| 1. |
- Alakukku, Laura, et al.
(author)
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Maatalouden ympäristötuen vaikuttavuuden seurantatutkimus (MYTVAS 3) : loppuraportti
- 2014
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Reports (other academic/artistic)abstract
- Since 1995, agri-environmental support partly funded by the EU has formed the core of Finland’s agri-environmental policy. This system has had a variety of impacts on the relationship between agriculture and the environment. Today’s agri-environmental support is one of the packages included in the Rural Development Programme for Mainland Finland (2007–2013/2014), which both in itself and through the underlying EU legislation requires monitoring of the impacts of the measures implemented. The study monitoring the impact of the 2nd Finnish agri-environmental scheme (MYTVAS 3), which ran from 2008 to 2013, forms part of this monitoring. The MYTVAS 3 monitoring study was also financed by the Ministry of the Environment. The monitoring study was carried out by a consortium coordinated by MTT Agrifood Research Finland and including the Finnish Environment Institute (SYKE), the University of Helsinki, the Finnish Game and Fisheries Research Institute and the University of Turku.The purpose of the MYTVAS 3 monitoring study was to find out how agri-environmental support and its various measures have affected the state of the environment in agricultural areas, how agri-environmental support has affected the potential for farming and how agri-environmental support should be developed to increase its impact. The monitoring focused on the impacts of agri-environmental support on the nutrient load from agriculture on the waterways and on biodiversity. When evaluating the findings presented, we should remember that while monitoring data shows that something happened, it does not necessarily explain what caused it. It is not always possible to show that particular developments were a specific outcome of the current agri-environmental support system and the implementation of its measures. The delay between a measure and its observed impact is often long, and the cause-and-effect relationships are complicated and partly unknown. Also, other agricultural policy and fluctuations on the market may affect the state of the agricultural environment directly or indirectly.The monitoring data show that agri-environmental support has not had a detrimental impact on the potential for farming. Despite a slight increase in the incidence of weeds, they do not cause problems of the kind that would require amendments to the content of agri-environmental measures. Carbon levels in the surface stratum of arable land seems to be continuing their slow decline, and there is still need for measures to preserve organic material in the soil.Compliance with the fertilisation limits in the agri-environmental support system would seem to have had very little impact on crop quality. Variations in the weight and protein content per hectolitre and per 1,000 seeds were of the same order between 2006 and 2012 as they were between 1995 and 2005. Crop quantities have also not been noticeably affected by compliance with the fertilisation limits. Average crop yields remained stable between 1986 and 2013, and no clearly different crop years were observed in the 2000s. It is possible, however, that the lower fertilisation levels could have lowered crop potential in the years with advantageous weather conditions in the 2000s and that protein contents have been lower in advantageous years.The monitoring data also show that the nutrient load potential of agriculture, measured by nutrient balances, has decreased continuously for nitrogen and particularly for phosphorus. The decrease in the nutrient load potential is due above all to a decrease in the use of synthetic fertilisers. The decline in nitrogen fertilisation has bottomed out in recent years, and low protein levels measured in high crop yield years show that there is no point in further reducing nitrogen fertilisation. Optimising nitrogen fertilisation according to how advantageous the growing season is and effectively using the soluble nitrogen in cattle manure are key measures in achieving reasonable nitrogen balances and good crop quality despite fluctuations in growing season conditions. New crop variants have been found to make more efficient use of nitrogen than old ones, and thus the introduction of new variants should be promoted. Despite the decrease in the nutrient balances, there are indications that nutrient loads in runoff water from domestic animal production sites are becoming an increasing problem. Indeed, the fundamental problem with the nutrient load from agriculture is the diversification of livestock farming and crop farming, which has made it more difficult to use nutrients appropriately. Therefore attention must be paid to measures that both boost the use of nutrients in manure and reduce the levels of nutrients that end up in manure. Based on nutrient load monitoring in the catchment areas of rivers, the phosphorus load per hectare of cropland has decreased in each programme period, being about 80% of the level of the first period (1995–1999) in the third period (2007–2013). Because of the increase in the area of cropland, the nitrogen load on waterways from agriculture continued to grow during the second programme period (2000–2006) but peaked in the third (2007–2013). A similar trend was found in the nitrogen load per hectare of cropland.The most important threat to biodiversity is caused by the development of landscape structure, typically involving a decrease in the number of open or half-open areas excluded from actual cultivation. The consequence of the clearing of margins and ecological islands located in crop fields, drainage measures aimed at increasing arable land and all rationalisation of cultivated areas is the diminishing of exactly those areas that are the most important from the perspective of the biodiversity of the agricultural environment. However, the measure-specific findings in the monitoring study show that biodiversity benefits have been locally achieved where measures have been implemented on a broad enough scale (biodynamic farming, traditional biotopes, wetlands, buffer zones, green fallow / nature management areas). Particular care should therefore be taken that all cultivated land continues to have a sufficient percentage of non-cultivated areas, whether they be natural meadows, nature management areas, biodiversity strips, buffer zones, filter strips, headlands, ecological islands, etc. Including the rather popular nature management areas as a new voluntary measure under basic measures was a significant contribution to biodiversity.Regarding the rural landscape, it may be noted that by visual inspection the area of cropland has remained largely unchanged, at the level of the landscape as a whole it is far more common for the landscape to become more closed than to become more open. This trend was also observed in the visual inspection of traditional biotopes, even if the openness of the meadows monitored largely remained unchanged.The only measures that directly address the reduction of gaseous emissions in the agri-environmental support system are the longterm grass cultivation on peat fields and special aid agreements for slurry injection in cropland. While other measures have indirectly affected gaseous emissions, the impact of agri-environmental support as a whole on reducing gaseous emissions from agriculture has been negligible. In general, we may conclude that the goals, content and support levels of agri-environmental support measures must be increasingly adapted and customised by region, by type of farming and by farm, because both the state of the agricultural environment and the needs of society differ greatly between different types of rural area.
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| 2. |
- Kettunen, Petri, et al.
(author)
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Agile Enterprise Transformations : Surveying the Many Facets of Agility for the Hybrid Era
- 2022
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Conference paper (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Agile companies are not uniform. Consequently, agile transformations are conceived broadly, ranging from adopting agile methods and practices in software development teams or functions to building all-encompassing enterprise agility. Moreover, the targeted effects of agility may vary, and the success of transformations and the attainment of agility are measured in various ways. In this paper, based on a recent industrial survey study, we scrutinize holistically why companies want to transform, what types of agility they are aiming at, and how they gauge transformations. The survey data was collected during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. Most of the respondents were in large or very large companies in Finland and Sweden in diverse industry domains. The main findings indicate that there are many reasons for companies to transform both to improve external outcomes (fore mostly responsiveness) and to develop internal capabilities (adaptability, organizational learning). Companies seemed to have aims and goals with respect to all types of agility, including business agility. As the nature of transformations and the companies’ aims and goals vary, the transformations follow various means and measures. As a conclusion, for the hybrid era, we advise companies to consider how agility has benefited during the pandemic era, how hybrid work possibly affects the goals for agile transformations and the different facets of agility, and how to sustain agility in hybrid work.
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| 3. |
- Kettunen, Petri, et al.
(author)
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Agile in the Era of Digitalization : A Finnish Survey Study
- 2019
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In: Lecture Notes in Computer Science (including subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics). - Cham : Springer. - 9783030353322 ; , s. 383-398
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Conference paper (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Agile software development has been applied since the early 2000s. It is now mainstream industrial practice in information and communication technology (ICT) companies and IT organizations. However, recently increasing and even disruptive digitalization has brought new drivers and needs for agility both in software organizations as well as in traditional companies, which are becoming more and more software-intensive. Following that line of developments, based on our recent survey conducted in Finland in 2018, in this paper we explore the current state of the affairs with respect to how different organizations currently address agility and agile development in both IT and non-software industrial sectors. The results show that operative goals (productivity, quality) are considered the most important ones to achieve by agile means. Scrum, Kanban and DevOps are the most frequently reported methods, and SAFe is the dominant scaling model. Lead time metrics are the most typically followed measurements. The operative goals as well as responsiveness are also the most highly ranked future aims. The impacts of digitalization are considered substantial but agile developments are seen to address them well. As a conclusion of this survey study, there is no “one agile way” for all. Different organizations seem to emphasize multiple aspects of agility when they develop, adapt and even transform themselves. Yet, also many commonalities were indicated. © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019.
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| 4. |
- Kettunen, Petri, et al.
(author)
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Finnish Enterprise Agile Transformations : A Survey Study
- 2019
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In: AGILE PROCESSES IN SOFTWARE ENGINEERING AND EXTREME PROGRAMMING - WORKSHOPS. - Cham : SPRINGER INTERNATIONAL PUBLISHING AG. - 9783030301262 ; , s. 97-104
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Conference paper (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Modern large software-intensive development organizations are nowadays more and more often believed to transform their structures and operations towards large-scale agility in search for higher performances. Based on a survey conducted in Finland in 2018, in this paper we explore the current state of the affairs with respect to how extensively organizations are actually transforming themselves, in what ways this takes place in practice and for what goals. Most of the respondents were in large organizations. The results show that the majority of the surveyed respondents indicated that their organizations have conducted agile transformations or are currently doing so. Different strategies and tactics have been used in the transformations, but markedly the respondents reported most that the company has had external consultants (subcontracting) to assist in the change. The most important goals aimed to be achieved with agile means were productivity and quality (operative) and responsiveness to customer/market changes (new features). Notably only very few respondents reported their organizations to be currently non-agile (do not use at all agile methods in software development).
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| 5. |
- Kettunen, Petri, et al.
(author)
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Impacts of COVID-19 Pandemic for Software Development in Nordic Companies : Agility Helps to Respond
- 2021
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In: AGILE PROCESSES IN SOFTWARE ENGINEERING AND EXTREME PROGRAMMING - WORKSHOPS (XP 2021). - Cham : Springer. - 9783030885823 ; , s. 33-41
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Conference paper (peer-reviewed)abstract
- In 2020, the global COVID-19 pandemic affected almost every company in some way also in the Nordic countries. Depending on the different industry sectors of the companies, the impacts have varied from minor risks to severe disruptions but also even booming businesses. In all, agility and resilience have been required to continue and even to survive. In 2018, we started conducting large-scale agile surveys in Finland and Sweden. For the 2020 survey round, we included questions about the current pandemic situation impacts and how agility has helped to respond. The respondents represented software professionals from different industries, not limited to information and communication technology (ICT) companies. The results indicate that although the perceived impacts have mostly been negative (53%), it is not all so. One-third (33%) reported positive impacts such as increased business and better well-being. The majority (55%) of the responses indicated that agility has helped to respond to the pandemic situation. Remarkably, 59% reported that their companies have improved agility during the past year. Improved agility appears to be positively related to the ability to respond to the pandemic. We did not discover significant differences between the Finnish and Swedish respondent cohorts.
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| 6. |
- Nguyen‐Duc, Anh, et al.
(author)
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Work‐from‐home impacts on software project : A global study on software development practices and stakeholder perceptions
- 2024
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In: Software, practice & experience. - : John Wiley & Sons. - 0038-0644 .- 1097-024X. ; 54:5, s. 896-926
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Context:The COVID-19 pandemic has had a disruptive impact on how people work and collaborate across all global economic sectors, including software business. While remote working is not new for software engineers, forced WFH situations come with both limitations and opportunities. As the ‘new normal’ for working might be based on the current state of Work-from-home (WFH), it is useful to understand what has happened and learn from that.Objective:This study aims to gain insights into how their WFH arrangement impacts project management and software engineering. We are also interested in exploring these impacts in different contexts, such as startups and established companies.Method:We conducted a global-scale, cross-sectional survey during the spring and summer 2021. Our results are based on quantitative and qualitative analysis of 297 valid responses.Results:We characterize the profile of WFH in both spatial and temporal aspects, together with a set of common collaborative tools and coordination and control mechanisms. We revealed some areas of project management that are relatively more challenging during WFH situations, such as coordination, communication and project planning. We also revealed a mixed picture of the perceived impact of WFH on different software engineering activities.Conclusion:WFH is a situational phenomenon which can have both negative and positive impact on software teams. For practitioners, we suggest a unified approach to consider the context of WFH, collaborative tools, associated coordination and control approaches and a process that resolve those aspects that are sensitive to physical interaction.
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