Xiaofeng Wang

Xiaofeng Wang is a Tenured Associate Professor at the Faculty of Engineering, Free University of Bozen-Bolzano, Italy. Her academic roles include teaching courses such as Agile Software Development, Entrepreneurial Software Engineering, and Software Project Management. She holds a PhD from the University of Bath, UK, and previously worked at Lero, the Irish Software Engineering Research Centre as a postdoc.

Her research focuses on agile and lean software development, software startups, and human factors in software engineering. Key areas include managing technical uncertainty in startups, generative AI applications in software inception, and hybrid work impacts on development practices. She actively publishes in journals like IEEE Software and conferences such as XP 2024.

Dr. Wang’s work emphasizes innovation in software ecosystems and startup success factors, with contributions to metrics for software startups and secure DevOps approaches. Her recent studies explore post-pandemic remote work dynamics and blockchain applications for virtual teams. She has led or participated in national and European projects, bridging academic research with industry needs.

Her teaching integrates real-world projects, such as the Students Sprint course, to enhance student engagement. She has pioneered educational tools like the ‘Essencery’ for essentializing software practices and ‘Digital Mentor’ chatbots for startup hypothesis generation. Her research and teaching aim to advance both technical and entrepreneurial competencies in software engineering.