Abstract Accurate effort estimation in the software development industry remains a significant challenge due to requirements’ complexities, technology variability, and insufficient skilled members. To provide up-to-date insights on the state of effort estimation practices in Sri Lanka, we surveyed agile practitioners to identify the effort estimation techniques, types of metrics employed, levels of accuracy, and reasons for inaccuracies in estimates. Our analysis of 93 valid responses reveals that Planning Poker was the most popular estimation technique at 50.5%, while story points were the most widely used metric utilized by 61.3% of participants. Expert estimation was employed by 30% of respondents, and man-hours were used by 23.7%. The combination of Planning Poker and story points was most used, with a prevalence of 70.2%. Regarding the accuracy of estimations, respondents who used a combination of Planning Poker (61.7%) and expert estimation (25.5%) could complete their work within the estimated time without any extra effort. The top three categories of inaccurate estimates were quality-related, project management, and team-related issues.

How an organisation sustains agility over time, and the actions it takes when encountering challenges to its agility, are not well established. This study explores how an organisation sustained its agility beyond the initial adoption stage when its agility was founded on the values, principles, and practices of agile software development. A qualitative case study of the Retail organisation within a company was carried out. The Retail organisation had sustained agility for six years. Nine main challenges are: disparate levels of maturity, resistance to change, competing priorities, lack of team empowerment, dependencies between teams, onboarding people to the agile way of working, lack of role clarity, staff turnover, and incompatible funding model. Based on the solutions to these challenges, eight general actions applied to sustain agility are: a clear reason for implementing agile principles, continuously raising agile awareness, continuously adjusting the business operating model, embedding specialist agile roles, changing the funding model, making work visible, supporting agile teamwork, and monitor, measure, feedback, and act. The contributions of this article are practical. The challenges, detailed solutions, and general actions identified could be helpful for organisations that need to sustain agility in contexts similar to the case organisation. The findings should enable synthesis with future case studies and potential theory-building.

The coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic has forced an unprecedented global shift within higher education in the ways that we communicate with and educate students. This necessary paradigm shift has compelled educators to take a critical look at their teaching styles and use of technology. Computing education traditionally focuses on experiential, in-person activities. The pandemic has mandated that educators reconsider their use of student time and has catalysed overnight innovations in the educational setting. Even in the unlikely event that we return entirely to pre-COVID-19 norms, many new practices have emerged that offer valuable lessons to be carried forward into our post-COVID-19 teaching. This working group will explore what the post-COVID-19 academic landscape might look like, and how we can use lessons learned during this educational shift to improve our subsequent practice. The exploration will strive to identify practices within computing that appear to have been improved through exposure to online tools and technologies, and that should therefore continue to be used in the online space. In the broadest sense, our motivation is to explore what the post-COVID-19 educational landscape will look like for computing education.

Abstract Against the backdrop of the growing adoption of Kanban in a variety of software development domains, this paper reports on how a Systems Thinking approach was used to implement Kanban within a business unit of a government organization. Based on an in‐depth case study in the development organization, we describe how Kanban practices such as visualization, manage flow, classes of service, and board design were implemented. Stages in the double diamond design thinking process of exploring an issue more widely (divergent thinking) and then taking focused action (convergent thinking) were incorporated to adapt Kanban practices such as board design. Positive experiences included improved visibility, improved collaboration, and improvements in lead time. Challenges included lack of team buy‐in, setting work‐in‐progress limits, and short‐term Kanban coach. We present the key lessons learned and offer practical recommendations on how teams can better produce knowledge work in today's fast‐paced dynamic business environment.

DevOps is a set of principles and practices to improve collaboration between development and IT Operations. Against the backdrop of the growing adoption of DevOps in a variety of software development domains, this paper describes empirical research into factors influencing its implementation. It presents findings of an in-depth exploratory case study that explored DevOps implementation in a New Zealand product development organisation. The study involved interviewing six experienced software engineers who continuously monitored and reflected on the gradual implementation of DevOps principles and practices. For this case study the use of DevOps practices led to significant benefits, including increase in deployment frequency from about 30 releases a month to an average of 120 releases per month, as well as improved natural communication and collaboration between IT development and operations personnel. We found that the support of a number of technological enablers, such as implementing an automation pipeline and cross functional organisational structures, were critical to delivering the expected benefits of DevOps.

Context: Although agile software development (ASD) method use has grown dramatically in recent years, there is lack of empirical evidence for their effective use and predicted improvements in software development. This suggests that there is an imprecise understanding of their use and practice in organisations beyond the adoption phase. There is a lack of clarity on what 'usage' or 'effectiveness' mean in the context of ASD. In particular, the relationship between agile usage and agile effectiveness has not been investigated. Objective: To study the factors that impact usage of ASD methods and analyse the relationship between post-adoption use of ASD methods, i.e. agile usage and the results effectively achieved in terms of improvements in development outcomes, i.e. agile effectiveness. Method: An agile usage model of post-adoption or continued agile usage is tested using a survey instrument. The study employs variance-based or partial least squares structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM) implemented in SmartPLS version 2.0. Special attention is given to the quality of the measures used by developing reliable and valid measures of study variables. Results: The results from a partial least squares (PLS) analysis shows that relative advantage and agile coach significantly influence the usage of agile methods. Results also support the thesis that agile usage as measured by intensity and extent of agile method use significantly impacts agile effectiveness. Conclusions: The overall contribution of this research is to improve the effectiveness of ASD methods by increasing the likelihood that ASD methods will be effectively used and sustained beyond the adoption phase.

Context: Agile methodologies (AM) emerged as a popular alternative to formalized methods, and have gained widespread acceptance in both the academic and industrial contexts. While most research has focused on their early stages of adoption and use, there is little evidence that agile methodologies have been effectively used beyond the adoption stage. Objective: The objective of this paper is to gain a comprehensive understanding of the various factors that impact the sustained usage of agile methods. Method: We performed a systematic literature review to identify empirical studies relating to agile usage. We followed the guidelines provided for conducting systematic literature reviews in software engineering [1, 2] using the following distinct stages: 1) protocol development and the search strategy, 2) exclusion process, 3) data extraction, and 4) data synthesis. Results: Our review identified nine critical factors viz., Management Support, Attitude, Motivation, Team Composition, Training, Agile Mindset, Technical Competence and Expertise, Agile Engineering Practices, and Methodology Champion. Conclusions: Our review highlights the significance of nine critical factors that impact sustained usage of AM in organizations. Our findings also indicate that the right balance and combination of various factors with an emphasis on continuous improvement will be crucial for achieving true agile sustainability in organizations.