Sarah Beecham

Brief Background

Sarah Beecham

I hold the position of Senior Research Fellow in the Process Quality Group in Lero – the Irish Software Research Centre. The Process Quality Group is involved in conducting research into global software development, agile processes, planned processes, processes for software development in healthcare, and free and open source software research.

My research focusses on socio-technical aspects of software engineering to include: Software Engineer motivation, agile methods, distributed software development and how technology impacts the lives of the older adult. I work closely with industry, where much of my research is problem driven. I am also interested in the education of the next generation of software engineers. In my empirical research I employ both qualitative and quantitative methods.

I am currently working on two Science Foundation (SFI) funded projects.
The Global Agile project, involves working with an medium sized Irish Software Development company who is rolling out the Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe) across all their global sites. I am also project managing the Smart Ageing project, which is a collaboration between Lero and IBM. We are looking into how technology can support the Older Adult, and have started developing an Social Network System for Older Adult volunteers.

Much of my time is spent supervising PhD students, and interacting with industry – and when time allows I write research papers. I am actively involved in the global software engineering community. Ranging from reviewing papers for journals and conferences (as part of the program committee), associate editor for the Journal of Systems and Software (JSS), co-chair for ICSE 2019 Software Engineering in Education track, PC on ICSE 2018 Doctoral Symposium (DS) (and I have chaired several DSs at ICGSE and EASE conferences). I have guest edited several special issues, to include EASE best papers in IST, and Global Software Development Education (GSD-Ed), in Transactions in Computing Education (TOCE).

Previously while at Lero, I worked on the PAISEAN project, where with the help of industry, we developed an software process assessment method for Global Teaming, and validated a Decision Support System that aimed to tailor Global Software Development (GSD) processes to meet individual organisation needs. During 2015 I worked on commercialising VENTURE – a simulation-based environment for interaction training.