Context We talk of the internet as digital infrastructure; but we leave the building of rails and roads to the quasi-monopolistic platform providers that benefit from both vendor and customer log-in. Decentralised architectures provide a number of advantages: They are potentially more inclusive for small players; more resilient against adversarial events, and seem to generate more innovation. However, it is not well understood how to evolve, adapt and govern decentralised infrastructures. Objective This article reports empirical qualitative research on the development and governance of the Beckn Protocol, an open source protocol for decentralised transactions, the successful development of domain-specific adaptations, and implementation and scaling of commercial infrastructures based on it. It explores how the architecture and governance support local innovation for specific business domains, and how the domain-specific innovations feed back into the development of the core concept Method The Beckn Protocol is researched as a defining element of a software ecosystem underpinning infrastructures for digital commerce. The research applied a case study approach, combining interviews with core members of the Beckn community; triangulated by interviews with community leaders of domain specific adaptations and by analysis of online documents and the protocol itself. Results The article shows the possibility of a decentralised approach to IT Infrastructures. It analyses the Beckn Protocol, domain specific adaptations, and networks built on them with respect to architecture and evolution, community and governance, the outcome, and communication and collaboration. Based on this analysis, a number of generative mechanisms, socio-technical arrangements that support adoption, innovation, and scaling of infrastructures are highlighted. Conclusion The article discusses the importance of governance also concerning security of decentralised networks. It emphasises the importance of feedback loops to both provide input for technical evolution and to recognise misconduct and develop means to address it. Implications for practice and research are highlighted.

User participation is often time and resource intensive for both the designers and participants. This is especially problematic in cases where designers and users are not co-located and have to travel to participatory meetings. Distributed co-design through remote participation technologies has been hoped to alleviate these issues. However, distributed co-design has its own issues, such as requirement of an access to suitable technology independently by the participants. In this paper we present three cases where distributed co-design has been mediated through WhatsAppTM, the currently most wide-spread mobile instant messaging app. Our lessons learned from these projects indicate that mobile instant messaging has potential in distributed co-design, and the continuous access to communication channels can enable detailed discussions between the designers and the participants. To summarise our findings, we present a framework to help future academics and practitioners to plan and implement (part of) their co-design process in mobile instant messaging services.

– There is increasing interest in Continuous Software Engineering (CSE) among practitioners and researchers. CSE addresses the need to increase flexibility and short release cycles, especially when augmenting software as a service, without jeopardizing software quality. – Empirical literature focuses on the transition to CSE as introducing a new method supported by new tools and architectural concepts. Little is known, however, about how software companies sustain CSE practices. – The analysis proceeds in two stages. First, we present a thematic analysis based on qualitative interviews with both management and developers from three different software development organizations. Then we apply the concept of infrastructuring to the results as a sense-making device. - We show how companies adapt and align their CSE organization, processes, and techniques to internal and external demands and conditions, resulting in widely varying practices. We further see that CSE in the companies is unlikely to arrive at a stable state. Rather, the companies continuously adapt their practices due to changes in the environment, requirements, new techniques and tools, and new software dependencies. – We use the concept of ‘infrastructuring’ from computer supported cooperative work and information systems to make sense of the continuous change we see in our interviews. We show that CSE needs to be regarded as a new way to make use of method (elements), processes and tools in software engineering, rather than a new method.

Programming robots presents significant challenges, including high costs, extensive time commitments and steep learning curves, particularly for individuals lacking technical background in engineering. These barriers have been partially mitigated by the emergence of end-user development methodologies. Yet existing approaches often fall short in equipping users with the necessary software engineering competencies to develop comprehensive robot behaviors or to effectively maintain and re-purpose their creations. In this paper, we introduce a novel end-user development approach designed to empower physical therapists to independently specify robot-assisted physical training exercises, eliminating the need for robotics experts' intervention. Our approach is based on a set of design goals obtained through a participatory design study with experts in the field. It utilizes a textual domain-specific language (DSL) that enables users to define expected robot behaviors through Behaviour-Driven Development (BDD) scenarios. This paper discusses key themes, design objectives, and the evolution of requirements that emerged from an evaluative workshop.

Advances in Artificial Intelligence (AI), and in particular in Machine Learning (ML), are introducing profound changes to scholarly submissions across publication venues, affecting in particular the contributions that are being submitted to Software Engineering (SE) conferences and journals. In this context, it is not always clear whether manuscripts submitted to SE venues under the umbrella term SE for AI are indeed relevant to SE, in the sense that they explicitly contain contributions to the SE body of knowledge. This leads to recurring discussions on whether certain AI-related submissions are appropriate to SE venues, or should instead be submitted to other journals and conferences, including AI or ML-specific ones. In this editorial, we discuss the kinds of AI-related contributions that are a better fit-and a less good fit-for publication in the IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering.

This note explores how data work takes place in a public sector arena. We report on findings from a 3-year research project with a Danish organisation, which, amongst other things, aimed to improve current data practices in the organisation. We make use of the notion of ‘social arenas’ as a lens to understand the complex setting the organisation is situated in. We find that data work in this context takes place among multiple stakeholders and requires cooperation across organisational boundaries. Moreover, changes in data practices in one site changes cooperation among multiple stakeholders in the arena. Additionally, we develop a diagram of this complex setting, which constitutes an analytical tool that supports our understanding of the site (or sites) of intervention where data work is examined. Our study contributes to the field of CSCW by proposing and showing how the notion of sub-arena helps to comprehend the cooperation and interaction within the surprisingly complex public sector and locate the (sub-)arenas and stakeholders affected by a change in how data is provided and used.

When software products and services are developed and maintained over longer time, software engineering practices tend to drift away from both structured and agile methods. Nonetheless, in many cases the evolving practices are far from ad hoc or chaotic. How are the teams involved able to coordinate their joint development?This article reports on an ethnographic study of a small team at a successful provider of software as a service. What struck us was the very explicit way in which the team adopted and adapted their practices to fit the needs of the evolving development. The discussion relates the findings to the concepts of social practices and methods in software engineering, and explores the differences between degraded behavior and the coordinated evolution of development practices. The analysis helps to better understand how software engineering practices evolve, and thus provides a starting point for rethinking software engineering methods and their relation to software engineering practice.

Even though agile methods have been flourishing in the last decades, their implementation in (globally) distributed arrangements still present hard challenges. Due to this tension, practices are either modified or added to compensate with the additional control required by the setup. In this paper, we present a case study about a company that managed to incrementally design a process that does not compromise the foundations of the agile philosophy by embracing the characteristics of distributed development. We show how a virtual work environment has been crafted by continuously improving practices and carefully selecting technologies to allow each team member to fully participate regardless of the actual physical location. Aware of the single nature limitation of the reported case, we present extensive information to frame the context allowing meaningful comparisons by researchers and providing concrete examples for practitioners.

Background: Agile and distributed software development are two trends that continue to increase rapidly in today's software industry. Even though the benefits achievable by combining them are potentially many, the intrinsic challenges of such marriage often lead to severe complications that can jeopardize the successful completion of software projects. Method: To investigate empirically how these two trends can coexist without compromising on the agile core values and principles, we conducted an exploratory holistic case study. Focusing on the development team of a Danish SME having both distributed offices as well as teleworking arrangements, we showcase (the evolution of) their practices. Results: The case is an example of the effective application of the agile reflective culture that allowed the company to evolve to a level in which the collocation restrictions of agile software development are overcome by a continuously evolving software process geared towards reducing waste to achieve speed and simplicity. Conclusions: Even though results need to be considered carefully due to the single nature of the reported case, we highlight five elements that have been fundamental in such journey: agile servant-leader, agile team, trust, virtual work environment, inspect & adapt, and reduce waste. Extensive information is provided to frame the context and to allow meaningful future comparisons.

Ethnography is a qualitative research method used to study people and cultures. It is largely adopted in disciplines outside software engineering, including different areas of computer science. Ethnography can provide an in-depth understanding of the socio-technological realities surrounding everyday software development practice, i.e., it can help to uncover not only what practitioners do, but also why they do it. Despite its potential, ethnography has not been widely adopted by empirical software engineering researchers, and receives little attention in the related literature. The main goal of this paper is to explain how empirical software engineering researchers would benefit from adopting ethnography. This is achieved by explicating four roles that ethnography can play in furthering the goals of empirical software engineering: to strengthen investigations into the social and human aspects of software engineering; to inform the design of software engineering tools; to improve method and process development; and to inform research programmes. This article introduces ethnography, explains its origin, context, strengths and weaknesses, and presents a set of dimensions that position ethnography as a useful and usable approach to empirical software engineering research. Throughout the paper, relevant examples of ethnographic studies of software practice are used to illustrate the points being made.

Software is created for and with a wide range of stakeholders, from customers to management, from value-added providers to customer service personnel. These stakeholders work with teams of software engineers to develop and evolve software systems that support their activities. All of these people and their interactions are central to software development. Thus, it is crucial to investigate the dynamic and frequently changing Cooperative and Human Aspects of Software Engineering (CHASE), both before and after deployment, in order to understand current software practices, processes, and tools. In turn, this enables us to design tools and support mechanisms that improve software creation, software maintenance, and customer communication.Researchers and practitioners have long recognized the need to investigate these aspects, however, their articles are scattered across conferences and communities. This workshop will provide a unified forum for discussing high quality research studies, models, methods, and tools for human and cooperative aspects of software engineering. This will be the 8th in a series of workshops, which continue to be a meeting place for the academic, industrial, and practitioner communities interested in this area, and will give opportunities to present and discuss works-in-progress.

Software is created by people for people working in a range of environments and under various conditions. Understanding the cooperative and human aspects of software development is crucial in order to comprehend how methods and tools are used, and thereby improve the creation and maintenance of software. Both researchers and practitioners have recognized the need to investigate these aspects, but the results of such investigations are dispersed in different conferences and communities. The goal of this workshop is to provide a forum for discussing high quality research on human and cooperative aspects of software engineering. We aim to provide both a meeting place for the community and the possibility for researchers interested in joining the field to present and discuss their work in progress and to get an overview over the field.

Communication plays a vital role in software development projects. Globally distributed teams use a mix of different communication channels to get the work done. In this paper, we report on an empirical study of a team distributed across Denmark and India. This paper explores the integration of formal documentation, bug-tracking systems and email with informal communication on Instant Messaging (IM), screen sharing, and audio conversations. Whenever overlap times occur, informal communication can take place at the same time in different sites, and it can effectively complement formal documentation. Our analysis provides an indication that IM can play a special role in such socio-technical communication systems: IM acts as a real time glue between different channels. The communication through IM also provides a means to build trust and social relationships with co-workers.

Software is created by people for people working in varied environments, under various conditions. Thus understanding cooperative and human aspects of software development is crucial to comprehend how methods and tools are used, and thereby improve the creation and maintenance of software. Over the years, both researchers and practitioners have recognized the need to study and understand these aspects. Despite recognizing this, researchers in cooperative and human aspects have no clear place to meet and are dispersed in different research conferences and areas. The goal of this workshop is to provide a forum for discussing high quality research on human and cooperative aspects of software engineering. We aim at providing both a meeting place for the growing community and the possibility for researchers interested in joining the field to present their work in progress and get an overview over the field.

Software is created by people---software engineers---working in varied environments, under various conditions. Thus understanding cooperative and human aspect of software development is crucial to comprehend how methods and tools are used, and thereby improving the creation and maintenance of software. Inspired by the hosting country's concept of co-responsibility -- ubuntu -- we especially invited contributions that address community-based development like open source development and sustainability of ICT eco-systems.

This tutorial provides an overview of the role of ethnography in Software Engineering research. It describes the use of ethnographic methods as a means to provide an in-depth understanding of the socio-technological realities surrounding everyday software development practice. The knowledge gained can be used to improve processes, methods and tools as well as develop observed industrial practices. The tutorial begins with a brief historical account of ethnography in the fields of Software Engineering, CSCW, Information Systems and other related areas. This sets the stage for a more in-depth discussion of methods for data collection and analysis used in ethnographic studies. It then describes how these methods can be and have been used by software engineering researchers to understand developers' work practices, to inform the development of processes, methods and tools and to evaluate the applicability of current processes, methods and tools. Finally, some practical issues concerning the selection and use of ethnographic methods by software engineers are discussed. Throughout the tutorial, examples from the presenters' experience illustrate the points made.