Dr Adam Przybyłek
SyMeCo project: “Agile Software development in the post-Covid-19 era”
Supervisor: Prof Kieran Conboy
Host University: University of Galway (UoG)
Email: adam.przybylek@universityofgalway.ie
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/adampap/
Dr Adam Przybyłek is a SyMeCo postdoctoral fellow with Lero@UoG, undertaking his fellowship under the supervision of Prof Kieran Conboy. Prior to this appointment, Adam served as an Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Electronics, Telecommunications and Informatics at Gdansk University of Technology, Poland. He holds a Ph.D. in Software Engineering and an M.Sc. in Information Systems, and his primary research interests lie in empirical software engineering, with a focus on agile methods and software modularity. Adam bridges the gap between theory and practice with significant industry experience, having worked as a network consultant and a data scientist developing AI-powered solutions for the insurance sector. Furthermore, he is the founder of the International Conference on Lean and Agile Software Development (https://lasd.pl), which was later converted into a track under the same name in 2023. He is also a co-founder of the Workshop on Personalization and Recommender Systems (https://pers.lasd.pl). Additionally, he served as Program Chair for KKIO’23, ACM SAC’24, ISD’24, and ACM SAC’25. He is also an active and long-serving member of program committees for several international venues, including ENASE and ACM SAC (since 2015), MADEISD@ADBIS (since its inception in 2019), and XP (since 2023).
SyMeCo research project: The COVID-19 pandemic necessitated a shift to remote work, posing significant challenges for agile teams traditionally reliant on face-to-face interaction. While many ad-hoc in-house remedies were developed, robust and sustainable solutions for remote and hybrid agile work remain elusive. Recent studies continue to highlight operational difficulties faced by remote and hybrid agile teams, including communication barriers, reduced team cohesion, maintaining transparency, decreased creativity, and complexities in onboarding new members. This project aims to address this gap by developing and disseminating a set of empirically validated context-specific practices, guidelines, and agile framework adaptations for remote and hybrid work settings. The research employs Case Study and Action Research in collaboration with industrial partners to develop, test, and refine systematic solutions, ensuring practical applicability. This approach promises to enhance organisational agility and team performance in the post-COVID-19 era where remote and hybrid work arrangements have become permanent features of the software development landscape, supporting sustainable workplace transformations.
Project impact – This research will help software development teams overcome persistent operational challenges while maintaining agile values in distributed settings. For industry, it will enable sustainable workplace transformations that balance employee flexibility with effective collaboration. For the research community, it contributes empirically grounded knowledge regarding agile method adaptation in remote and hybrid contexts, addressing a significant gap in current literature.
Interdisciplinary aspects: The project sits at the intersection of Software Engineering and Information Systems. It addresses not only technical aspects of agile practices but also organisational transformation, team dynamics, and employee well-being in remote and hybrid work settings.
Project website: https://symeco.lasd.pl/