Plenary Panel
Wednesday July 17, 3:00pm
Location: Weasler Auditorium

Agile, Continuous Integration, and DevOps

Chair: Carl K. Chang, Iowa State University, USA

Panelists:

Wikerson de Lucena Andrade, Universidade Federal de Campina Grande, Brazil
Mikio Aoyama, Nanzan University, Japan
Edmundo Tovar, Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, Spain
Robert Ward, Iowa State University, USA

Panel Description:

Agile methods were sometimes touted as a new paradigm for software development processes. While perhaps not that revolutionary (see the foundation paper to accompany this plenary panel), Agile has posed ample challenges for the Software Engineering research community as well as for Software Engineering curriculum design.  Invited panelists will contribute their views on the particular challenges faced by Agile researchers, on the most important results to date, and on what directions and methods hold the best promise for future research results. They will also share their views on how Agile methods and models could best be addressed in Software Engineering curriculum, what aspects of Agile are especially problematic for conventional post-secondary education, and what teaching approaches they believe have the most promise for preparing undergraduates to understand and successfully participate in Agile methodologies when they move into professional software development roles.

Following a brief introduction by the chair, invited panelists will each briefly (five minutes), share their views on these topics. The chair will then open the floor to the audience for discussion and debate. We welcome information about curriculum initiatives and teaching experiments that may serve as models for others; highlights of significant recent research and related work in-progress; Agile specific research challenges; and observations about current development practice. We especially encourage comments on the recent emergence of DevOps as a distinct concern in development organizations and on current attempts to move from continuous integration to continuous deployment. Finally, we hope both audience members and panelists will share their insights about the future direction of Agile in general.

The invited panelists will close the plenary panel session with a one minute summary, each, of what they consider the most significant “take-aways” from the exercise.