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DevOps as a new way of thinking for software development and operations has received much attention in the industry, while it has not been thoroughly investigated in academia yet. The objective of this study is to characterize DevOps by exploring its central components in terms of principles, practices and their relations to the principles, challenges of DevOps adoption, and benefits reported in the peer-reviewed literature. As a key objective, we also aim to realize the relations between DevOps practices and benefits in a systematic manner. A systematic literature review was conducted. Also, we used the concept of benefits dependency network to synthesize the findings, in particular, to specify dependencies between DevOps practices and link the practices to benefits. We found that in many cases, DevOps characteristics, ie, principles, practices, benefits, and challenges, were not sufficiently defined in detail in the peer-reviewed literature.In addition, only a few empirical studies are available, which can be attributed to the nascency of DevOps research. Also, an initial version of the DevOps benefits dependency network has been derived. The definition of DevOps principles and practices should be emphasized given the novelty of the concept. Further empirical studies are needed to improve the benefits dependency network presented in this study. KEYWORDSbenefits and values, challenges, development and operations, DevOps, principles and practices, systematic literature review

Effort estimation is more challenging in an agile context, as instead of exerting strict control over changes in requirements, dynamism is embraced. Current practice relies on expert judgment, where the accuracy of estimates is sensitive to the expertise of practitioners and prone to bias. To improve the effectiveness of the effort estimation process, the goal of this research is to investigate and understand the estimation process with respect to its accuracy in the context of agile software development from the perspective of agile development teams. Using case study research, 2 observations and eleven interviews were conducted with 3 agile development teams at SAP SE, a German multinational software corporation. The results reveal that factors such as the developer's knowledge, experience, and the complexity and impact of changes on the underlying system affect the magnitude as well as estimation accuracy. Furthermore, there is a need for a tool that incorporates expert knowledge, enables explicit consideration of cost drivers by experts and visualizes this information to improve the effectiveness of the effort estimation. On the basis of the findings of the case study, a framework, inspired by the quality improvement paradigm is proposed to improve effort estimation in agile development

Effort estimation is more challenging in an agile context, as instead of exerting strict control over changes in requirements, dynamism is embraced. Current practice relies on expert judgment, where the accuracy of estimates is sensitive to the expertise of practitioners and prone to bias. In order to improve the effectiveness of the effort estimation process, the goal of this research is to investigate and understand the estimation process with respect to its accuracy in the context of agile software development from the perspective of agile development teams. Using case study research, two observations and eleven interviews were conducted with three agile development teams at SAP SE, a German multinational software corporation. The results reveal that factors such as the developer's knowledge and experience and the complexity and impact of changes on the underlying system affect the magnitude as well as the accuracy of estimation. Moreover, if certain aspects of the estimation process, such as the potential impact of a change on the underlying system, are supported by a tool can help improve estimation accuracy. We conclude that explicit consideration of these factors in the estimation process can support experts in making accurate and informed estimates. Furthermore, there is a need for a tool that incorporates expert knowledge, enables explicit consideration of cost drivers by experts and visualizes this information in order to improve the effectiveness of the effort estimation process.

No abstract