AQUA: an Agile Process to Develop Quantum Annealing Applications

Fuente: arXiv
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Autores principales: Marchesi, Lodovica, Nasharti, Amal, Marchesi, Michele
Formato: Preprint
Publicado: 2026
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author Marchesi, Lodovica
Nasharti, Amal
Marchesi, Michele
author_facet Marchesi, Lodovica
Nasharti, Amal
Marchesi, Michele
contents Quadratic unconstrained binary optimization (QUBO) is a field of operations research that is attracting growing interest due to the recent availability of quantum hardware targeted at solving QUBO problems. However, practical adoption is hindered by mathematical intricacy, hardware constraints, and a lack of sound software engineering processes for QUBO development. This work presents AQUA (Agile QUantum Annealing), an agile lifecycle for QUBO/QA development created through an industry-academia partnership between NetService S.p.A and the University of Cagliari. Using the Design Science Research (DSR) approach, AQUA customizes Scrum to the needs of QUBO/QA development, structuring work into four stages: initial assessment with formal modeling, prototype-driven algorithm selection, agile implementation, and deployment with ongoing maintenance, each gated by milestones. Validated on a real credit-scoring case, AQUA shows feasibility and offers an explicit, systematic QA engineering framework. Key contributions of our work are: a dedicated QUBO/QA software process, its creation and design using DSR approach, and its empirical validation on a simple yet real case study.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2601_14501
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle AQUA: an Agile Process to Develop Quantum Annealing Applications
Marchesi, Lodovica
Nasharti, Amal
Marchesi, Michele
Software Engineering
Quadratic unconstrained binary optimization (QUBO) is a field of operations research that is attracting growing interest due to the recent availability of quantum hardware targeted at solving QUBO problems. However, practical adoption is hindered by mathematical intricacy, hardware constraints, and a lack of sound software engineering processes for QUBO development. This work presents AQUA (Agile QUantum Annealing), an agile lifecycle for QUBO/QA development created through an industry-academia partnership between NetService S.p.A and the University of Cagliari. Using the Design Science Research (DSR) approach, AQUA customizes Scrum to the needs of QUBO/QA development, structuring work into four stages: initial assessment with formal modeling, prototype-driven algorithm selection, agile implementation, and deployment with ongoing maintenance, each gated by milestones. Validated on a real credit-scoring case, AQUA shows feasibility and offers an explicit, systematic QA engineering framework. Key contributions of our work are: a dedicated QUBO/QA software process, its creation and design using DSR approach, and its empirical validation on a simple yet real case study.
title AQUA: an Agile Process to Develop Quantum Annealing Applications
topic Software Engineering
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2601.14501