A Proposal for Hybrid Agile Approach during Procurement Process of Smart City Solutions

  • Procopie-Florin Gușul “Ștefan cel Mare” University of Suceava, Romania
  • Alina-Ramona Butnariu “Ștefan cel Mare” University of Suceava, Romania
Keywords: smart city, agile, scrum, public procurement process

Abstract

Smart city is a concept widely used and sometimes the idea seems somehow utopian since it involves notions from a multitude of scientific fields. Most researchers, representatives of companies and government agencies, together with city dwellers agree that the main elements of the smart city are ICT, their successful application and smart human resources. However, it seems that local governments do not pay much attention to educating citizens or raising society's awareness of smart solutions when trying to develop smart cities. Rather, we believe that the major interest in introducing smart city solutions has been an economic one, which would support increasing revenues to local budgets or increasing sales revenues for companies that develop smart solutions. We therefore believe that the demands and expectations of citizens must be listened to (more), frequent result-oriented discussions with smart solutions providers need to take place and that local authorities must establish a clear action plan for all stakeholders to communicate in order to create a smart city that works with success. Therefore, among the characteristics of agile methodologies usually implemented in software development we identified in the current study some concepts that might be applicable to the process of public procurement of smart city solutions. We thus propose a new hybrid agile approach and discuss its advantages with regards to smart city projects. Conclusions of the study indicate that the proposed approach requires changes in public management and, even more important, in our thinking. Customers, typically in the form of municipality or governmental organizations, need to become pro-active and much more engaged in smart city projects. As a result, it is demonstrated that smart governance plays an essential role in the success of the urban projects implemented with such solutions.

References

[1] Balaji M, Velmurugan V, Subashree C. “TADS : An assessment methodology for agile supply chains,” Revista Mexicana de Trastornos Alimentarios. Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Centro de Ciencias Aplicadas y Desarrollo Tecnológico. 2015; 13(5): 504–509. doi: 10.1016/j.jart.2015.10.002.
[2] Rebentisch E. et al. “Defining Scaling Strategies for the Improvement of Agility Performance in Product Development Projects,” Procedia CIRP. Elsevier B.V., 70; 2018: 29–34. doi: 10.1016/j.procir.2018.01.006.
[3] Manifesto for Agile Software Development. Available from: http://agilemanifesto.org/
[4] Carlos E et al. “Science Direct The agility construct on project management theory,”2016; 34: 660–674.
[5] Sherehiy B, Karwowski W, Layer KL. “A review of enterprise agility: Concepts , frameworks , and attributes,” 2007; 37: 445–460. doi: 10.1016/j.ergon.2007.01.007.
[6] Dingsoyra T et al. “A decade of agile methodologies: Towards explaining agile software development,” The Journal of Systems and Software, 2012; 85: 1213–1221. doi: 10.1016/j.jss.2012.02.033.
[7] Cockburn A. Agile software development: The comparative game. Boston, MA: Addison-Wesley; 2006.
[8] Mergel I, Gong Y, Bertot J. “Agile government: Systematic literature review and future research,” Government Information Quarterly, 2018. doi: 10.1016/j.giq.2018.04.003.
[9] Conforto EC et al. “Agile project management and stage-gate model — A hybrid framework for technology-based companies,” Journal of Engineering and Technology Management Elsevier B.V.; 2016. doi: 10.1016/j.jengtecman.2016.02.003.
[10] Schwaber K. “The Scrum Guide TM,” (November); 2017.
[11] Highsmith JR. Agile project management: creating innovative products. Pearson Education; 2009.
[12] Rigby DK, Sutherland J, & Takeuchi H. Embracing agile. Harvard Business Review; 2016; 94(5), 40–50. doi: https://hbr.org/2016/05/embracing-agile.
[13] Rubin KS. Essential Scrum. A Practical Guide to the Most Popular Agile Process; 2013.
[14] Agile For All. Intro To Agile. Available from: http://www.agileforall.com/intro-to-agile/
[15] Caragliu A, Del Bo C, Nijkamp P. “Smart Cities in Europe”; 3rd Central European Conference in Regional Science – CERS, 2009. doi: 10.1080/10630732.2011.601117.
[16] Achmad, KA et al. “Smart City Readiness based on Smart City Council ’ s Readiness Framework Smart City Readiness b ased on Smart City Council’ s Readiness Framework,” (April 2020); 2017. doi: 10.11591/ijece.v8i1.pp. 271-279.
[17] Giffinger R, Fertner C, Kramar H, Kalasek R, Pichler-Milanovic N, Meijers E. “Smart cities - Ranking of European medium-sized cities,”; 2007.
[18] Buchem I, Attwell G, Eds GT. Learning and Diversity in the Cities of the Future; 2013.
Published
2020-08-11
How to Cite
Gușul, P.-F., & Butnariu, A.-R. (2020). A Proposal for Hybrid Agile Approach during Procurement Process of Smart City Solutions. LUMEN Proceedings, 13, 22-33. https://doi.org/10.18662/lumproc/ncoe4.0.2020/03