The Relationship between Information Technology Adoption and Job Satisfaction in the Jordanian Construction Industry

Despite the popularity of Information Technology and job satisfaction research, little empirical evidence exists of the relationship between IT adoption and job satisfaction within the Jordanian construction industry. This research fills these knowledge gaps by exploring the relationship between IT adoption and job satisfaction from the perspective of construction companies, contractors, consultants, and architectural and engineering firms in Jordan. Measures were developed using MSQ and IT Barometer surveys. Three hundred questionnaires were distributed to investigate this relationship among different companies from the Jordanian construction sector. Descriptive statistics were obtained and hypotheses were tested using multiple regression analysis. Results show that more investment in technology would increase employee job satisfaction regarding intrinsic, extrinsic, and general perspectives.

Stakeholder Challenges in Information Systems Project Offshoring

This study of international information systems (IS) offshoring highlights the idea that project success or failure is often in the eye of the beholder and that proper attention needs to be provided to both client and vendor perspectives. This research contributes by identifying noteworthy IS offshoring challenges faced by client and vendor stakeholders. This research synthesizes key findings from eight dyadic case studies consisting of 56 interviews in total from both client and vendor firms detailing their offshore experiences. The case investigations lead to the discovery of nine unique challenges encountered by client and vendor stakeholders. The challenges include a wide assortment of economic, personal responsibilities/expectations, and organizational offshore project management issues. The reported challenges can suitably guide client and vendor project managers in managing international IS offshore projects as well guide academic researchers to better understand techniques for managing offshore IS projects.

Performance Management in Software Engineering

Performance measurement in software engineering has to meet a multiplicity of challenges. Oftentimes, traditional metrics focus on sequential development instead of using incremental and iterative development. Output is measured on a pure quantitative (e.g., SLOC), quality-disregarding basis. A project’s input is hard to assign properly using enterprise-unspecific forecasting tools which have to be calibrated at first and which do not account for time preferences. Requirements necessary for behaviourally adjusted project management and control are rarely discussed. Focusing on these shortcomings, this paper proposes an enterprise-specific approach which combines lifecycle and activity based costing techniques for software development following the incremental and iterative Unified Process model. Key advantages are calibration effort can be avoided, project management decisions are supported by a clear managerial accounting emphasis, precise milestone-depending cost objectives can be determined as the basis for personnel management and control of development teams, and cost and time variance analysis can be supported in a sophisticated way.

Global IT Project Management Using Web 2.0

For many businesses, managing globally distributed IT projects effectively is key to success in today’s competitive environment. However, IT projects and their managements are notorious for failures, and managing globally distributed teams poses unique additional challenges. While the Internet, email and the Web have been major means of communication among such teams, new Web 2.0 technologies and applications which have emerged into prominence in the last few years present new opportunities for successfully managing global projects. This paper presents the authors’ findings on awareness and level of use of Web 2.0 tools for project management among global teams. It also offers recommendations on how managers of global IT projects can manage their teams more efficiently and effectively using Web 2.0 tools.

Software Engineering Productivity

Software engineering productivity has been widely studied, but there are many issues that remain unsolved. Interesting works related to new metrics and more replications of past productivity analysis have emerged, however, in order to fulfill these unsolved issues, a consensus about influencing factors and well recognized and useful sets of inputs and outputs for using in measurements must be reached. In this regard, a clear state of the art may shed light on further research in software engineering productivity, which remains a promising research area. In this paper, general concepts of software engineering productivity along with general issues and recent challenges that need further attention from the research community are presented.

A Single-Objective Recovery Phase Model

The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) has identified the four phases of disaster related planning as mitigation, preparation, response, and recovery. The recovery phase is characterized by activity to return life to normal or improved levels. Very little research considers the recovery phase, which encompasses restoring services and rebuilding disaster stricken areas of the highway transportation network. Existing recovery phase models deal primarily with travel times and do not focus on specific routes for reconstruction. This research proposes a plan for repair and restoration of bridges to restore a highway network that allows accessibility to key facilities in the area. This research differs from other recovery phase models in that actual routes are chosen for recovery based on given criteria. The single-objective optimization model developed in this paper is a flexible model that can be applied to a variety of natural disaster situations and other situations that involve damage to transportation components where decisions on recovery strategies must be made.

Multicultural Software Development

Productivity management is a challenge for software engineering companies and, in this regard, there is a current trend toward globalization. Via acquisitions and mergers, business has become international and employs different national cultures. Therefore, the focus of this article is on the understanding of cultural differences affecting productivity in globalized software production. The relation between productivity and non coding activities in software development projects has not been proven. Software development is expert work, typically made in closely collaborating local teams and global distribution of expert work increases the degree of difficulty. In this paper, the authors analyze multicultural ICT companies from their productivity perspective through the lens of cultural differences. The purpose of this study is to report findings based on general cultural studies and reported experiences that seem to affect productivity in the software industry. Some company cases are also described and analyzed.

Information Systems Outsourcing in Large Companies

Information systems outsourcing is an indispensable tool in the management of information systems. The set of services contracted to outside suppliers, originally more limited to services of an operational nature, has expanded over the past two decades, and today there is a wide range of services subject to outsourcing. Among them are: the hiring of software development; maintenance of applications; services and communications networks; security of information systems; and many others. Depending on the nature of the services contracted and on the range that the contracting of services has on departments of information systems, the issues involved in project management vary considerably. This article presents the results of a survey conducted among large companies in the Republic of Ireland to characterize, among other things, the range of services that are most often outsourced. The results are relevant in the sense that not only do they enable a better understanding of the reality of information systems departments of large Irish companies, but also enable the management to focus attention on specific services.

Information Technology Project Performance

In this exploratory research study the critical success factors resulting in Information Technology (IT) project performance were assessed. Previous research supported associations between critical success factors and information technology project performance. A survey of 116 different projects at firms in the United States was used as the context to examine the critical success factors in project performance. The examination of the data analysis showed the size of the project, clarity of goals and mission, availability of required technology, and client acceptance of the project had a significant impact on project performance.

Information Technology Project Outcomes

Enterprise IT projects can end up costing much more than initial estimations, taking much longer time than expected or delivering benefits below expectations. The success or failure of IT projects, however, depends on the project managers. Many reasons are attributed to the success or failure of an IT project. The major stakeholders who are involved in IT projects are the right people to provide these reasons. This study was conducted among IT project managers in the Washington-Baltimore Metropolitan area to find out the most important reasons that projects succeed or fail. Washington-Baltimore metropolitan is a major hub of IT activities because of the location of the U.S. Federal Government, several government agencies and the presence of many IT contactors in the area. The study provides metric for comparing reasons for success or failure of IT projects with those projects not located in the area.