development. Originality/value: This study explores the significance of working from home directive on software practitioners' productivity during COVID-19 pandemic and further investigates how are software practitioners' productivity adopting agile software development practices amidst the COVID-19 pandemic. Besides, this study discusses the challenges software practitioners currently face and offers some strategies to bridge the gaps in agile software development to help software practitioners, system developers, software managers and software organizations adapt to the changes caused by the pandemic. © 2023, Emerald Publishing Limited.
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A common baseline is that Agile-based software development is conducted by co-located teams working in well-equipped office workspaces. The COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent lockdowns have cast new light on those assumptions. Suddenly, developers were no longer co-located with their teams and their well-equipped workspaces were vacant. How did the lockdowns, and the speed in which they were implemented, affect developers and development efforts? Did the lockdowns lead to diminished product quality? How was employee productivity impacted? A survey questionnaire was created to answer these questions. © 2022 IEEE Computer Society. All rights reserved.
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As the world is still recovering from the detrimental effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, one key aspect of the pandemic era were the global efforts for containment, case tracking and several other factors. While the scientific and governmental initiatives were largely successful and effective, a notable surge was observed in contributions from individuals and programming communities that developed their own software for COVID-19 by using data retrieval and analysis along with visualization methodologies. To achieve their goals, they turned their attention to knowledge exchange portals and asked questions regarding technological queries. In this paper, we present a collective platform that retrieves such questions from a well-known Q&A portal and visualizes the contained information. This platform serves as a useful tool for assessing programming and technological interest in COVID-19 related software development efforts while also promoting the open science principles. © 2022 ACM.
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Context: The Covid-19 pandemic led to a comprehensive transformation of how organizations operate and people work. Many companies, especially in the software development area, sent their employees to work from home in order to contain the spread of the virus. Nowadays, after two years of the pandemic, the companies introduce new regulations concerning the work organization for their employees. We notice a high variety of work organization types in practice, like work from home, work from anywhere, onsite work or mixed approaches. While some organizations integrated approaches like work from anywhere, others specify rules for part-time organizations onsite and work from home. This situation leads to new challenges for agile software development teams, as the agile practices in use are originally designed for onsite work and focusing on social aspects like collaboration. Also, the adaptions of specific agile practices due to the remote work during Covid-19 by the teams may do not cover the new circumstances of hybrid (distributed) work settings, while some team members work from home, others onsite in the office. Method: We conducted a quantitative survey in two agile software development teams in one company operating in a work from anywhere setting. Results: The results of this study show that the team members prefer to work remotely in future. However, some team members also want to work one or two days per week onsite in the office. This heterogeneous preferences of the workplace will lead to hybrid work organization and thus, to new challenges and advantages for agile software development team members. Conclusion: Based on our results, we discuss the needs of agile software development teams working in hybrid settings concerning equipment in the office, new software tools supporting the agile approach in use and the adaption of agile practices. Furthermore, we provide practical implications related to the need for sustainable flexibility on employee side concerning selecting the workplace. © 2022 IEEE.
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In this paper, we propose an analytical model that can analyze the impact of emergencies on open source software (OSS) development. As the core of this model, a metric system is used to comprehensively describe the OSS development process, which includes three dimensions: team activity, development activity, and development risk, with a total of 30 metrics. To demonstrate the effectiveness of the model, we construct an empirical study analyzing the impact of COVID-19 on OSS development. This study is based on the development process events between January 2019 and April 2022 belonging to 50 selected open source projects on GitHub. The results show that more than 72.4% of projects were negatively impacted following the COVID-19 outbreak. Interestingly, we observe that variants of covide-19 did not exacerbate its impact on software development. On the contrary, some project development activities have obviously resumed, indicating that the development team has adapted and gradually got rid of the impact of the epidemic. © 2022 IEEE.
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This research follows a previously published paper presented by Pourtoulidou and Frey which describes the conversion of a classroom-based to blended training for new employees entering aerospace companies [1]. This paper presents the lessons learned that derived from the analysis of the results after evaluating the blended training according to the participants', subject matter experts', and trainer's perspectives. Prior to the training, Pourtoulidou and Frey analyzed the demands of aerospace companies and the labor market in order to develop this introductory training [1]. The classroom-based training was developed, implemented and evaluated in 2018/2019. Utilizing this evaluation, the blended training consisted of an online phase, which lasted six months and provided access to lecture videos, literature material, quizzes, forums and virtual meetings over the Moodle platform. In the middle of the online phase, a face-to-face session took place in October 2021 in which the participants worked with practical applications and associated with subject matter experts operating directly in industrial projects. The lessons learned focus on the training development for employees' blended courses and on the specific limitations resulting from developing a joint training for entry-level aerospace engineers. The flexibility and further benefits of the training's online phase were well received from the participants, while the opportunity to meet, work and exchange experiences in person during the training was highly appreciated. The impact of COVID-19 on participants' experience and feedback was also visible and commented on. © 2022 SEFI 2022 - 50th Annual Conference of the European Society for Engineering Education, Proceedings. All rights reserved.
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This paper investigates the automated building of verified software environments that can be used in university courses. Over the last couple of years, it has become obvious that using online environments, video meetings, virtual lectures, online teaching, and learning is not a matter of choice. The coronavirus pandemic forced all parts of the education systems, and even of life, to go online. Deepening the research and development in the software automation field can lead to using various ways to allow university students and learners to "get in touch with” the real-world problems in software development. We developed such an approach by defining the steps, developing and evaluating specific automation processes of building an environment for secure software development. We defined both the functional and nonfunctional requirements for such a system, and the next major steps in development, such as virtualization setup (kvm), virtual environment (virtual machines) definition and creation, database configuration and management of user settings, have been defined and developed. The evaluation is performed according to the specifics defined in the Web technologies course, but the results and use are not limited to that course alone. In conclusion, the results of the evaluation conducted in a laboratory setting have been presented and appropriate scenarios, applications and future work have been defined. © 2023, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.
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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. © 2023, Springer Nature Switzerland AG.
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PurposeAs work-from-home policies were being implemented during Covid-19, organizations have been migrating their learning and development programs to digital platforms. This study aims to understand the role of employees' perceptions about four key attributes of online learning platforms (OLPs), namely, online environment, ease of use, online content (OC) and online engagement anchors in their levels of work engagement (WE). Further, it also investigates how the personality attributes of the employees and financial incentives for online learning influence this relationship.Design/methodology/approachUsing the snowball sampling technique, online questionnaires were distributed to about 350 employees in four IT firms in India who were working from home during the Covid-19 period. The total number of valid responses was 306 and consisted of software developers, technical leads, process specialists, testers and managers. The analysis was done using Python software (V.3.7.4) packages and Process Macro (pyprocessmacro V.1.0.8) developed for Python.FindingsPerceived OLP features significantly influence employee WE. OC and ease of use are significant influencers of employee WE. The perception of OLP features indirectly affects WE through the learner's personality characteristics. Moreover, the financial incentive to learn online shares a negative interaction effect with OLP features to influence WE.Originality/valueThe paper contributes to the existing literature on virtual knowledge management by identifying the driving factors that reinforce the acceptance of OLPs. Moreover, to the best of the authors' knowledge, this is the first attempt to link online learning management system key characteristics with employee outcome as engagement. Most of the previous work has ignored exploring such a relationship in an organizational setting.
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This paper presents our experience implementing Collaborative Working Spheres (CWS) in the context of an international undergraduate course on Global Software Development (GSD) during the COVID-19 pandemic. Many universities around the world increased their efforts in creating educational alternatives for adequately addressing the educational challenges that this pandemic has introduced. A particular case is the training of software skilled graduates to work in globally distributed environments because learning this topic requires a lot of practical work when student motivation could have been negatively affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. However, providing highly practical GSD courses during a pandemic is a challenging task for many of these universities. It is against this backdrop that we have developed an educational tool to provide CWS, enabling undergraduate students to acquire practical experience in GSD and improve their communication and teamworking skills, even during the COVID-19 pandemic. An international empirical evaluation was conducted involving students and teachers from seven universities in different countries around the world. The obtained results showed that our approach can make a significant contribution to the development of practical projects on undergraduate GSD courses with students developing their knowledge and social skills associated with this topic. The data collected on the teachers’perceptions suggested that our approach could also be useful in introducing the GSD approach at undergraduate level when social distancing is in place. Author
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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.
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The Italian Association for Stress Analysis (AIAS) was founded in 1971 by researchers from academia, research centers, and industry. AIAS was intended as a community where to discuss, share, and develop scientific knowledge related to all technical aspects of stress analysis. In the years, from an initial focus on experimental techniques, AIAS contributed considerably to the development of modern numerical methods and computational techniques for mechanical engineering design. In 2015, AIAS turned in the Italian Scientific Society of Mechanical Engineering Design.Today, AIAS is an institutional partner that supports the instances from academia in the subject area of mechanical engineering design. Every year, AIAS organizes a technical conference offering the possibility to present research updates, share new ideas, and foster collaborations. The AIAS conference has become a fundamental event for all those interested in current developments in mechanical engineering design and stress analysis, where to meet researchers, testing equipment, and software developers.The 51st AIAS Conference edition was held in Padova, Italy again in presence after two years of online-only events due to the COVID-19 pandemic.The response of researchers and students has been outstanding: over 200 oral contributions have been presented during the three days of the conference, with four parallel sessions. In addition to the thematic sessions on AIAS traditional subjects, special sessions on additive manufacturing, energy methods for structural analysis, circular design in mechanical engineering, and mechanical behavior under extreme conditions, have been successfully organized with the contribution of the AIAS technical committees.Among all contributions presented at the conference, 48 have been selected to be published after peer review, in this volume. This was made possible thanks to the active participation of all AIAS members, to the work of the AIAS Scientific Committee and Conference Papers Review panel (Profs Giovanni Meneghetti, AIAS Scientific Coordinator, Luciano Afferrante, Francesco Bucchi, Filippo Cianetti, Enrico Armentani, Marco Sasso). Their outstanding contribution is gratefully acknowledged.DisclaimerAIAS2022 Conference was held in presence on Sept. 7-10, 2022. Presentations were arranged in four parallel sessions with a time slot of 15 min assigned to each presenter. Approximately 250 participants attended the conference during the three days event. All sessions have been continuously monitored by the organizers to provide technical support. The conference ran smoothly, and the participants' feedback was very positive.