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To combat the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic, many new ways have been proposed on how to automate the process of finding infected people, also called contact tracing. A special focus was put on preserving the privacy of users. Bluetooth Low Energy as base technology has the most promising properties, so this survey focuses on automated contact tracing techniques using Bluetooth Low Energy. We define multiple classes of methods and identify two major groups: systems that rely on a server for finding new infections and systems that distribute this process. Existing approaches are systematically classified regarding security and privacy criteria.Copyright © 2021 ACM.
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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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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 college entrance examination is vital for program admission. Typically, entrance examinations are conducted onsite using paper and pens. When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, the entrance examination was lifted and physical gatherings were prohibited. Since many schools cannot offer an online admissions exam, they rely on grades and interviews to admit and qualify students for degree programs. However, academic standards differ between schools, and grades may not be enough to assess students' capacity. Thus, this study aims to develop an Online Proctored Entrance Examination System (OPEES) with Degree Program Recommender for colleges and universities to help institutions administer onsite or online entrance tests and generate course suggestions using a rulebased algorithm. The study employed the scrum methodology in software development. OPEES allows applicants to submit applications online, and institutions can manage user accounts, tailor exams and degree programs' criteria, manage exam dates, and assign proctors. Online proctoring using Jitsi, an opensource multiplatform voice, video, and instant messaging tool with end-to-end encryption, ensures exam integrity. The system's features were evaluated by 102 respondents, comprised of end-users (students and school personnel) and IT professionals, using the FURPS (Functionality, Usability, Reliability, Performance, and Supportability) software quality model. In the software evaluation, the overall system proved to be functional as perceived by the respondents, as manifested by the mean rating of 4.61. In conclusion, the system's architecture was deemed feasible and offers a better way to streamline admission examinations and determine a student's applicable degree program by enabling institutions to customize their exams and degree program requirements. It will be beneficial to look into recommendation system algorithms and historical enrollment data to improve the system's use case. © 2022 IEEE.
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Digital technologies enable apparel manufacturers to unlock solutions for new product development (NPD) challenges faced during the Covid-19 pandemic. A Product Configurator (PC) is the key to Mass Customization (MC) as it can employ to elicit customer requirements, which is essential in successful NPD. Even though some online PCs exist in apparel retail and product development, no one could gather customer requirements and deploy them in the NPD. This paper conceptualizes a Natural Language Processing (NLP)-based PC on eliciting customer requirements based on a systematic literature review and a basic concept of Design Space Analysis. Finally, it is contended that this knowledge can apply in relevant software development to modernize apparel design, development and online retail. © 2023 The authors and IOS Press.
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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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Hampton Roads Sanitation District (HRSD) provides wastewater conveyance and treatment services for 1.7 million people in southeast Virginia. Since 2017, HRSD has used Virtual Reality (VR) design reviews on more than 20 projects because of how accessible VR makes designs to every level within an organization, including the operations and maintenance staff responsible for maintaining the completed project. However, VR is not necessarily appropriate for all projects. This paper uses a recent HRSD project to show how HRSD approaches the use of VR, to what extent it is used, and how HRSD focuses on the operation and maintenance aspects of the designs during reviews. The paper also highlights features of the VR software, design-review best practices, limitations of two-dimensional design, how standard details can be incorporated into the model, and the added value from use of the internet-based, real-time reviews during the COVID-19 pandemic, when in-person meetings were impossible. Copyright © 2022 Water Environment Federation.
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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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Due to the steadily increasing digitalization and the lack of social contact during the Covid-19 pandemic, the workload, and stress of software developers increases. This may lead to psychological overwhelm, when negative emotions caused by heavy stress are not detected early enough to be treated effectively. Machine Learning made it possible to recognize emotions in human beings using physiological features automatically. Nonetheless, current research lacks of methods to detect psychological overwhelm in software developers during work early. Furthermore, means are necessary to react to such detection properly. In this research, we investigate the methods for enabling an automatic emotion regulation for psychological overwhelm of software developers using multimodal physiological sensors, Machine Learning and the qualitative inquiry method of Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis. The goal is to find solutions to improve the psychological well-being of software developers and the associated quality of software development through the use of emotion regulation techniques. Raising awareness of the problem of psychological overwhelm among software developers will lead to a more profound understanding of its impact on the overall quality of software development and the mental health of software developers. © 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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Derived from COVID-19 pandemic remote work is now a trend, involving new skills and variations on developers' wellbeing. Current students are going to live this new era in the labor market;it is needed to know if they are getting ready for this scenario. This paper presents an exploratory study based on a survey to assess how developers in industry and students in the academy experienced their wellbeing expressed in emotions during the pandemic, as well as how they practiced the soft skills involved in software development. The results of developers are considered as basis to assess how students are prepared for this context. The descriptive study has shown that developers experienced more positive emotions, while students had a mix of positive and negative emotions. In terms of soft skills, developers and students showed closer levels of practice, however students should reinforce some skills. © 2022 IEEE.
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The blood Transfusion Unit of the Indonesian Red Cross (UTD PMI) Pontianak is an organization engaged in blood donation services. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the bloodstock at UTD PMI Pontianak was insufficient. When the bloodstock was insufficient, donor seekers or the families of patients who needed blood would share messages asking for blood on social media. However, people often ignored these messages because they were not addressed to the right donor, as well as donors who often see similar messages but do not match their blood type. One of the factors that caused insufficient bloodstock at UTD PMI Pontianak was the lack of donor motivation in donating blood. The existing blood donor application still had some problems regarding the user interface, and there were still some users' needs that had not been met in the application. For a design to meet the users' needs, the researchers used the User-Centered Design (UCD) method to create a user interface for blood donation information media because UCD focused on user needs to achieve user goals. The prototype was tested for usability using the USE Questionnaire and follow-up interviews. From the results of the USE Questionnaire, the researchers obtained very good usability for every aspect, with a score above 92%. This research also showed that donors and donor seekers felt helped by the prototype of blood donor information media because it could meet the user needs in dealing with the problem they faced. © 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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The ravages of the COVID-19 and the continuous mutation of the COVID-19 make this war without gunpowder smoke unstoppable. With the continuous epidemic prevention and control, the resident closure and isolation by community is an effective way to block the large-scale development of the COVID-19. However, the shortage of daily necessities for residents during the lockdown period requires timely arrangements and deployment by local departments to ensure the basic living of the residents under lockdown. A necessary distribution and circulation system in the epidemic prevention and control community was designed and developed in this paper. The proposed necessity distribution and circulation system is mainly to help the government distribute supplies to residents and the circulation of necessities between residents more efficiently. The design process of the system includes the software development process of demand analysis, overall design, detailed design and programming;it was adopted CS three-tier architecture software development mode and the software development technology of .Net + SQLSERVER. The main business modules of the system are including necessity circulation between residents, government supply management, and volunteer necessity delivery business. The system can also be applied to the necessity circulation subsystem of the community healthy life service platform for the daily life of residents. © 2022 ACM.
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In the Covid-19 pandemic, ventilators became scarce, especially in countries with lower medical standards. A special project has managed to develop a complete ventilator as a kit using cheap parts and 3D printers. In the first two phases of the project a demonstrator has been developed which allows first tests. With hands-on experiments, one can already control the ventilator together with an artificial lung and learn how the ventilator works and what types of pumps, sensors, and electronic components are necessary for this. Due to its multidisciplinary character this project provides an excellent basis for the elaboration of educational and instructional material. Disciplines addressed comprise among others: informatics, physics, mathematics, biochemistry, medicine, material science, and electronics. In addition, the use of tools is demonstrated on a wide range covering 3D printing, IDEs for software development, wiring and soldering, etc. The knowledge gained through this project could be used for setting up a startup enterprise or as reference when starting research in the Edge Computing or IoT domain. The education and training will be carried out in small groups (four persons ideally) using a system for blended learning. It is envisaged to use the Mediathread Development [1] from the Columbia University which provides an excellent framework for the flipped classroom approach. Besides the academic domain also industries are the target for using the educational material which will be delivered by the project. © 2023, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.
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Agile companies are not uniform. Consequently, agile transformations are conceived broadly, ranging from adopting agile methods and practices in software development teams or functions to building all-encompassing enterprise agility. Moreover, the targeted effects of agility may vary, and the success of transformations and the attainment of agility are measured in various ways. In this paper, based on a recent industrial survey study, we scrutinize holistically why companies want to transform, what types of agility they are aiming at, and how they gauge transformations. The survey data was collected during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. Most of the respondents were in large or very large companies in Finland and Sweden in diverse industry domains. The main findings indicate that there are many reasons for companies to transform both to improve external outcomes (fore mostly responsiveness) and to develop internal capabilities (adaptability, organizational learning). Companies seemed to have aims and goals with respect to all types of agility, including business agility. As the nature of transformations and the companies' aims and goals vary, the transformations follow various means and measures. As a conclusion, for the hybrid era, we advise companies to consider how agility has benefited during the pandemic era, how hybrid work possibly affects the goals for agile transformations and the different facets of agility, and how to sustain agility in hybrid work. © 2022 IEEE.
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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