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Recently, Internet of Things (IoT) devices and sensors are rapidly increasing in the word. They are connecting to the internet and are generating vast packets in the network. Thus, the networks could be congested, and the performance will degrade. For this reason, it is important to decrease the number of transmitted packets. Agile is a technique to develop the software and manage the work efficiently. Kanban is a method to support Agile development. The purpose of this paper is to propose an IoT sensors management system considering Agile–Kanban and show its application for weather measurement and electric wheelchair management.

The authors present the design and implementation of two systems and show the measurement device, data communication failure and experimental results.

The proposed Agile–Kanban system can manage a large amount of IoT sensors and can decrease the IoT sensor’s consumption power thus increasing the IoT sensor lifetime.

By experimental results, the authors have shown that the proposed systems have good performance and can control the IoT devices efficiently.

Agile software development, Knowledge workers and Lean thinking as a management system

The case lends itself to students of business management, or aspiring consultants, who have been exposed to operations management in general and Lean thinking specifically. It is an advanced case study, assuming prior knowledge in these subjects and approaches the subject matter from an organisational development point of view, rather than a pure operations point of view. It is thus well suited to an elective on operational excellence on an MBA or in executive education courses in Lean thinking

The case starts with Mark, manager of a software development team, hearing that he will have budget for two new developers who will join his team in the coming year. While the extra help could be useful, he was considering what the impact of new people would be on the productivity of the team, which he felt was already stretched. Mark continues to consider the entire development chain and how code changes were implemented to ACSESim’s (the company’s primary product) graphical user interfaces. Having recently been acquired by an American company, he was also under pressure to start to adopt some of the parent company’s systems, which would constitute a fairly disruptive, but necessary, change, particularly for future collaborations with other developers in the parent company. With two new developers, experience taught Mark that development could slow down owing to training efforts. To minimise disruption, he was wondering about how to get the new developers up-to-speed quickly and streamline their operations within a changing corporate environment. The case highlights the different mechanisms that were in place at ACSESim, including the use of issue trackers; Kanban boards; version control software; automated systems; stand-up meetings, etc. Each of these mechanisms is discussed briefly and shows the value they added to the development practices that were in place. This also allows students to understand Agile practices and what Lean thinking might mean in a knowledge work environment and then to consider what the proposed changes might mean and how they could be deployed.

To gain an understanding of how Lean and Agile principles can be applied in a software development environment and Lean knowledge work in general To consider the best way to manage new hires so that they can become productive in a Lean or Agile software development environment, whilst dealing with pressures to migrate to new systems.

Teaching notes are available for educators only. Please contact your library to gain login details or email support@emeraldinsight.com to request teaching notes.

CSS: 9: Operations and Logistics.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the views of the author, who has written extensively on the management tools needed for continuous innovation, and who believes that an Agile management process methodology that has revolutionized software development, has the potential to transform manufacturing.

The paper offers a glimpse of what Agile manufacturing will look like from the experience of Wikispeed, a California C‐Corporation that in three months developed a functional road‐safety‐legal automobile prototype able to travel 100 miles per gallon.

At Wikispeed as in Agile software development, work proceeds by trying to identify what customers want, defining those wants in terms of precisely articulated tests, prioritizing which tests are to be worked on, working in short cycles to deliver features or products that meet the tests, finding out from customers whether that's what they really want, and then continuing the cycle once again.

The Wikispeed case is reported on.

In the Agile process, self‐organizing teams work in short cycles called “sprints” and develop the features and products in a series of projects or modules to facilitate rapid, customer‐valued innovation.

With Agile, the work of project teams enables a firm's product to continuously evolve in the light of the experience they gain and through customer feedback.

The inherent variability on process times and demand are the factors that prevent the efficient application of lean philosophy in multi-project product development (PD) environments. Considering this variability, a hybrid push–pull project control system is developed, and value stream costing (VSC) analysis is performed to reflect the relation between project lead time, capacity and project cost. The assessment of the push/pull project control on lead time improvement and long-term savings on capacity have been aimed with the proposed complete design structure.

In a team-based structure, formed through clustering, push control techniques for planning tasks within cross-functional teams and pull control techniques for planning tasks between cross-functional teams are developed. The final step evaluates the proposed structure through VSC and long-term savings have been pointed out, especially in terms of freed-up capacity. For the validation of the proposed methodology, an office furniture manufacturing firm’s PD department has been considered and the performance of the hybrid system has been observed through simulation experiments and based on the simulation results, the lean system is evaluated by VSC.

The results of simulation experiments show a superior performance of the proposed hybrid push/pull project control mechanism under different settings of cycle time between projects or shortly project cycle time, dispatching rules within teams and variability levels. The results of the Box-Score (tool to apply VSC) indicate increased capacity in the long term to add extra projects during the planning period with the same project lead time and without additional cost.

Although extensive simulation experiments have been performed to quantify the effect of project control structure and positive results have been reported on lead time and cost, the proposed design structure has not been tested in all existing PD environments.

To the best of authors’ knowledge, the quantification of the effect of hybrid project control with VSC is the first attempt to be applied in lean PD projects.

National Innovation Foundation (NIF) was a partner organization of the Honey Bee Network (HBN) which was a networked organization of individuals, innovators, farmers, scholars, academicians, policy makers, entrepreneurs and non-governmental organizations (NGOs). The HBN worked to create a network of grassroot innovators and acknowledged them by protecting their IPR. NIF was an autonomous body of the Department of Science and Technology (DST), Government of India, which provided institutional support to grassroot innovators, and facilitated the diffusion of traditional knowledge through various channels. NIF also handled filing patents and licensing of grassroot technology.

The purpose of this conceptual chapter is to highlight the disadvantages of project management to help the reader put project management work in context.

Different project management methodologies such as waterfall project management, Agile project management, Six Sigma, and Kanban are discussed in terms of overall problems and then specific problems with each methodology. Managing multiple projects and the problems with program and portfolio management are discussed.

The findings are that most formalized project management methods are ill-suited to most library-related situations. However, some aspects of project management are well suited to any project, at any size, and those are discussed.

The value of this paper is that readers will get a strong understanding of project management methodologies in context and a clear idea of the strengths and weaknesses of each.

This paper aims to investigate the relationship of software company culture and core values and project management methodologies on the demand for corporate real estate (CRE), impacting decisions regarding location, square footage, office design and amenities.

A researcher-administered survey was designed with the assistance of a purposive sample of brokers, architects and interior designers to elicit responses from the CRE officers in software companies at four stages of growth, from small, entrepreneurial startups to large, publicly traded software companies, located in the same metropolitan area of the USA. Quantitative responses are summarized with traditional statistics and data visualizations. Linguistic analysis, including sentiment analysis and keyword relevance, was performed on the unstructured, English text responses.

Differences exist in the office layouts, amenities and locations across the four software company size categories studied. Linguistic analysis of company descriptions of office design, culture and core values, and the relationship between the two, provide another way for brokers, investors and other stakeholders to understand company perspectives and communication idioms related to CRE needs. The research was unable to show any differences in any dependent variable based on software project management methodologies due to sampling limitations.

This study is limited by the sample size of the participating software companies based on access to company leadership. Results are not generalizable.

Architects, investors, brokers and lenders may find value in using this study’s approach to better understand the needs of software technology clients. Specifically, stakeholders may find value in examining the linkage from software company size, culture and core values to CRE office layout, amenities and location.

The qualitative findings suggest that software company culture and core values and company size influence the design of the CRE demanded by software companies. Multivariate data visualization was designed to communicate longitudinal CRE data. Linguistic analysis was used to extract the emotional content and relevance scores from company descriptions of office design, company culture and core values and the reported effect of culture and core values on office design. Findings may be beneficial for stakeholders involved in the design, location and future CRE investments, and they suggest the need for future research on a larger sample.

Agile methods are increasingly being applied in the contexts of innovation beyond traditional information technology (IT) and physical product development projects, such as when process improvements are being implemented. Nevertheless, this phenomenon is still recent and little addressed in the literature, with few descriptions of empirical cases. This study aims to address this gap.

This multiple case study aims to present and discuss the application of Agile practices embedded in large companies’ innovation value chains, focusing on improvements of business processes. The following research question is pursued: How are large companies applying elements of Agile methods to their innovation processes when implementing incremental improvements in their operational processes? Based on the idea that the Agile-Stage-Gate model is an alternative to this challenge, this study investigates the application of this hybrid model in two large Brazilian companies by presenting their idiosyncrasies, lessons learned, adaptations, challenges and benefits.

Overall, it was observed that the experience with the application of the Agile-Stage-Gate model is positive for these companies, with better customer engagement, easier project control and increased productivity of the project team.

For those aiming to implement the Agile-Stage-Gate model, this paper identifies the main adaptations made in order to combine the purist approaches and critical success factors for its implementation.

Veteran managers trained to respect hierarchical systems are daunted by the fundamental changes in thinking and culture that are required to implement the Agile continuous innovation approach to manufacturing. Though widely hailed by software developers it has been slow to catch on in manufacturing. This paper aims to address this issue.

To assuage managers concerns, ten prevalent myths about Agile are addressed along with a description of how the approach really works in practice.

The paper reveals that the Agile outside‐in orientation that maximizes customer value requires a reinvention of management roles, practices, values and communications to implement it.

If research is reported on in the paper this section must be completed and should include suggestions for future research and any identified limitations in the research process.

Agile is a way of forcing either high performance or change because results are apparent so quickly, not years later when the project runs out of money and the product flops in the marketplace.

The article dispels many myths about Agile and shows managers how to overcome resistance to adopting the Agile approach, which addresses the central problem at the very core of a hierarchical bureaucracy, namely, its limited ability to innovate.