Keynote 1
Dr. Rashina Hoda
Title: Augmented Agile: Human-centred AI-assisted Software Project Management
Abstract: Software engineering teams face a number of challenges on a regular basis. Software practitioners have employed agile methods for over two decades to work around challenges such as inadequate customer collaboration, poor management practices, teamwork issues, and coordination challenges in large-scale teams. While they have served us well for over two decades, agile methods are not without limitations. Transitioning into agile methods as well as adapting agile practices to suit different domains such as Finance, can be challenging for software teams, management, and firms at large. In her keynote, Rashina will share her experiences from industrial Agile research to shed light on what’s been working, what’s missing, and what can be done better, including a vision of a new future of software project management that combines a deeply human-centric approach (‘the heart’) with AI-assisted techniques (‘the mind’) to augment and boost current agile practice.
Bio: Rashina Hoda has been researching industrial agile software engineering practice since the mid-2000s. She is constantly in awe of how practitioners make projects work, despite the practical challenges. With her research teams, she has developed evidence-based theories and published over 100 research articles on topics such as self-organising teams, self-assignment, role of the project manager in agile teams, coordination in large-scale agile, and human values in agile methods. In 2017, Rashina received a distinguished paper award on her ‘theory of becoming agile’ at ICSE, which she later applied to present the idea of ‘agile nation’ to address wider societal challenges in a 2019 TEDxAuckland talk. Rashina was selected as one of the 2020-2021 ‘Superstars of STEM’ by Science and Technology Australia. Rashina enjoys presenting the ‘voice of agile research’ to a wide range of audiences. She is an Associate Professor in Software Engineering at Monash University, Melbourne, Australia. For more, see rashina.com
Keynote 2
Dr. Wesley K. G. Assunção
Title: Software Modernization: from industry needs to developers’ perception
Abstract: The large majority of existing pieces of software in industry are long-living systems (a.k.a., legacy systems), which represent strategic value to companies. However, over the years, user requirements changed, technologies evolved, and new business models emerged, leading to changes of such systems. As a result of extensive maintenance and obsolete technology, legacy systems usually have decayed and degraded architectures. Consequently, any maintenance/evolution such as fixing bugs, adding a new feature, or keeping up with new trends (e.g., digital transformation) become extremely complex, time-consuming, and costly (e.g., the US government spent over $90 billion on IT in 2019, from which about 80% to operate and maintain legacy systems). To remain competitive, efficient, sustainable, retain value, and embrace digital transformation, companies must have their legacy systems modernized. Nowadays, a common modernization strategy is to move systems to the cloud using modular and highly-decoupled architectures (e.g., microservices). However, several challenges are faced by practitioners when planning and performing software modernization. In this talk, Dr. Wesley K. G. Assunção will present industry needs, challenges, automated support (i.e., using AI), and the developers’ perception on using automatically generated solution. This talk is based on a work in collaboration with an industry partner and many research collaborators, resulting and several research studies, covering both empirical results and solution proposals. Additionally, existing limitations/gaps in the field and research opportunities will also be discussed.
Bio: Dr. Wesley K. G. Assunção is an Associate Professor with the Department of Computer Science at North Carolina State University, USA. Previously, Dr. Assunção worked as a University Assistant in the Institute of Software Systems Engineering (ISSE) at Johannes Kepler University Linz (JKU), Austria (2021-2023); a Postdoctoral Researcher at Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro (PUC-Rio), Brazil (2019-2023); and an Associate Professor at Federal University of Technology - Paraná, Brazil (2013-2020). He obtained his MSc and PhD in Computer Science from Federal University of Paraná (UFPR) also in Brazil. His research interests are: Software Modernization, Variability Management, Software Quality, Model-Driven Engineering, Collaboration in Systems Engineering, Software Testing, and Search-Based Software Engineering. Dr. Assunção’ work has been published in several top-tier software engineering venues. He has also been serving as reviewers for many conferences and journal, and as organizer of conference, symposiums, workshops, competitions, and meetings. Further information: https://wesleyklewerton.github.io