Agile processes in software engineering and extreme programming : 18th International Conference, XP 2017 Cologne, Germany, May 22–26, 2017 proceedings

Abstract

The 18th XP conference was held 2017 in the wonderful city of Cologne, Germany. In the spirit of past XP conferences, XP 2017 was a place where researchers and practitioners met to exchange new ideas and present their work. These proceedings contain the full research papers, short research papers, and doctoral symposium papers presented at the conference. In all, 46 research papers were submitted (39 full and seven short papers). All submitted papers went through a thorough review process, with each paper receiving at least three reviews. Finally, the Program Committee accepted 14 papers as full research papers (an acceptance rate of 35%). Moreover, six papers — submitted as short or full research papers — were accepted as short research papers. The selected papers cover a wide range of agile techniques and approaches. Many of them present results of empirical studies aiming to systematically evaluate successful agile practices, others are technology studies that are relevant to both researchers and practitioners. In the tradition of former XP conferences, the XP 2017 conference program offered many different session topics. Besides the scientific program, i.e., the research track, doctoral symposium, and scientific workshops, the conference featured an industry and practice track, experience reports, and Open Space sessions. Materials from all of these sessions are available on the conference website at www.xp2017.org. Moreover, three keynotes were given by highly renowned speakers. Andrea Goulet from Corgibytes presented a talk on “Makers and Menders: Putting the Right Developers on the Right Projects” focusing on a group of developers called “menders” – people who love taking an existing project and making it better over time. In his keynote “End-to-End Agility at GitHub” Alain Hélaïli talked about the organization and the efficient workflows at GitHub. Finally, Claes Wohlin from Blekinge Institute of Technology answered the question “Evidence-Driven Change in Software Development: Is It Feasible?” Many people contributed to the success of the XP 2017 conference. We would like to thank everyone, especially the authors and presenters of all papers, the Program Committee members, the volunteers, and sponsors. Furthermore, we want to express our gratitude to the XP 2017 organizers; they did a great job.