The use of agile methodologies like SCRUM is seen by companies in the software engineering field as a strategic necessity for their competitiveness, which makes them more reactive and dynamic in an increasingly demanding and competitive international market. One of the critical factors in the implementation of a SCRUM environment is the set-up of teams that are simultaneously homogeneous and composed of the best collaborators for each SCRUM role. In this sense, this study describes the modeling process and presents the implementation of a decision support system that can contribute to improving the process of assigning an agile team simultaneously considering the technical and social skills of employees. The results of the study allowed testing the application considering different competencies associated to each Agile position, the impact that the attribution process suffers from oscillations in the process of evaluation and self-evaluation, and the impact in terms of the performance of the inclusion of new collaborators and criteria comparison.

In colon cancer, the prognostic value of macrophages is controversial, and it is still unknown how hypoxia modulates macrophage–cancer cell crosstalk. To unravel this, co-cultures of human primary macrophages and colon cancer cells were performed at 20% and 1% O2, followed by characterization of both cellular components. Different colon cancer patient cohorts were analyzed for hypoxia and immune markers, and their association with patient overall survival was established. A positive correlation between HIF1A and CD68 in colon cancer patients was identified but, unexpectedly, in cases with higher macrophage infiltration, HIF1A expression was associated with a better prognosis, in contrast to breast, gastric, and lung cancers. Under hypoxia, co-cultures’ secretome indicated a shift towards a pro-inflammatory phenotype. These alterations occurred along with increased macrophage phagocytic activity and decreased SIRPα expression. Cancer cells were more invasive and exhibited higher CD47 expression. We hypothesize that the better prognosis associated with HIF1AHighCD68High tumors could occur due to macrophagic pro-inflammatory pressure. Indeed, we found that tumors HIF1AHighCD68High expressed increased levels of CD8A, which is positively correlated with HIF1A. In conclusion, we show that in colon cancer, hypoxia drives macrophages into a pro-inflammatory phenotype, concomitant with increased infiltration of anti-tumor immune cells, favoring better disease outcome.

The use of agile methodologies like SCRUM is seen by companies in the software engineering field as a strategic necessity for their competitiveness, which makes them more reactive and dynamic in an increasingly demanding and competitive international market. One of the critical factors in the implementation of a SCRUM environment is the set-up of teams that are simultaneously homogeneous and composed of the best collaborators for each SCRUM role. In this sense, this study describes the modeling process and presents the implementation of a decision support system that can contribute to improving the process of assigning an agile team simultaneously considering the technical and social skills of employees. The results of the study allowed testing the application considering different competencies associated to each Agile position, the impact that the attribution process suffers from oscillations in the process of evaluation and self-evaluation, and the impact in terms of the performance of the inclusion of new collaborators and criteria comparison.