8.0SEJun 15, 2025
Get on the Train or be Left on the Station: Using LLMs for Software Engineering ResearchBianca Trinkenreich, Fabio Calefato, Geir Hanssen et al.
The adoption of Large Language Models (LLMs) is not only transforming software engineering (SE) practice but is also poised to fundamentally disrupt how research is conducted in the field. While perspectives on this transformation range from viewing LLMs as mere productivity tools to considering them revolutionary forces, we argue that the SE research community must proactively engage with and shape the integration of LLMs into research practices, emphasizing human agency in this transformation. As LLMs rapidly become integral to SE research - both as tools that support investigations and as subjects of study - a human-centric perspective is essential. Ensuring human oversight and interpretability is necessary for upholding scientific rigor, fostering ethical responsibility, and driving advancements in the field. Drawing from discussions at the 2nd Copenhagen Symposium on Human-Centered AI in SE, this position paper employs McLuhan's Tetrad of Media Laws to analyze the impact of LLMs on SE research. Through this theoretical lens, we examine how LLMs enhance research capabilities through accelerated ideation and automated processes, make some traditional research practices obsolete, retrieve valuable aspects of historical research approaches, and risk reversal effects when taken to extremes. Our analysis reveals opportunities for innovation and potential pitfalls that require careful consideration. We conclude with a call to action for the SE research community to proactively harness the benefits of LLMs while developing frameworks and guidelines to mitigate their risks, to ensure continued rigor and impact of research in an AI-augmented future.
5.9SEJun 25, 2025
AI and Agile Software Development: From Frustration to Success -- XP2025 Workshop SummaryTomas Herda, Victoria Pichler, Zheying Zhang et al.
The full-day workshop on AI and Agile at XP 2025 convened a diverse group of researchers and industry practitioners to address the practical challenges and opportunities of integrating Artificial Intelligence into Agile software development. Through interactive sessions, participants identified shared frustrations related to integrating AI into Agile Software Development practices, including challenges with tooling, governance, data quality, and critical skill gaps. These challenges were systematically prioritized and analyzed to uncover root causes. The workshop culminated in the collaborative development of a research roadmap that pinpoints actionable directions for future work, including both immediate solutions and ambitious long-term goals. The key outcome is a structured agenda designed to foster joint industry-academic efforts to move from identified frustrations to successful implementation.
3.4SEAug 28, 2025
AI and Agile Software Development: A Research Roadmap from the XP2025 WorkshopZheying Zhang, Tomas Herda, Victoria Pichler et al.
This paper synthesizes the key findings from a full-day XP2025 workshop on "AI and Agile: From Frustration to Success", held in Brugg-Windisch, Switzerland. The workshop brought together over 30 interdisciplinary academic researchers and industry practitioners to tackle the concrete challenges and emerging opportunities at the intersection of Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) and agile software development. Through structured, interactive breakout sessions, participants identified shared pain points like tool fragmentation, governance, data quality, and critical skills gaps in AI literacy and prompt engineering. These issues were further analyzed, revealing underlying causes and cross-cutting concerns. The workshop concluded by collaboratively co-creating a multi-thematic research roadmap, articulating both short-term, implementable actions and visionary, long-term research directions. This cohesive agenda aims to guide future investigation and drive the responsible, human-centered integration of GenAI into agile practices.
3.6SEAug 1, 2021
Agile Elicitation of Scalability Requirements for Open Systems: A Case StudyGunnar Brataas, Antonio Martini, Geir Kjetil Hanssen et al.
Eliciting scalability requirements during agile software development is complicated and poorly described in previous research. This article presents a lightweight artifact for eliciting scalability requirements during agile software development: the ScrumScale model. The ScrumScale model is a simple spreadsheet. The scalability concepts underlying the ScrumScale model are clarified in this design science research, which also utilizes coordination theory. This paper describes the open banking case study, where a legacy banking system becomes open. This challenges the scalability of this legacy system. The first step in understanding this challenge is to elicit the new scalability requirements. In the open banking case study, key stakeholders from TietoEVRY spent 55 hours eliciting TietoEVRY's open banking project's scalability requirements. According to TietoEVRY, the ScrumScale model provided a systematic way of producing scalability requirements. For TietoEVRY, the scalability concepts behind the ScrumScale model also offered significant advantages in dialogues with other stakeholders.