Preparing School Leaders for Special Education: Old Criticisms and New Directions

In the context of accountability and high-stakes testing, professors of educational administration in Texas and across the nation are under tremendous pressure to develop innovative principal preparation programs that produce effective school leaders, especially as research methodologies emerge to disaggregate the effects of such programs. One area few programs adequately address, including more innovative programs, is special education - despite the fact that principals struggle with accountability for all students, but particularly those principals in schools and districts with limited resources and limited professional development opportunitie~ (Bays & Crocket, 2007; Wakeman, Browder, Flowers, & Ahlgrim-Delzell, 2006). Principals have long reported that their preparation programs did not prepare them with the legal and instructional knowledge in the area of special education (DiPaola & Walther-Thomas, 2003; Hirth & Valesky, 1990)

Exploring the Nuances of 'Wickedness' in Information Systems Development

Information Systems Development (ISD) practice is an inherently challenging undertaking, as exemplified by the high rate of ISD project failures. The scale of the challenge is often heightened in distributed environments where ISD practitioners can face considerable complexity, uncertainty, and contention. The concept of -˜wickedness’ epitomizes such challenges. However, ISD literature has yet to fully explore the nuances of wickedness found in ISD practices within distributed environments. To address this gap, we use a theoretical framework to analyze case study findings from an interdisciplinary connected health project. In particular, we break open the social aspects of wickedness and explore their impact on shared understanding and shared commitment in ISD projects. The paper highlights the implications that these nuances have for group decision-making in distributed ISD project teams

Ambidexterity in Information Systems Research: Overview of Conceptualizations, Antecedents, and Outcomes

Organizations that are not efficient and innovative today quickly become irrelevant tomorrow. Ambidexterity (i.e., simultaneously conducting two seemingly contradicting activities, such as exploitation and exploration) helps organizations to overcome this challenge and, hence, has become increasingly popular with manifold applications in information systems (IS) research. However, we lack a systematic understanding of ambidexterity research, its research streams, and their future trajectory. Hence, we conduct a systematic literature review on ambidexterity in IS research and identify six distinct research streams that use an ambidexterity lens: IT-enabled organizational ambidexterity, ambidextrous IT capability, ambidexterity in IS development, ambidextrous IS strategy, ambidextrous inter-organizational relationships, and organizational ambidexterity in IS. We present the current state of research in each stream. More so, we comprehensively overview application areas, conceptualizations, antecedents for, and outcomes of ambidexterity. Hence, this study contributes to the emergent theme of ambidexterity in IS research

Exploring the Nuances of \u27Wickedness\u27 in Information Systems Development

Information Systems Development (ISD) practice is an inherently challenging undertaking, as exemplified by the high rate of ISD project failures. The scale of the challenge is often heightened in distributed environments where ISD practitioners can face considerable complexity, uncertainty, and contention. The concept of -˜wickedness’ epitomizes such challenges. However, ISD literature has yet to fully explore the nuances of wickedness found in ISD practices within distributed environments. To address this gap, we use a theoretical framework to analyze case study findings from an interdisciplinary connected health project. In particular, we break open the social aspects of wickedness and explore their impact on shared understanding and shared commitment in ISD projects. The paper highlights the implications that these nuances have for group decision-making in distributed ISD project teams

Is Communication the Key to Success? Investigating the Impact of Agile Practices on Information Systems Development Projects

In recent years, agile methodologies for information systems development (ISD) have increasingly attracted the attention of the research community. Agile ISD methodologies are considered an effective way for managing ISD projects in environments characterized by rapidly changing requirements. Although the body of knowledge on agile ISD is constantly growing, we still lack a detailed understanding of the fundamental processes underpinning agile ISD methodologies. In this paper, we investigate how agile practices affect the team communication processes in order to extend our knowledge on the theoretical underpinnings of agile ISD projects. This is achieved by developing a preliminary research model that is based on a solid theoretical foundation. As a theoretical framework, we employ the unified model of ISD success and extend it with context-specific insights from the cognitive-affective model of organizational communication and media naturalness theory. In consequence, we suggest several propositions for future testing

Understanding Agile Software Development Assimilation Beyond Acceptance

Agile software development methods represent a departure from the heavily regimented and document-driven procedures of traditional, waterfall approaches. Despite the highly touted benefits of employing agile ISD methods and the growth of agile adoption rates over the past two decades, it is not clear why some organizations fail to routinize agile methods, while others do so and realize their promised benefits. Motivated by the need to understand the factors that influence agile routinization, this study empirically examines the deep contextual factors that impact the extent to which agile methods are proliferated throughout an organization. Findings indicate that project success from initial agile use does not translate to routine agile use. Instead, findings from the study suggest that organizational factors of organizational culture and structure play a pivotal role in the routinization of agile methods

Web Services and Emergent Organizations: Opportunites and Challenges for IS Development

We are living in exciting times, in which technological innovation and new forms of organization are advancing at a very fast pace. On the organizational side, the lack of stability of the so-called emergent organizations, those that are in continuous evolution and transformation, represents a big challenge for Information Systems Development practices and technologies: in a fast changing organization, there may be no optimal set of specifications for an Information System and even the traditional concept of the Information System life cycle may need to be replaced by one involving the idea of continuous development. On the technological side, the diffusion of Internet-based platforms and, in particular, the recent introduction of the so-called Web Services technological standard for dynamic component-based software development may represent a potentially interesting opportunity to build continuously changing Information Systems. In this contribution we start exploring this territory, focusing on the concepts of emergent systems and continuous development, explaining the major characteristics of Web services technology and the potential uses of it

When agility meets a project portfolio: A study of success factors in large organisations

The iterative nature of agile methods combined with high levels of team and customer interactions and continuously changing IT and software development project requirements make the management of agile project portfolios very complex. To date, the mechanisms under which project portfolio management adapts to these complexities and achieves portfolio success have not been thoroughly investigated. This study explores the notion of success and its impacting factors in large organisations\u27 portfolios of agile IT and software development projects. Using a multiple case study design, we analysed the agile project portfolios of seven large organisations. We identified four success criteria and 15 success factors and categorised them into a unique agile portfolio success framework. Some of these criteria and factors are unique to agile project portfolios. The framework contributes to agile and project management literature by conceptualising the notion of success in portfolios of agile projects while revealing a set of factors that affect the relationship between an agile portfolio with its subcomponents and the surrounding environment. The framework supports managers and practitioners in large organisations in reflecting on their agility efforts to achieve higher success rates in their agile portfolios