LASD@SAC'26
Track on Lean and Agile Software Development
at the 41st ACM/SIGAPP Symposium On Applied Computing
March 23-27, 2026
Thessaloniki, Greece
About
The International Conference on Lean and Agile Software Development (LASD) was established in 2017 as part of the FedCSIS multiconference. Over the years, the conference has evolved to adapt to changing circumstances and explore new opportunities. In 2021 and 2022, LASD was held as an online conference due to the COVID-19 pandemic, making it more accessible to a global audience. In 2023, it became a track within ACM SAC, and in 2024, LASD expanded its reach by being held twice — first at SAC and later at ISD — solidifying its presence in both the Software Engineering and Information Systems communities.
The objective of LASD is to advance the state-of-the-art in lean and agile software development and disseminate best practices, along with success stories of successful transitions and adaptations to the evolving work environment.
LASD has already established itself as a prominent forum where practitioners, researchers, and academics meet to share and discuss their concerns, experience, and research findings. It is also renowned for its conscientious PC members, who diligently provide detailed reviews of journal-quality standards.
Authors of high-quality papers presented at LASD will be invited to submit extended versions of their work for further review and potential publication ine-Informatica Software Engineering Journal (EISEJ, IF: 1.2) and Journal of Computer Languages (COLA, IF: 1.8).
Motivation
While agile and lean software development has already become mainstream in industry and a strong community has crystallized around the new way of thinking, making the transition to the new mindset is still challenging for many project managers. Besides, as the vast majority of software development projects are unique, agile methods often need to be tailored to accommodate specific situations. However, method tailoring is not trivial and poses serious challenges for practitioners. Indeed, one of the most distinctive features of Scrum is that its practices are not independent, but instead are very tightly coupled and synergistic.
Furthermore, Scrum, XP, and Kanban were originally designed for small, single teams and do not provide guidance on dealing with scaling issues, while the last decade has seen the spread of agile into large-scale and distributed projects. To help companies in large-scale transformations, several agile scaling frameworks have been proposed. These off-the-shelf solutions incorporate predefined workflow patterns to deal with issues related to the large number of teams, inter-team coordination, and lack of up-front architecture. Nevertheless, numerous challenges while adopting off-the-shelf frameworks have been reported, including a mismatch between framework and organization, changes in management structure, changes in company policies, and the impossibility of fully implementing the whole framework at once.
On top of that, the COVID-19 pandemic has forced co-located teams, who relied on face-to-face communication for work coordination, to transition into a remote work environment. Since agile methods lack guidelines for remote work, it falls upon the agile community to develop systematic solutions for remote agile teams.
Currently, we are witnessing a pervasive hype surrounding generative AI coding tools that leverage Large Language Models (LLMs). These tools enable developers to accelerate coding, testing, debugging, refactoring, and documentation processes. Additionally, fine-tuned LLMs hold the potential for enhancing non-programming tasks like user story refinement, estimation, and prioritization. These remarkable advancements not only evoke excitement but also open up new research directions to further explore and optimize the integration of generative AI tools within the realm of Agile Software Development.
Topics of Interest
Submissions
Research papers and experience reports related to the above topics are solicited. Papers should be submitted in the PDF format using the ACM-SAC proceedings format via the START submission system. Full papers are limited to 8 pages with the option (at an extra charge) to add 2 more pages.
Each submission will be reviewed by at least three program committee members. To facilitate the double-blind reviewing, authors are kindly requested to provide the paper WITHOUT any reference to any of the authors, including the authors' personal details, the acknowledgments section of the paper and any other reference that may disclose the authors' identity.
Papers that receives positive reviews but are not accepted due to space limitation are invited for the poster session. The length of poster papers is 2 pages (included in the registration) + 1 page (at an extra charge).
Upon paper acceptance, prospective authors must provide a camera-ready version which takes into account the review comments. The conference proceedings will be published by ACM and also available online through the ACM Digital Library.
Paper registration is required, allowing the inclusion of the paper/poster in the conference proceedings. An author or a proxy must present the paper. This is a requirement for the paper/poster to be included in the ACM digital library. Authors who cannot make on-site presentations due to travel or health restrictions may request to present their materials online. No-presentation of registered papers and posters will result in excluding them from the ACM digital libray.
Starting January 1, 2026, ACM will fully transition to Open Access. All ACM publications, including those from ACM-sponsored conferences, will be 100% Open Access. Authors will have two primary options for publishing Open Access articles with ACM: the ACM Open institutional model or by paying Article Processing Charges (APCs). With over 1,800 institutions already part of ACM Open, the majority of ACM-sponsored conference papers will not require APCs from authors or conferences (currently, around 70-75%).
Authors from institutions not participating in ACM Open will need to pay an APC to publish their papers, unless they qualify for a financial or discretionary waiver. To find out whether an APC applies to your article, please consult the list of participating institutions in ACM Open and review the APC Waivers and Discounts Policy. Keep in mind that waivers are rare and are granted based on specific criteria set by ACM.
Understanding that this change could present financial challenges, ACM has approved a temporary subsidy for 2026 to ease the transition and allow more time for institutions to join ACM Open. The subsidy will offer:
- $250 APC for ACM/SIG members
- $350 APC for non-members
Student Research Competition (SRC)
Students are invited to submit research abstracts (maximum of 2 pages in ACM camera-ready format) following the instructions published at the SAC 2026 website.
Important Dates
Paper/poster submission
September 26, 2025
Reviews due date
October 26, 2025
Author notification
October 31, 2025
Camera-ready papers/posters
December 5, 2025
Author registration due date
December 12, 2025
Track Chairs
Gustavsson, Tomas
Sweden, Karlstads universitet, tomas.gustavsson@kau.seJarzebowicz, Aleksander
Poland, Gdansk University of Technology, aleksander.jarzebowicz@pg.edu.plPrzybyłek, Adam (Lead Chair)
Ireland, University of Galway, adam.przybylek@gmail.com