The smart management of freshwater for precision irrigation in agriculture is essential for increasing crop yield and decreasing costs, while contributing to environmental sustainability. The intense use of technologies offers a means for providing the exact amount of water needed by plants. The Internet of Things (IoT) is the natural choice for smart water management applications, even though the integration of different technologies required for making it work seamlessly in practice is still not fully accomplished. The SWAMP project develops an IoT-based smart water management platform for precision irrigation in agriculture with a hands-on approach based on four pilots in Brazil and Europe. This paper presents the SWAMP architecture, platform, and system deployments that highlight the replicability of the platform, and, as scalability is a major concern for IoT applications, it includes a performance analysis of FIWARE components used in the Platform. Results show that it is able to provide adequate performance for the SWAMP pilots, but requires specially designed configurations and the re-engineering of some components to provide higher scalability using less computational resources.

https://repositorio.fei.edu.br/bitstream/FEI/997/1/RI_997.pdf

Smart Water Management Platform: IoT-Based Precision Irrigation for Agriculture

Decision making in traditional software development lies with the project manager. In contrast, Agile software development teams are empowered to make decisions, while the role of project manager has changed from one of command and control (i.e. to make decisions and ensure they are implemented) to one of a facilitator. This article argues that decision making in software development is not characterised by a sequence of isolated or exclusive decisions; rather, decisions are inter-related, with each decision leading to further decisions, the chain of which often spans the entire duration of a project. Over this extended period, there are several potential factors that can negatively affect the efficacy of decision making by Agile teams. One of the findings of this exploratory longitudinal study is that the high level of empowerment of a cohesive software development team undertaking an Agile project may be one of these negative factors, as empowered, cohesive teams can exhibit problems such as gro...

The role of project management in ineffective decision making within Agile software development projects

An intelligent and secure smart watering system using fuzzy logic and blockchain

Advances in the Internet of Things (IoT) are helping to make water management smarter and optimizing consumption in the smart agriculture industry. This article proposes a new topology of sensor nodes based on the use of inexpensive and highly efficient components, such as water level, soil moisture, temperature, humidity, and rain sensors. Additionally, to guarantee good performance of the system, the used transmission module is based on LoRa LPWAN technology. The design of the main circuit board of the system is optimized by combining two layers and implementing software optimization. The overall sensor network is developed and tested in the research lab, and real farms can be controlled by users manually or automatically using the mobile application. Experimental results are produced by testing sensor and communication link effectiveness, and are subsequently validated in the field through a one-week measurement campaign.

Smart Agriculture Using IoT Multi-Sensors: A Novel Watering Management System

Extreme programming (XP), similarly to other agile software development methods, values close collaboration with customers. One of the XP practices suggests that the customer should be 100% available for the development team. Anecdotal evidence suggests that the XP customer role is costly, difficult and demanding. However, very few empirical studies have been published on the role of customer in an XP project. The results of this controlled case study are in line with the common belief that the on-site customer’s role is indeed demanding, requiring a strong ability to resolve issues rapidly. Yet, the study also offers contrasting findings in terms of required actual customer involvement in the development project. This empirical case demonstrates that while the customer was present close to 100% with the development team, only 21% of his work effort was required to assist the team in the development. However, it is also shown that an on-site customer may create a false sense of confidence in the system under development. The implications of these and other findings are discussed.

On-Site Customer in an XP Project: Empirical Results from a Case Study

None of the agile methods are claimed to fit all development situations. A team should attempt to adapt the methods and practices to fit their specific needs. For that reason agile principles call for self-reflection on a regular basis in order to identify where and how to make improvements. While some systematic approaches on how to execute this self-reflection process effectively have already been proposed, little empirical evidence currently exists. This paper reports empirical results based on a study where a project team conducted a self-reflection process called “post-iteration workshop” in order to improve and optimize the adopted practices in an XP project. Both qualitative and quantitative data were collected from four 1-2 hour workshops. The results show that with less than 4% effort it is possible to hold post-iteration workshops that significantly help to improve and optimize practices and enhance the learning and satisfaction of the project team.

Self-Adaptability of Agile Software Processes: A Case Study on Post-iteration Workshops

An apparatus, method and computer program product are provided for reducing power consumption of an electronic device by taking into consideration not only the load history of each run-time entity operating on the electronic device, but also the importance of those run-time entities. In particular, a run-time entity's utilization of the hardware resources of an electronic device may be controlled in association with the importance level assigned to that run-time entity. Run-time entities having a lower importance level may be allocated less than the maximum operating power of the processor necessary to implement the run-time entity at the highest performance level.

Apparatus, method and computer program product for reducing power consumption based on relative importance

The intensive use of technology in precision irrigation for agriculture is getting momentum in order to optimize the use of water, reduce the energy consumption and improve the quality of crops. Internet of Things (IoT) and other technologies are the natural choices for smart water management applications, and the SWAMP project is expected to prove the appropriateness of IoT in real settings with the deployment of on-site pilots. At the same time, the more intense the use of technology is, agriculture turns new security risks, which may affect both crop development and the commodities market. A security breach may irreversibly compromise a crop and data eavesdropping may compromise price and contracts exposing sensitive data such crop quality, development or management. This paper discusses security challenges and technologies for the application of IoT in agriculture and indicates that one of the most relevant challenges to be handled in SWAMP project is dealing with the multitude of behaviors from IoT application and what would be considered as normal and what would be considered as a threat.

/pdf/swamp-smart-water-management-platform-overview-and-security-3jqu28ttwz.pdf

SWAMP: Smart Water Management Platform Overview and Security Challenges

Data reduction based on machine learning algorithms for fog computing in IoT smart agriculture

One objective for the agile methods is to lower cost of changing requirements. Currently the most popular agile software development method is Extreme Programming (XP). XP addresses this issue by simplifying management tasks and documentation while the traditional software engineering places more emphasis on strict control and extensive documentation. Requirements management (RM) is the activity that ensures that requirements are traceable and all changes to requirements are properly handled. In a dynamic and fast moving project with an iterative process, RM may tie up too much resources. Requirements management and configuration management (CM) are only implicitly addressed by XP. It may be that the method developers viewed RM and CM too bureaucratic, heavy weight or ceremonial to be included in XP. Currently, in the XP process, user requirements called as “user stories” are written and managed on paper cards. The objective of this paper is to examine the challenges involved in the requirements management in an XP project. The aim is also to study possibilities to integrate the support for user story management into single tool framework. Based on the study, an approach for managing user stories with the respect of XP’s basic principles is depicted. Our study is based on an empirical XP case study. According to our study, the following issues were recognized especially important when considering the management of requirements in XP. First, XP provides the basic set of practices that should be shaped into the development situation. This means that practices are tailored for the purposes of a project and the organization, and they can be further changed on-the-fly on periodic process assessments, i.e. if they do not work. Thus, the tool support should not force detailed procedures but provide just enough basic abilities for storing, relating and retrieving user stories and tasks. Second, the tool should allow the XP process to remain agile. This means that the tool should not jeopardize XP’s intentions for open communication and lightweight management and documentation. Third, requirements management tool support should be integrated into the project’s overall development environment. This allows the project team to operate via one channel from a user story definition, through implementation, up to testing. Our solution for the management of user stories and tasks is called StoryManager. The solution has been integrated as plug-in into Eclipse –tool integration framework to enable integrated environment for an XP project.

Kari Kolehmainen

Papers

Self-Adaptability of Agile Software Processes: A Case Study on Post-iteration Workshops

Apparatus, method and computer program product for reducing power consumption based on relative importance

SWAMP: Smart Water Management Platform Overview and Security Challenges

Data reduction based on machine learning algorithms for fog computing in IoT smart agriculture

Supporting requirements engineering in extreme programming: managing user stories