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Papers by Brian Fitzgerald

ACM Transactions on Software Engineering and Methodology

Agile development methods have become a standard in the software industry, including in large-sca... more Agile development methods have become a standard in the software industry, including in large-scale projects. These methods share a set of underlying assumptions that distinguish them from more traditional plan-driven approaches. In this paper we adopt Alvesson and Sandberg's problematization approach to challenge three key assumptions that are prevalent in the large-scale agile literature: 1) agile and plan-driven methods are mutually exclusive; 2) self-managing and hierarchically-organized teams are mutually exclusive; and 3) agile methods can scale through simple linear composition. Using a longitudinal case study of large-scale agile development, we describe a series of trigger events and episodes whereby the agile approach was tailored to address the needs of the large-scale development context, which was very much at odds with these fundamental assumptions. We develop a set of new underlying assumptions which suggest that agile and plan-driven practices are mutually enabli...

Founded in 1900, Bostonia magazine is Boston University's main alumni publication, which cove... more Founded in 1900, Bostonia magazine is Boston University's main alumni publication, which covers alumni and student life, as well as university activities, events, and programs

Throughout my undergraduate studies in law I took a keen interest in politics, economics and cons... more Throughout my undergraduate studies in law I took a keen interest in politics, economics and constitutional and international law. I also worked at that time for the Crown Law Office of Queensland and gained significant experience in Public Law. After graduating I worked as a Research Associate for the High Court of Australia at the direction of then Justice William Deane (at the time when Sir Anthony Mason was Chief Justice). This time at the High Court provided new ideas and experience in relation to legal research (especially computerised legal databases), writing, reasoning and conceptual thinking. It also allowed me to see the inner workings of the highest court in the land and to work on a number of significant constitutional law opinions. During this time Justice Deane was a generous mentor and pointed out to me the importance of the legal area of Restitution and the special expertise of Professor Peter Birks at Oxford University in relation to this topic.

Cultural Science Journal, 2014

Agile development approaches have become the norm for almost all software development now. While ... more Agile development approaches have become the norm for almost all software development now. While agile approaches can deliver more frequent releases of working software, it quickly became apparent in many organisations that they were not able to leverage these frequent releases due to the disconnect between the development and operations functions, with the latter typically responsible for releasing software to customers. This resulted in the move towards closer integration of these functions through the DevOps movement. As the trend towards digitalisation continues, companies are increasingly implementing DevOps. We propose a maturity model for this agile to DevOps transition with three levels: agile, continuous integration, continuous delivery. Based on an in-depth case study in an organisation which has several years’ experience of DevOps, we identify a fundamental disruption in the soft skills and competences that software teams are expected to possess, and in the patterns of co...

This chapter considers how open content licences of copyright-protected materials – specifically,... more This chapter considers how open content licences of copyright-protected materials – specifically, Creative Commons (CC) licences - can be used by governments as a simple and effective mechanism to enable reuse of their PSI, particularly where materials are made available in digital form online or distributed on disk.

Media International Australia, 2005

Fan-based or third party content creation has assumed an integral place in the multi-million doll... more Fan-based or third party content creation has assumed an integral place in the multi-million dollar computer games industry. The emerging production ecology that involves new kinds of distributed organisations and ad hoc networks epitomises the ‘drift of value’ from producer to consumer and allows us to understand how user-led innovation influences the creative industries. But the ability to control intellectual property rights in content production is critical to the power structures and social dynamic that are being created in this space. Trainz, a train simulation game released by Brisbane developer Auran, which relies heavily on fan-created content for its success, is used as a case study. The licence agreements between Auran and the fan creators are analysed in order to understand how the balance between the commercial and non-commercial is achieved and how the tension between open networks of collaboration and closed structures of commercial competitive environments are negoti...

International Journal of Cultural Studies, 2006

Policy Futures in Education, 2006

The 'Blog, Podcast, Vodcast and Wiki Copyright Guide for Australia' was developed by th... more The 'Blog, Podcast, Vodcast and Wiki Copyright Guide for Australia' was developed by the Law Research Program of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Creative Industries and Innovation (CCI) to examine and explain copyright issues which impact upon creators and users of ...

ACM Transactions on Software Engineering and Methodology

Agile development methods have become a standard in the software industry, including in large-sca... more Agile development methods have become a standard in the software industry, including in large-scale projects. These methods share a set of underlying assumptions that distinguish them from more traditional plan-driven approaches. In this paper we adopt Alvesson and Sandberg's problematization approach to challenge three key assumptions that are prevalent in the large-scale agile literature: 1) agile and plan-driven methods are mutually exclusive; 2) self-managing and hierarchically-organized teams are mutually exclusive; and 3) agile methods can scale through simple linear composition. Using a longitudinal case study of large-scale agile development, we describe a series of trigger events and episodes whereby the agile approach was tailored to address the needs of the large-scale development context, which was very much at odds with these fundamental assumptions. We develop a set of new underlying assumptions which suggest that agile and plan-driven practices are mutually enabli...

Founded in 1900, Bostonia magazine is Boston University's main alumni publication, which cove... more Founded in 1900, Bostonia magazine is Boston University's main alumni publication, which covers alumni and student life, as well as university activities, events, and programs

Throughout my undergraduate studies in law I took a keen interest in politics, economics and cons... more Throughout my undergraduate studies in law I took a keen interest in politics, economics and constitutional and international law. I also worked at that time for the Crown Law Office of Queensland and gained significant experience in Public Law. After graduating I worked as a Research Associate for the High Court of Australia at the direction of then Justice William Deane (at the time when Sir Anthony Mason was Chief Justice). This time at the High Court provided new ideas and experience in relation to legal research (especially computerised legal databases), writing, reasoning and conceptual thinking. It also allowed me to see the inner workings of the highest court in the land and to work on a number of significant constitutional law opinions. During this time Justice Deane was a generous mentor and pointed out to me the importance of the legal area of Restitution and the special expertise of Professor Peter Birks at Oxford University in relation to this topic.

Cultural Science Journal, 2014

Agile development approaches have become the norm for almost all software development now. While ... more Agile development approaches have become the norm for almost all software development now. While agile approaches can deliver more frequent releases of working software, it quickly became apparent in many organisations that they were not able to leverage these frequent releases due to the disconnect between the development and operations functions, with the latter typically responsible for releasing software to customers. This resulted in the move towards closer integration of these functions through the DevOps movement. As the trend towards digitalisation continues, companies are increasingly implementing DevOps. We propose a maturity model for this agile to DevOps transition with three levels: agile, continuous integration, continuous delivery. Based on an in-depth case study in an organisation which has several years’ experience of DevOps, we identify a fundamental disruption in the soft skills and competences that software teams are expected to possess, and in the patterns of co...

This chapter considers how open content licences of copyright-protected materials – specifically,... more This chapter considers how open content licences of copyright-protected materials – specifically, Creative Commons (CC) licences - can be used by governments as a simple and effective mechanism to enable reuse of their PSI, particularly where materials are made available in digital form online or distributed on disk.

Media International Australia, 2005

Fan-based or third party content creation has assumed an integral place in the multi-million doll... more Fan-based or third party content creation has assumed an integral place in the multi-million dollar computer games industry. The emerging production ecology that involves new kinds of distributed organisations and ad hoc networks epitomises the ‘drift of value’ from producer to consumer and allows us to understand how user-led innovation influences the creative industries. But the ability to control intellectual property rights in content production is critical to the power structures and social dynamic that are being created in this space. Trainz, a train simulation game released by Brisbane developer Auran, which relies heavily on fan-created content for its success, is used as a case study. The licence agreements between Auran and the fan creators are analysed in order to understand how the balance between the commercial and non-commercial is achieved and how the tension between open networks of collaboration and closed structures of commercial competitive environments are negoti...

International Journal of Cultural Studies, 2006

Policy Futures in Education, 2006

The 'Blog, Podcast, Vodcast and Wiki Copyright Guide for Australia' was developed by th... more The 'Blog, Podcast, Vodcast and Wiki Copyright Guide for Australia' was developed by the Law Research Program of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Creative Industries and Innovation (CCI) to examine and explain copyright issues which impact upon creators and users of ...