Agile IT Outsourcing

Agile methods are lightweight, iterative software development frameworks used predominantly on small and mid-sized software development projects. This chapter introduces a project structure and management practices creating agile conditions for large software projects outsourced either offshore or onshore. Agility is achieved by slicing a large project into a number of small projects working in agile settings. Development is divided into research and development activities that are located on-site, and production activities located off-site. The proposed approach makes agile methods applicable to the stressed conditions of outsourcing without compromising the quality or pace of the software development effort. Creating an agile environment in an outsourcing project relies on maintaining a balance between the functions and sizes of on-site and off-site teams, on redefining the developers’ roles, and on reorganizing the information flow between the different development activities to compensate for the lack of customers on-site, team colocation, and tacit project knowledge.

Collaborative Engineering for Enhanced Producibility by Ontology-Based Integration of Design and Production

Many companies base their business strategy on customized products with a high level of variety and continuous functional improvements. For companies to be able to provide affordable products in a short time and be at the competitive edge, every new design must be adapted to existing production facilities. In order to ensure this, collaboration between engineering design and production engineering has to be supported. With the dispersed organisations of today combined with the increasing amount of information that has to be shared and managed, this collaboration is a critical issue for many companies. In this article, an approach for sharing and managing product and production information is introduced. The results are based on the experiences from a case study at a car manufacturer. By ontology-based integration, work within domains engineering design, production engineering and requirement management at the company was integrated. The main objectives with the integration were: support the formation of requirement specifications for products and processes, improve and simplify the information retrieval for designers and process planners, ensure traceability from changes in product systems to manufacturing systems and vice versa, and finally, eliminate redundant or multiple versions of requirement specifications.

User Satisfaction with E-Collaborative Systems

E-mail is a critical component of most e-collaborative environments. This chapter describes an application of the American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) framework to model the antecedents and consequences of customer satisfaction with e-mail systems. The ACSI framework is an established methodology in the marketing literature and appeared to be useful to assess the antecedents and consequences of individual satisfaction in many more circumstances than external customer purchases. We surveyed e-mail users to gather data to utilize in an ACSI model modified for e-mail systems. Our findings indicate that the ACSI model can yield useful insights into factors that contribute to and result from user satisfaction.

Metaphors for E-Collaboration

What constitutes regional commerce? What creates and enhances a regional identity? In the United States, regions can be quite large and may even cover geographical territory from several surrounding counties or states. They are larger than any one individual company, shopping street, or district. Regional cooperation of commercial businesses is often manifested through special events, cooperative advertising with coordinated signage, extended opening hours, and special discounts that contribute to building a sense of community, and which eventually develop a sense of region. The political and environmental exigencies for the creation and expansion of regions have meant an increase in the popularity and importance of regions and a subsequent movement to enhance and differentiate their identities. We now see the rise of regional governments, water authorities, and educational institutions among many others. One little-explored idea has been the use of e-collaboration to forge, reinforce, and sustain a regional identity via the virtual world. Although geographical separation of many miles might dictate that bricks-and-mortar theatres cannot easily collaborate physically (i.e., they cannot share costumes, props, ushers, and so on), the possibility of e-collaboration opens potential opportunities for attracting wider audiences, reaching and ultimately casting fresh talent, and building reciprocal audiences who possess a passion for the arts and who have the means and desire to travel to attend performances throughout the geographical region. In this study, a methodology built on the conceptual foundation of metaphor research was used to comprehend and then interpret the Web presence of 15 nonprofit theatres that comprise the total regional theatre of southern New Jersey that exists on the Web. In order to add additional insight, our earlier research findings from working with off-Broadway and regional theatre festivals were extended to analyze the Web presence of the theatres in southern New Jersey. We contribute to the literature by systematic and deep investigation of the strategic importance of the Web for nonprofit theatre groups in the southern New Jersey region. In addition, our use of the metaphor methodology in order to create a telling portrait of what transpires on the Web in relation to nonprofit organizations is also an original contribution. Our work is meant to heighten the awareness of administrators to the rapidly accelerating need for the strategic use of e-collaboration. We propose that with the use of the Web, administrators can move toward creating a regional theatre Web presence for South Jersey, one which would make use of an evolutionary metaphor. To this end, we suggest the use of an organism metaphor. Through the creation of reciprocal hyperlinks, theatres can be supported in improving their practice of colocation on the Web, wherein they will be taking strides to cooperate as a regional theatre community.

Managing Operational Business Processes with Web-Based Information Technologies

Traditionally management schools of thought that emphasize certain types of work structures usually appear earlier than information technologies (IT) geared at supporting those work structures. This situation has undoubtedly changed recently, arguably around the mid-1990s, with the explosion in the commercial use of the Internet and particularly the Web. This calls for the development of a generic framework that ties together relevant management ideas that help organizations strategically and operationally align themselves with new Web-based IT. Our goal with this chapter is to provide some basic elements that can be used by managers and researchers as a starting point to develop this generic framework. As such, we focus on a particular set of activities associated with team coordination and communication in production and service delivery business processes through the Internet and the Web.

Exploring the Virtual Team Leaders' Perspective

In this study we examined the perceived importance of line managers and middle managers in virtual teams, and what work roles and leadership functions are necessary to promote virtual team success and performance. Using Quinn’s (1988) competing values framework it was found that control-related roles of directors and producers were perceived to be most important. With years in a leading position, the repertoire of leadership roles needed to successfully lead virtual teams declined. Additionally, middle managers compared to line managers perceived people oriented leadership functions (i.e., mentor and facilitator roles) and flexibility-related work roles (i.e., innovator and mentor roles) as more important whereas line managers compared to middle managers perceived stability leadership functions (i.e., monitor and coordinator roles) as more important. Limitations, implications for virtual team leadership, and suggestions for future research are discussed.

Web-Based Template-Driven Communication Support Systems

Teams whose interactions might be mediated entirely via Internet-based communication, virtual teams, are emerging as commonplace in business settings. Researchers have identified trust as a key ingredient for virtual teams to work effectively (Aubrey & Kelsey, 2003; Beranek, 2000; David & McDaniel, 2004; Iacono & Weisband, 1997; Jarvenpaa, Knoll, & Leidner, 1998; Jarvenpaa, Shadow, & Staples; 2004). However, researchers have not identified scalable methods that consistently promote trust within virtual teams. Improved interface design for communication support systems used by virtual teams may contribute to solving this problem. Interface cannot solve the problem of members trusting each other, but it can support the type of activities that do. This paper describes the development and some initial experiences with a Web-based, template-driven, asynchronous communication support tool and how this system can be used to support trust development in virtual teams and performance goals of virtual teams. This article presents the capabilities and features of the communication support system. More detailed findings from an experimental study of this system’s use can be found in another publication (Remidez, 2003).

A Comparative Analysis of E-Collaboration Research Funding in the European Union and the United States

Much of the funding for research and development initiatives in the area of e-collaboration comes from government agencies in various countries. Government funding of e-collaboration research in the European Union (EU) and the United States (U.S.), in particular, seems to be experiencing steady growth in recent years. In the EU, a key initiative to promote governmental investment in e-collaboration research is the Collaboration@Work initiative. This initiative is one of the EU’s Information Society Technologies Directorate General’s main priorities. In the U.S., government investment in e-collaboration research is channeled through several government branches and organizations, notably the National Science Foundation. There are key differences in the approaches used for government funding of e-collaboration research in the EU and U.S. Among other differences, the EU model appears to foster research that is aligned with the action research tradition, whereas the U.S. model places emphasis on research that is better aligned with the experimental research tradition.

The Drivers for the Adoption and Use of M-Services

Mobile services (m-services) have become an important part of the e-commerce landscape. Although research has been conducted on which services people use and the benefits they attach to those services, the values associated with the adoption and use of m-services at the individual level is still unclear. This paper addresses the question of why and how individuals adopt and appropriate m-services with a particular focus on m-communication? In the information systems field various technology adoption models have been proposed and validated in relation to technology adoption within an organisational setting but personal adoption and use of technology is less researched. We propose the use of means-end chains and laddering techniques to determine the basic primitive values that are fulfilled for the individual by using various m-services. The examples presented show that mobile services often fulfil such basic needs as self-esteem, achievement, individuality, belonging and well-being. Exploring the realization of values as a theoretical framework offers researchers a way forward in environments characterised by individual technology decisions.

Applying Pattern Theory in the Effective Management of Virtual Projects

The management of virtual projects is fundamentally different from that of traditional projects. Furthermore, the research in this area comes from different reference disciplines and perspectives, and a unified view or theory of best practices does not yet exist. We use the theoretical frame of patterns to propose a unified view. We focus on three concepts as the underlying theoretical elements for identifying patterns of effectiveness in virtual project management: (a) coordination, (b) communication, and (c) control. As a first step in the identification of specific patterns, we conducted a series of virtual focus groups with participants from industry who had real experience with virtual projects. The brainstorming data from the focus groups were analyzed to develop an initial set of patterns. Based on this first step, we also present a structured process for the discovery and continuing validation of patterns of effectiveness in virtual projects, and discuss the issues involved in applying the process.