Context: Ever since the emergence of agile methodologies in 2001, many software companies have shifted to Agile Software Development (ASD), and since then many studies have been conducted to investigate effort estimation within such context; however to date there is no single study that presents a detailed overview of the state of the art in effort estimation for ASD. Objectives: The aim of this study is to provide a detailed overview of the state of the art in the area of effort estimation in ASD. Method: To report the state of the art, we conducted a systematic literature review in accordance with the guidelines proposed in the evidence-based software engineering literature. Results: A total of 25 primary studies were selected; the main findings are: i) Subjective estimation techniques (e.g. expert judgment, planning poker, use case points estimation method) are the most frequently applied in an agile context; ii) Use case points and story points are the most frequently used size metrics respectively; iii) MMRE (Mean Magnitude of Relative Error) and MRE (Magnitude of Relative Error) are the most frequently used accuracy metrics; iv) team skills, prior experience and task size are cited as the three important cost drivers for effort estimation in ASD; and v) Extreme Programming (XP) and SCRUM are the only two agile methods that are identified in the primary studies. Conclusion: Subjective estimation techniques, e.g. expert judgment-based techniques, planning poker or the use case points method, are the one used the most in agile effort estimation studies. As for the size metrics, the ones that were used the most in the primary studies were story points and use case points. Several research gaps were identified, relating to the agile methods, size metrics and cost drivers, thus suggesting numerous possible avenues for future work.

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Abstract-Nowadays, software systems are a key factor in the success of many organizations as in most cases they play a central role helping them attain a competitive advantage. However, despite their importance, software systems may be quite costly to develop, so substantially decreasing companies' profits. In order to tackle this challenge, many organizations look for ways to decrease costs and increase profits by applying new software development approaches, like Global Software Development (GSD). Some aspects of the software project like communication, cooperation and coordination are more challenging in globally distributed than in co-located projects, since language, cultural and time zone differences are factors which can increase the required effort to globally perform a software project. Communication, coordination and cooperation aspects affect directly the effort estimation of a project, which is one of the critical tasks related to the management of a software development project. There are many studies related to effort estimation methods/techniques for co-located projects. However, there are evidences that the co-located approaches do not fit to GSD. So, this paper presents the results of a systematic literature review of effort estimation in the context of GSD, which aimed at help both researchers and practitioners to have a holistic view about the current state of the art regarding effort estimation in the context of GSD. The results suggest that there is room to improve the current state of the art on effort estimation in GSD.

Onboarding is the process of supporting new employees regarding their social and performance adjustment to their new job. Software companies have faced challenges with recruitment and onboarding of new team members, and there is no study that investigates it in a holistic way. In this paper, we conducted a multi‐case study to investigate the onboarding of software developers/teams, associated challenges, and areas for further improvement in 3 globally distributed legacy projects. We employed Bauer's model for onboarding to identify the current state of the onboarding strategies employed in each case. We learned that the employed strategies are semi‐formalized. Besides, in projects with multiple sites, some functions are executed locally, and the onboarding outcomes may be hard to control. We also learned that onboarding in legacy projects is especially challenging and that decisions to distribute such projects across multiple locations shall be approached carefully. In our cases, the challenges to learn legacy code were further amplified by the project scale and the distance to the original sources of knowledge. Finally, we identified practices that can be used by companies to increase the chances of being successful when onboarding software developers and teams in globally distributed legacy projects.

Abstract-Effort estimation is a project management activity that is mandatory for the execution of software projects. Despite its importance, there have been just a few studies published on such activities within the Agile Global Software Development (AGSD) context. Their aggregated results were recently published as part of a secondary study that reported the state of the art on effort estimation in AGSD. This study aims to complement the aforementioned secondary study by means of an empirical investigation on the state of the practice towards effort estimation in AGSD. To do so, a survey was carried out using as instrument an on-line questionnaire and a sample comprising software practitioners experienced in effort estimation within the AGSD context. Results show that the effort estimation techniques used within the AGSD and collocated contexts remained unchanged, with planning poker being the one employed the most. Sourcing strategies were found to have no or a small influence upon the choice of estimation techniques. With regard to effort predictors, global challenges such as cultural and time zone differences were reported, in addition to factors that are commonly considered in the collocated context, such as team experience. Finally, many challenges that impact the accuracy of the effort estimates were reported by the respondents, such as problems with software requirements and the fact that the communication overhead between sites is not properly accounted.