Identifying Key Characteristics of Business Rules That Affect Software Project Success

Today, businesses need to continuously adjust to a dynamic environment. Enterprises have to deal with global competition and technological advances, meet government regulations, and keep their expenses under control. Under these pressures, enterprises need to implement and improve software that supports and helps to evolve their business. However, as practice shows, software implementation projects are complex, and a considerable percentage of them do not meet business requirements. Therefore, a business needs to manage software implementation properly. Existing research shows that using business rules (BR) in software implementation projects helps to ensure its success. The purpose of our study is to advance the understanding of how BR affect software implementation success, namely, which key characteristics of BR are the most important. To achieve this goal, the top thousand enterprises in Slovenia, by added value, facing typical software implementation projects were surveyed. The obtained results show that BR that are specifically prepared for a particular project and easy to understand have a statistically significant positive effect on software implementation project success.

Emerging Ecosystems Empowered by AI and IoT Technologies

As latest advancements signify the fourth industrial revolution, artificial intelligence (AI) and internet of things (IoT) became the focal points for innovators. IoT-enabled technology can be used to gather and explore huge amounts of data from both virtual and physical environments, and AI provides the means for effectively processing and manipulating resulting information to optimize or automate processes. In this chapter, the related state of the art is presented, along with the characteristics that enable the creation of hybrid innovation ecosystems. An overview of IoT and AI platforms is included, which can be utilized even by non-experts to compose advanced cost-effective services. Also, related notions such as interoperability and engagement are also discussed. Although such components can be applied in a multitude of domains, to provide a concrete example of innovation enablement, the smart grid ecosystem is employed. Here, participants, either from the supply or the demand side, take advantage of IoT and AI technology to address new business requirements that arise.

Tools and Platforms for Developing IoT Systems

The internet of things (IoT) transforms the world in many ways. It combines many types of hardware and software with a variety of communication technologies to enable the development of innovative applications. A typical IoT system consists of IoT device, IoT gateway, IoT platform, and IoT application. Developing these elements and delivering an IoT system for fulfilling business requirements encompasses many activities to be executed and is not straightforward. To expedite these activities, some major vendors provide software development kits (SDK), integrated development environments (IDE), and utility tools for developing software to be executed on IoT devices/gateways. Moreover, these vendors utilize their cloud platforms to provide fundamental services, such as data storage, analytics, stream processing, for developing IoT systems. These vendors also developed IoT specific cloud-based services, such as connectivity and device management, to support IoT system development. This chapter presents an overview of tools and platforms provided by five major vendors.

Managing Human Resources in E-Commerce

Human resources are the driving force and source of the core competitive advantage of any business. The purpose of this chapter is to discuss how human resource management (HRM) practices and human resource (HR) strategies are formulated and utilized in the context of e-commerce firms. When discussing e-commerce, relatively less attention is paid to HRM-related issues. However, analyzing, carefully, both the successful start-ups (i.e., Dollar Shave Club and Warby Parker) and e-commerce giants (i.e., Amazon and Alibaba) treat HRM as a critical success factor. Because business success depends on the careful integration of HRM strategies with business requirements and strategies. In this chapter, the different HRM practices and strategies adopted by different e-commerce firms will be discussed.

SERIES

Requirement defects are one of the major sources of failure in any software development process, and the main objective of this chapter is to make requirement analysis phase exhaustive by estimating risk at requirement level by analyzing requirement defect and requirement inter-relationships as early as possible to using domain modeling to inhibit them from being incorporated in design and implementation. To achieve this objective, this chapter proposes a tool to assist software developers in assessing risk at requirement level. The proposed tool, software risk estimator, SERIES in short, helps in early identification of potential risk where preventive actions can be undertaken to mitigate risk and corrective actions to avoid project failure in collaborative manner. The entire process has been supported by a software case study. The results of the proposed work are promising and will help software engineers in ensuring that all business requirements are captured correctly with clear vision and scope.

Analysis of Low Code-No Code Development Platforms in comparison with Traditional Development Methodologies

This paper examines the overview of low-code/no-code development platforms in comparison with traditional development methodologies and examines the benefits and limitations of the same. For several decades, businesses have had multiple options when they demanded new information systems. They could develop a new system using in-house developers, or they could order a system from an external merchant. This offers a close fit to business obligations. However, nowadays, there is a new alternative that is becoming increasingly prevalent. Low code/no code (LC/NC) applications can cater to business requirements efficiently, can be implemented instantly, and the cost is much less than systems developed in-house. Few, if any, programming skills are required. Keywords: Traditional development, No code development, low code development, Low code No code development, Software development life cycle (SDLC)

A Study on Employees Opinion Towards Recruitment Procedure at Kotak Life Insurance In Madurai District

Due to rising trend of enterprise eco-system, there is a need for more agile Human Resource Management (HRM) changing entire HR landscape. The requirements of client organizations are changing with each passing day which requires day-today solutions from providers of Human Resource Management (HRM) services. The focus of e-HRM is to provide readymade solutions as per changing business requirements in addition to challenges faced due to cut- throat competition by organizations viz. workforce diversity, gender inequality, talent acquisition & retention, effective HR utilization. The current paper studies fast growing bank and its changing business needs and thereafter emergence of e-HRM as solution-provider to its fast changing business needs. The research study is qualitative in nature.

Discussion on Integrated Modeling Technology of New Generation Centralized Control Station Equipment Monitoring System

At present, the substation SCD model mainly aims at the modeling of primary equipment and secondary equipment, and the description of auxiliary equipment and substation area model is missing. According to the characteristics of equipment monitoring of the new generation centralized control station, the description of auxiliary equipment model and area model needs to be added to the original IEC61850 standard. In the first mock exam station, the current business requirements of centralized control station are analyzed. A unified model structure of master station is designed. Based on the definition of IEC61850 standard, a method and example of extending auxiliary device model and regional model are given. The proposed auxiliary equipment and area modeling method based on IEC61850 standard can make up for the shortcomings of the original standard, support the equipment monitoring of the new generation centralized control station and realize rich application functions.

New goal-oriented requirements extraction framework for e-health services: a case study of diagnostic testing during the COVID-19 outbreak

PurposeThis paper aims to introduce the goal-oriented requirements extraction approach (GOREA). It is an elicitation approach that uses, specifically, healthcare business goals to derive the requirements of e-health system to be developed.Design/methodology/approachGOREA consists of two major phases: (1) modelling e-health business requirements phase and (2) modelling e-health information technology (IT) and systems requirements phase. The modelling e-health business requirements phase is divided into two main stages: (1) model e-health business strategy stage and (2) model e-health business environment stage. The modelling e-health IT and systems requirements phase illustrates the process of obtaining requirements of e-health system from the organizational goals that are determined in the previous phase. It consists of four main steps that deal with business goals of e-health system: (1) modelling e-health business process (BP) step; (2) modelling e-health business goals step; (3) analysing e-health business goals step; and (4) eliciting e-health system requirements step. A case study based on the basic operations and services in hospital emergency unit for checking patient against COVID-19 virus and taking its diagnostic testing has been set and used to examine the validity of the proposed approach by achieving the conformance of the developed system to the business goals.FindingsThe results indicate that (1) the proposed GOREA has a positive influence on the system implementation according to e-health business expectations; and (2) it can successfully fulfil the need of e-health business in order to save the citizens life by checking them against COVID-19 virus.Research limitations/implicationsThe proposed approach has some limitations. For example, it is only validated using one e-health business goal and thus it has to be authenticated with different e-health business goals in order to address different e-health problems.Originality/valueMany e-health projects and innovations are not established based on robust system requirements engineering phase. In order to ensure the success delivery of e-health services, all characteristics of e-health systems and applications must be understood in terms of technological perspectives as well as the all system requirements.

The FunCaps Framework: Reconceptualizing Operational Alignment

Background and purpose: Operational alignment, the alignment between business processes (BPs) and information systems (ISs), is a well-acknowledged requirement for improving business efficiency. However, a lack of sound foundation for the practical implementation of operational alignment remains in the existing literature. This is, in part, because previously developed coarse-grained strategic alignment models for operational alignment have overlooked the differences between strategic and operational levels of alignment. Additionally, while some studies have recognized these differences, they remain limited. This is partly due to their negligence of the IS’s socio-technical nature or their focus on identifying the social antecedents and their effect on operational alignment, without considering how ISs meet the business requirements in achieving operational alignment. To overcome this potential lack of applicability, the purpose of this paper is to determine the right level of abstraction for describing BPs and ISs and reconceptualizing operational alignment. Methodology: This paper conducts empirical research using a grounded theory (GT), centering on semi-structured interviews with 28 experts involved in the Iranian top public universities. Data were analyzed by using MAXQDA software. Results: The resulting FunCaps framework specifies the required combinations of BP functions and IS capabilities for operational alignment. Conclusion: FunCaps reconceptualizes operational alignment based on operational planning and reciprocal integration and establishes the broader picture by considering an IS as a socio-technical system.