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Context: The rapid emergence of generative AI (GenAI) tools has begun to reshape software engineering practice. Yet, their adoption within agile environments remains underexplored. Objective: This study investigates how agile practitioners adopt GenAI tools in real-world organizational contexts, focusing on regulatory conditions, role-specific use cases, benefits, and barriers. Method: An exploratory multiple case study was conducted in three German organizations, involving 17 semi-structured interviews and document analysis. A cross-case thematic analysis was applied to identify GenAI adoption patterns. Results: Findings reveal that GenAI is primarily used for creative tasks, documentation, and code assistance. Benefits include efficiency gains and enhanced creativity, while barriers relate to data privacy, validation effort, and lack of governance. Using the Technology-Organization-Environment (TOE) framework, we find that these barriers stem from misalignments across the three dimensions. Regulatory pressures are often translated into policies without accounting for actual usage patterns or organizational constraints, leading to systematic policy-practice gaps and shadow IT behavior. Conclusion: GenAI offers significant potential to augment agile roles but requires alignment across TOE dimensions, including pragmatic policies, data protection measures, and user training to ensure responsible and effective integration.

This study examines the evolution of a grassroots, volunteer-driven peer-to-peer (P2P) educational initiative from an emergency response to the 2023 Türkiye earthquake into a sustainable ecosystem that operated for over two years and supported 300+ middle-school learners with 40+ volunteer tutors. Employing an interpretive case study approach, we triangulated data from participant observation, focus groups, questionnaires, and collaborative visioning workshops to investigate the socio-technical dynamics enabling long-term resilience in a fully online, nonreciprocal far-peer tutoring setting. Our findings reveal that while age proximity fosters trust and open communication, it also poses challenges for tutors who must balance peer rapport with instructional authority. Volunteer engagement is driven primarily by intrinsic motives - educational impact and community belonging - while optional micro-earning is envisioned as a practical enabler for long-term sustainability. Tutees report significant gains in confidence, self-expression, and accelerated comprehension, attributing these outcomes to personalized, interactive sessions within a "family-like" safe space that combines academic instruction with socio-emotional support. Notably, tutees view tutors as aspirational role models and express strong intentions to return as tutors themselves, envisioning a self-regenerating cycle of intergenerational reciprocity that carries knowledge and solidarity from generation to generation. Both cohorts call for a dedicated platform featuring integrated scheduling, personalization, feedback, and quality assurance mechanisms. We synthesize these insights into theory-informed implications and five design principles for sustainable P2P learning ecosystems at scale.

Context: The rapid emergence of generative AI (GenAI) tools has begun to reshape various software engineering activities. Yet, their adoption within agile environments remains underexplored. Objective: This study investigates how agile practitioners adopt GenAI tools in real-world organizational contexts, focusing on regulatory conditions, use cases, benefits, and barriers. Method: An exploratory multiple case study was conducted in three German organizations, involving 17 semi-structured interviews and document analysis. A cross-case thematic analysis was applied to identify GenAI adoption patterns. Results: Findings reveal that GenAI is primarily used for creative tasks, documentation, and code assistance. Benefits include efficiency gains and enhanced creativity, while barriers relate to data privacy, validation effort, and lack of governance. Using the Technology-Organization-Environment (TOE) framework, we find that these barriers stem from misalignments across the three dimensions. Regulatory pressures are often translated into policies without accounting for actual technological usage patterns or organizational constraints. This leads to systematic gaps between policy and practice. Conclusion: GenAI offers significant potential to augment agile roles but requires alignment across TOE dimensions, including clear policies, data protection measures, and user training to ensure responsible and effective integration.

This study examines a grassroots, volunteer-driven peer-to-peer (P2P) educational initiative that emerged following a catastrophic earthquake and evolved into a sustainable educational program lasting over two years. Employing an interpretive case study approach—including participant observation, focus groups, and questionnaires—we explore the motivations and experiences of both tutors and learners, the perceived effectiveness of the online P2P model, and the barriers and enablers to scaling such initiatives. Our key findings indicate that while age proximity fosters trust and effective communication, it also poses authority challenges for tutors. Tutor engagement was fueled mainly by intrinsic motivators such as pursuing educational impact and community belonging. Learners reported significant gains in confidence, self-expression, and accelerated comprehension, attributing this to personalized, interactive sessions. Both cohorts called for a dedicated platform with enhanced features, such as built-in scheduling to overcome logistical hurdles. Finally, we articulate transferable principles for scaling P2P models, including flexible micro-volunteering pathways, strategic recruitment, and diversified funding.

Agile transformations have been a significant challenge since the beginning of the agile movement, with numerous researchers and practitioners suggesting various structured approaches and guidelines. The Kanban Maturity Model (KMM) is a relatively new approach that focuses on assessing the current maturity level of an organisation, with an emphasis on a spectrum of Kanban practices. This paper presents the initial results of applying the KMM as a guide for subsequent steps in Kanban implementation and agile transformation. The exploratory case study describes the application of the KMM in the agile transformation of a software development team within a midsize organisation. Despite previous unsuccessful attempts to implement Scrum, the adoption of KMM facilitated a rapid and successful implementation of the Kanban Method. Within three months, the team’s throughput tripled, and the quality of the developed software improved significantly. The results suggest that the KMM can be successfully used as an effective guideline for agile transformation of software development teams.

After the COVID-19 breakout, agile teams found themselves in situations that “pure agilists” and textbooks on agile methods had preferred to ignore. Whereas agile mindsets helped them to quickly shift to remote work, mere virtualization of agile practices often proved insufficient, and several challenges emerged. This paper reports on an Action Research project carried out in Lufthansa Systems Poland with the aim of (1) revisiting their ad-hoc actions to adapt to remote work; and (2) elaborating systematic solutions to maintain efficiency in such a setting. With our assistance, the participating teams found measures to mitigate issues posed by the new work environment. They devised an inter-team communication model to improve the effectiveness of information exchange that had declined in the absence of spontaneous, face-to-face communication. Moreover, they employed several other mitigation strategies, including working at least one day per week in the office, keeping webcams on during online meetings, and recapping meetings at the end of a session. Our study largely supports previous findings indicating that Scrum can be effectively applied beyond its comfort zone but also suggests that for adaptations to be successful and comprehensive, they should be developed in a structured manner.