arXiv subjects

Lucas Gren

Publications and source records attributed to Lucas Gren.

At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

The Expert Validation Framework (EVF): Enabling Domain Expert Control in AI Engineering

Generative AI (GenAI) systems promise to transform knowledge work by automating a range of tasks, yet their deployment in enterprise settings remains hindered by the lack of systematic quality assurance mechanisms. We present an Expert Validation Framework that places domain experts at the center of building software with GenAI components, enabling them to maintain authoritative control over system behavior through structured specification, testing, validation, and continuous monitoring processes. Our framework addresses the critical gap between AI capabilities and organizational trust by establishing a rigorous, expert-driven methodology for ensuring quality across diverse GenAI applications. Through a four-stage implementation process encompassing specification, system creation, validation, and production monitoring, the framework enables organizations to leverage GenAI capabilities while maintaining expert oversight and quality standards.

cs.SE↗

arXiv2025

Comparing Open-Source and Commercial LLMs for Domain-Specific Analysis and Reporting: Software Engineering Challenges and Design Trade-offs

Context: Large Language Models (LLMs) enable automation of complex natural language processing across domains, but research on domain-specific applications like Finance remains limited. Objectives: This study explored open-source and commercial LLMs for financial report analysis and commentary generation, focusing on software engineering challenges in implementation. Methods: Using Design Science Research methodology, an exploratory case study iteratively designed and evaluated two LLM-based systems: one with local open-source models in a multi-agent workflow, another using commercial GPT-4o. Both were assessed through expert evaluation of real-world financial reporting use cases. Results: LLMs demonstrated strong potential for automating financial reporting tasks, but integration presented significant challenges. Iterative development revealed issues including prompt design, contextual dependency, and implementation trade-offs. Cloud-based models offered superior fluency and usability but raised data privacy and external dependency concerns. Local open-source models provided better data control and compliance but required substantially more engineering effort for reliability and usability. Conclusion: LLMs show strong potential for financial reporting automation, but successful integration requires careful attention to architecture, prompt design, and system reliability. Implementation success depends on addressing domain-specific challenges through tailored validation mechanisms and engineering strategies that balance accuracy, control, and compliance.

cs.SE↗

arXiv2025

Cross-Functional AI Task Forces (X-FAITs) for AI Transformation of Software Organizations

This experience report introduces the Cross-Functional AI Task Force (X-FAIT) framework to bridge the gap between strategic AI ambitions and operational execution within software-intensive organizations. Drawing from an Action Research case study at a global Swedish enterprise, we identify and address critical barriers such as departmental fragmentation, regulatory constraints, and organizational inertia that can impede successful AI transformation. X-FAIT employs force field analysis, executive sponsorship, cross-functional integration, and systematic risk assessment strategies to coordinate efforts across organizational boundaries, facilitating knowledge sharing and ensuring AI initiatives align with objectives. The framework provides both theoretical insights into AI-driven organizational transformation and practical guidance for software organizations aiming to effectively integrate AI into their daily workflows and, longer-term, products.

cs.SE↗

arXiv2024

Prototypical Leadership in Agile Software Development

Leadership in agile teams is a collective responsibility where team members share leadership work based on expertise and skills. However, the understanding of leadership in this context is limited. This study explores the under-researched area of prototypical leadership, aiming to understand if and how leaders who are perceived as more representative of the team are more effective leaders. Qualitative interviews were conducted with eleven members of six agile software teams in five Swedish companies from various industries and sizes. In this study, the effectiveness of leadership was perceived as higher when it emerged from within the team or when leaders aligned with the group. In addition, leaders in managerial roles that align with the team's shared values and traits were perceived as more effective, contributing to overall team success.

cs.SE↗

arXiv2024

From Group Psychology to Software Engineering Research to Automotive R&D: Measuring Team Development at Volvo Cars

From 2019 to 2022, Volvo Cars successfully translated our research discoveries regarding group dynamics within agile teams into widespread industrial practice. We wish to illuminate the insights gained through the process of garnering support, providing training, executing implementation, and sustaining a tool embraced by approximately 700 teams and 9,000 employees. This tool was designed to empower agile teams and propel their internal development. Our experiences underscore the necessity of comprehensive team training, the cultivation of a cadre of trainers across the organization, and the creation of a novel software solution. In essence, we deduce that an automated concise survey tool, coupled with a repository of actionable strategies, holds remarkable potential in fostering the maturation of agile teams, but we also share many of the challenges we encountered during the implementation.

cs.SE↗

arXiv2024

Investigating team maturity in an agile automotive reorganization

About seven years ago, Volvo Cars initiated a large-scale agile transformation. Midst this journey, a significant restructuring of the R&D department took place. Our study aims to illuminate how team maturity levels are impacted during such comprehensive reorganizations. We collected data from 63 teams to comprehend the effects of organizational changes on these agile teams. Additionally, qualitative data was gathered to validate our findings and explore underlying reasons. Contrary to what was expected, the reorganization did not significantly alter the distribution of team maturity. High turnover rates and frequent reorganizations were identified as key factors to why the less mature teams remained in the early stages of team development. Conversely, teams in the second category remained stable at a higher maturity stage, primarily because the teams themselves remained largely intact, with only management structures changing. In conclusion, while reorganizations may hinder some teams' development, others maintain stability at a higher level of maturity despite substantial managerial changes.

cs.SE↗

arXiv2024

The Social Psychology of Software Security (Psycurity)

This position paper explores the intricate relationship between social psychology and secure software engineering, underscoring the vital role social psychology plays in the realm of engineering secure software systems. Beyond a mere technical endeavor, this paper contends that understanding and integrating social psychology principles into software processes are imperative for establishing robust and secure software systems. Recent studies in related fields show the importance of understanding the social psychology of other security domains. Finally, we identify critical gaps in software security research and present a set of research questions for incorporating more social psychology into software security research.

cs.SE↗

arXiv2024

Human Factors in Model-Driven Engineering: Future Research Goals and Initiatives for MDE

Purpose: Software modelling and Model-Driven Engineering (MDE) is traditionally studied from a technical perspective. However, one of the core motivations behind the use of software models is inherently human-centred. Models aim to enable practitioners to communicate about software designs, make software understandable, or make software easier to write through domain-specific modelling languages. Several recent studies challenge the idea that these aims can always be reached and indicate that human factors play a role in the success of MDE. However, there is an under-representation of research focusing on human factors in modelling. Methods: During a GI-Dagstuhl seminar, topics related to human factors in modelling were discussed by 26 expert participants from research and industry. Results: In breakout groups, five topics were covered in depth, namely modelling human aspects, factors of modeller experience, diversity and inclusion in MDE, collaboration and MDE, and teaching human-aware MDE. Conclusion: We summarise our insights gained during the discussions on the five topics. We formulate research goals, questions, and propositions that support directing future initiatives towards an MDE community that is aware of and supportive of human factors and values.

cs.SE↗

arXiv2022

Problem reports and team maturity in agile automotive software development

Background: Volvo Cars is pioneering an agile transformation on a large scale in the automotive industry. Social psychological aspects of automotive software development are an under-researched area in general. Few studies on team maturity or group dynamics can be found specifically in the automotive software engineering domain. Objective: This study is intended as an initial step to fill that gap by investigating the connection between issues and problem reports and team maturity. Method: We conducted a quantitative study with 84 participants from 14 teams and qualitatively validated the result with the Release Train Engineer having an overview of all the participating teams. Results: We find that the more mature a team is, the faster they seem to resolve issues as provided through external feedback, at least in the two initial team maturity stages. Conclusion: This study suggests that working on team dynamics might increase productivity in modern automotive software development departments, but this needs further investigation.

cs.SE↗

arXiv2022

What Makes Effective Leadership in Agile Software Development Teams?

Effective leadership is one of the key drivers of business and project success, and one of the most active areas of management research. But how does leadership work in agile software development, which emphasizes self-management and self-organization and marginalizes traditional leadership roles? To find out, this study examines agile leadership from the perspective of thirteen professionals who identify as agile leaders, in different roles, at ten different software development companies of varying sizes. Data from semi-structured interviews reveals that leadership: (1) is dynamically shared among team members; (2) engenders a sense of belonging to the team; and (3) involves balancing competing organizational cultures (e.g. balancing the new agile culture with the old milestone-driven culture). In other words, agile leadership is a property of a team, not a role, and effectiveness depends on agile team members' identifying with the team, accepting responsibility, and being sensitive to cultural conflict.

cs.SE↗

arXiv2021

Is it Possible to Disregard Obsolete Requirements? A Family of Experiments in Software Effort Estimation

Context: Expert judgement is a common method for software effort estimations in practice today. Estimators are often shown extra obsolete requirements together with the real ones to be implemented. Only one previous study has been conducted on if such practices bias the estimations. Objective: We conducted six experiments with both students and practitioners to study, and quantify, the effects of obsolete requirements on software estimation. Method By conducting a family of six experiments using both students and practitioners as research subjects (N = 461), and by using a Bayesian Data Analysis approach, we investigated different aspects of this effect. We also argue for, and show an example of, how we by using a Bayesian approach can be more confident in our results and enable further studies with small sample sizes. Results: We found that the presence of obsolete requirements triggered an overestimation in effort across all experiments. The effect, however, was smaller in a field setting compared to using students as subjects. Still, the over-estimations triggered by the obsolete requirements were systematically around twice the percentage of the included obsolete ones, but with a large 95% credible interval. Conclusions: The results have implications for both research and practice in that the found systematic error should be accounted for in both studies on software estimation and, maybe more importantly, in estimation practices to avoid over-estimation due to this systematic error. We partly explain this error to be stemming from the cognitive bias of anchoring-and-adjustment, i.e. the obsolete requirements anchored a much larger software. However, further studies are needed in order to accurately predict this effect.

cs.SE↗

arXiv2020

Understanding Work Practices of Autonomous Agile Teams: A Social-psychological Review

The purpose of this paper is to suggest additional aspects of social psychology that could help when making sense of autonomous agile teams. To make use of well-tested theories in social psychology and instead see how they replicated and differ in the autonomous agile team context would avoid reinventing the wheel. This was done, as an initial step, through looking at some very common agile practices and relate them to existing findings in social-psychological research. The two theories found that I argue could be more applied to the software engineering context are social identity theory and group socialization theory. The results show that literature provides social-psychological reasons for the popularity of some agile practices, but that scientific studies are needed to gather empirical evidence on these under-researched topics. Understanding deeper psychological theories could provide a better understanding of the psychological processes when building autonomous agile team, which could then lead to better predictability and intervention in relation to human factors.

cs.SE↗

arXiv2020

What an Agile Leader Does: The Group Dynamics Perspective

When large industrial organizations change to(or start with) an agile approach to operations, managers and some employees are supposed to be "agile leaders" often without being given a clear definition of what that comprises when building agile teams. An inductive thematic analysis was used to investigate what 15 appointed leaders actually do and perceive as challenges regarding group dynamics working with an agile approach. Team maturity, Team design, and Culture and mindset were all categories of challenges related to group dynamics that the practitioners face and manage in their work-life that are not explicitly mentioned in the more process-focused agile transformation frameworks. The results suggest that leader mitigation of these three aspects of group dynamics is essential to the success of an agile transformation.

cs.SE↗

arXiv2020

Agility is responsiveness to change: An essential definition

There is some ambiguity of what agile means in both research and practice. Authors have suggested a diversity of different definitions, through which it is difficult to interpret what agile really is. The concept, however, exists in its implementation through agile practices. In this vision paper, we argue that adopting an agile approach boils down to being more responsive to change. To support this claim, we relate agile principles, practices, the agile manifesto, and our own experiences to this core definition. We envision that agile transformations would be, and are, much easier using this definition and contextualizing its implications.

cs.SE↗

arXiv2019

A Flipped Classroom Approach to Teaching Empirical Software Engineering

Contribution: A flipped classroom approach to teaching empirical software engineering increases student learning by providing more time for active learning in class. Background: There is a need for longitudinal studies of the flipped classroom approach in general. Although a few cross-sectional studies show that a flipped classroom approach can increase student learning by providing more time for other in-class activities, such as active learning, such studies are also rare in the context of teaching software engineering. Intended outcomes: To assess the usefulness of a flipped classroom approach in teaching software engineering. Application design: The study was conducted at an international Master's program in Sweden, given in English, and partially replicated at a university in Africa. Findings: The results suggest that students' academic success, as measured by their exam grades, can be improved by introducing a flipped classroom to teach software engineering topics, but this may not extend to their subjective liking of the material, as measured by student evaluations. Furthermore, the effect of the change in teaching methodology was not replicated when changing the teaching team.

cs.SE↗

arXiv2019

Agile Ways of Working: A Team Maturity Perspective

With the agile approach to managing software development projects comes an increased dependability on well functioning teams, since many of the practices are built on teamwork. The objective of this study was to investigate if, and how, team development from a group psychological perspective is related to some work practices of agile teams. Data were collected from 34 agile teams (200 individuals) from six software development organizations and one university in both Brazil and Sweden using the Group Development Questionnaire (Scale IV) and the Perceptive Agile Measurement (PAM). The result indicates a strong correlation between levels of group maturity and the two agile practices \emph{iterative development} and \emph{retrospectives}. We, therefore, conclude that agile teams at different group development stages adopt parts of team agility differently, thus confirming previous studies but with more data and by investigating concrete and applied agile practices. We thereby add evidence to the hypothesis that an agile implementation and management of agile projects need to be adapted to the group maturity levels of the agile teams.

cs.SE↗

arXiv2019

The perceived effects of group developmental psychology training on agile software development teams

Research has shown that the maturity of small workgroups from a psychological perspective is intimately connected to team agility. We, therefore, tested if agile team members appreciated group development psychology training. Our results show that the participating teams seem to have a very positive view of group development training and state that they now have a new way of thinking about teamwork and new tools to deal with team-related problems. We, therefore, see huge potential in training agile teams in group development psychology since the positive effects might span over the entire software development organization.

cs.SE↗

arXiv2019

Do internal software quality tools measure validated metrics?

Internal software quality determines the maintainability of the software product and influences the quality in use. There is a plethora of metrics which purport to measure the internal quality of software, and these metrics are offered by static software analysis tools. To date, a number of reports have assessed the validity of these metrics. No data are available, however, on whether metrics offered by the tools are somehow validated in scientific studies. The current study covers this gap by providing data on which tools and how many validated metrics are provided. The results show that a range of metrics that the tools provided do not seem to be validated in the literature and that only a small percentage of metrics are validated in the provided tools.

cs.SE↗