Abstract
Metrics are key elements that can give us valuable information about the effectiveness of agile software development processes, particularly considering the Scrum environment. This study aims to learn about the metrics adopted to assess agile development processes and explore the impact of how the role performed by each member in Scrum contributed to increasing/reducing the perception of the importance of these metrics. The impact of years of experience in Scrum on this perception was also explored. To this end, a quantitative study was conducted with 191 Scrum professionals in companies based in Portugal. The results show that the Scrum role is not a determining factor, while individuals with more years of experience have a higher perception of the importance of metrics related to team performance. The same conclusion is observed for the business value metric of the product backlog and the percentage of test automation in the testing phase. The findings allow for extending the knowledge about Scrum project management processes and their teams, in addition to offering important insights into the implementation of metrics for software engineering companies that adopt Scrum.

Abstract
Transactions have been a key issue in database management for a long time and there are a plethora of architectures and algorithms to support and implement them. The current state-of-the-art is focused on storage management and is tightly coupled with its design, leading, for instance, to the need for completely new engines to support new features such as Hybrid Transactional Analytical Processing (HTAP). We address this challenge with a proposal to implement transactional logic in a query language such as SQL. This means that our approach can be layered on existing analytical systems but that the retrieval of a transactional snapshot and the validation of update transactions runs in the server and can take advantage of advanced query execution capabilities of an optimizing query engine. We demonstrate our proposal, TiQuE, on MonetDB and obtain an average 500x improvement in transactional throughput while retaining good performance on analytical queries, making it competitive with the state-of-the-art HTAP systems.

Abstract
Cloud native database systems provide highly available and scalable services as part of cloud platforms by transparently replicating and partitioning data across automatically managed resources. Some systems, such as Google Spanner, are designed and implemented from scratch. Others, such as Amazon Aurora, derive from traditional database systems for better compatibility but disaggregate storage to cloud services. Unfortunately, because they follow an open-box approach and fork the original code base, they are difficult to implement and maintain. We address this problem with Loom, a replicated and partitioned database system built on top of PostgreSQL that delegates durable storage to a distributed log native to the cloud. Unlike previous disaggregation proposals, Loom is a closed-box approach that uses the original server through existing interfaces to simplify implementation and improve robustness and maintainability. Experimental evaluation achieves 6x higher throughput and 5x lower response time than standard replication and competes with the state of the art in cloud and HPC hardware.

Abstract
This work focuses on the motivation levels of introductory programming students and their relationship with their learning performance. The study involved students enrolled in the Introduction to Programming (IP) course included in two slightly different Informatics Engineering degrees at the same institution. The motivation section of the Motivated Strategies for Learning Questionnaire (MSLQ) instrument includes several scales and subscales used to analyse different motivational factors.Four research questions guided the study. The first is comparing the results of the two groups of students. The second considered the student's previous programming experience and tried correlating it with motivational factors. The third is similar but separates students following IP for the first time and those who had failed it in previous years. Finally, the fourth research question examined the influence of motivational factors on students' learning performance measured by their final grades.This paper provides a detailed study description and presents and discusses its results. © 2023 IEEE.

Abstract
(1) Background: In this study on Robotic Process Automation (RPA), the feasibility of sustainable RPA implementation was investigated, considering user requirements in the context of this technology’s stakeholders, with a strong emphasis on sustainability. (2) Methods: A multi-objective mathematical model was developed and the Weighted Sum and Tchebycheff methods were used to evaluate the efficiency of the implementation. An enterprise case study was utilized for data collection, employing investigation hypotheses, questionnaires, and brainstorming sessions with company stakeholders. (3) Results: The results underscore the significance of user requirements within the RPA landscape and demonstrate that integrating these requirements into the multi-objective model enhances the implementation assessment. Practical guidelines for RPA planning and management with a sustainability focus are provided. The analysis reveals a solution that reduces initial costs by 21.10% and allows for an efficient and equitable allocation of available resources. (4) Conclusion: This study advances our understanding of the interplay between user requirements and RPA feasibility, offering viable guidelines for the sustainable implementation of this technology.

Abstract
To develop a full battery model in view to accurate battery management, Li-ion cell dynamics is modelled by a capacitor in series with a simplified Randles circuit. The open circuit voltage is the voltage at the capacitor terminals, allowing, in this way, for the dependence of the open circuit voltage on the state-of-charge to be embedded in its capacitance. The Randles circuit is recognised as a trusty description of a cell dynamics. It contains a semi-integrator of the current, known as the Warburg impedance, that is a special case of a fractional integrator. To enable the formulation of a time-domain system identification algorithm, the Warburg impedance impulse response was calculated and normalised, in order to derive a finite order state-space approximation, using the Ho-Kalman algorithm. Thus, this Warburg impedance LTI model, with known parameters (normalised impedance) in series with a gain block, is suitable for system identification, since it has only one unknown parameter. A LTI System identification Algorithm was formulated to estimate the model parameters and the initial values of both the open circuit voltage and the states of the normalised Warburg impedance. The performance of the algorithm was very satisfactory on the whole state-of-charge region and when compared with low order Thevenin models. Once it is understood the parameters variability on the state-of-charge, temperature and ageing, we envisage to continue the work using parameter-varying algorithms.