Building a Contemplative IS Workforce through Promoting Mindfulness in IS Design–A Case Study

Incorporating mindfulness in the information systems (IS) development process is not new, but educating an IS workforce to promote the design for a contemplative user experience is. Building a contemplative IS workforce is critical for promoting contemplative societies as social interactions nowadays have been increasingly structured by IS infrastructures and capabilities. This research examines the definitions of mindfulness in IS literature and in Buddhism. It qualitatively studies the IS students’ learning outcome on mindfulness. Students in a Systems Analysis and Design course were exposed to mindfulness literature, asked to design websites for a contemplative community of practice, and challenged to exercise and reflect on mindfulness when designing for spiritual information services. A majority of the students have recognized the importance of mindfulness in IS design, suggested approaches of reaching system outcome of promoting mindful user experience, and reported the incorporation of mindfulness in their daily attitudes and behaviors

Information Technology and the Search for Organizational Agility: A Systematic Review with Future Research Possibilities

Organizations are increasingly turning to information technology (IT) to help them respond to unanticipated environmental threats and opportunities. In this paper, we introduce a systematic review of the literature on IT-enabled agility, helping to establish the boundary between what we know and what we don’t know. We base our review on a wide body of literature drawn from the AIS Basket of Eight IT journals, a cross-section of non-Basket journals, IT practitioner outlets, and premier international IS conferences. We review the use of different theoretical lenses used to investigate the relationship between IT and organizational agility and how the literature has conceptualized agility, its antecedents, and consequences. We also map the evolution of the literature through a series of stages that highlight how researchers have built on previous work. Lastly, we discuss opportunities for future research in an effort to close important gaps in our understanding

Colocation as a hybrid ICT sourcing strategy to improve operational agility

Fast access to communication networks and the availability of high-performance information and com-munication technology (ICT) infrastructures is indis-pensable for accelerating business transactions. Yet with increased environmental volatility, companies need to become more agile in identifying and responding to market- and technology-based challenges. Accordingly, a responsive and high-performance ICT infrastructure remains a top priority for firms. Thus, new ICT sourcing strategies may lead to significant competitive advantages, especially in dynamic business environments. This article analyzes a hybrid ICT sourcing strategy called colocation that allows firms to operate their own ICT resources in facilities of special-ized data center providers. Grounded in the theory of dynamic capabilities, we theorize and empirically ex-amine how colocation and top management support enable firms to improve their operational agility in the presence of environmental turbulence.</jats:p

The Future Affordances of Digital Learning and Teaching within The School of Education

This report illustrates the discussion outcome on digital education within the University of Glasgow School of Education. It is not a strategy document but it does explore the conditions for nurturing digital culture and how these can be channelled into a strategy on digital learning and teaching. The report is based on a review of literature and on a number of local, national and international case study vignettes

Adopting Agile Development in Business Process Management: a Case Study in an Industrial Company

Agility and agile development have been studied prominently in academic literature in various fields. Applying agile development in business process management and seeing agile projects from business point of view and in traditional industries have remained with relatively low attention. This thesis researches how traditional industrial business should adapt to agile development. The objective of this thesis is to analyse current state of agile development in the Case Company and propose improvements via analysing current agile projects. The research was conducted as a qualitative multiple case study. The data was gathered through semi-structured interviews by interviewing 7 managers or directors from 3 selected project cases taking place within the Case Company. Agile development projects are new to the Case Company and company's recent corporate digital strategy is emphasizing on the increase of agile development initiatives and capabilities within the company. Based on the research, the biggest challenges for businesses to adapt agile development lies on project planning, business involvement development, and roll-out operations. Adopting agile methodology requires increasing tolerance of uncertainty and continuous effort from stakeholders. Project planning and resourcing need to be adjusted according to agile projects, where planning is continuous, and success is primarily measured via achieved system capabilities. Shift to new roles requires new capabilities from employees combining knowledge of business and technology. In addition to staying in traditional planning, too light project core groups and combined roles of product owner and project manager were found to have negative effects on project success. Ensuring adequate business commitment throughout agile projects was found to be a major issue. Business commitment can be improved by allocating more resources to change and expectations management work early enough. Integrating projects better to business process management activities by considering to-be processes and organizations on early stages of the system development ensures better support and input from the business representatives for the project. This also helps in planning and execution of system deployment in roll-out phase. Roll-out of an agile system development project is likely to fail due to too much complexity or lack of proper planning. It is suggested that agile projects utilize traditional plan-driven practices for meeting crucial milestones. Hybrid strategy combining both agile and plan-driven project management methodologies and deeper analysis of roll-out activities in agile projects are suggested to be studied further. Agile development proved to be highly applicable in system development projects by enabling innovative and customer-centric solutions. It offers great variety of tools and techniques that are recommended to be shared and utilized wider outside agile projects. Workflow management, customer centricity in development work, and systematic communication pattern are examples of practical learnings from agile projects that are likely to improve quality of any daily work.Ketteryyttä ja ketterää kehittämistä on tutkittu näkyvästi akateemisessa kirjallisuudessa useilla aloilla. Ketterän kehittämisen soveltaminen liiketoimintaprosessien hallinnassa ja ketterien projektien näkeminen liiketoiminnan näkökulmasta erityisesti perinteisillä toimialoilla ovat jääneet suhteellisen pienelle huomiolle. Tämä diplomityö tutkii, kuinka ketterä kehittäminen tulisi ottaa käyttöön teollisessa liiketoiminnassa. Työn tavoitteena on analysoida ketterän kehittämisen nykytilaa case-yrityksessä ja tuoda esiin kehityskohteita yrityksen nykyisistä projekteista. Tutkimus toteutettiin laadullisena monitapaustutkimuksena. Aineisto kerättiin puolistrukturoiduilla teemahaastatteluilla, joissa haastateltiin seitsemää johtajaa kolmesta projektista. Ketterät projektit ovat uusia case-yritykselle ja sen viimeaikainen digitalisaatiostrategia korostaa ketterien kehityshankkeiden ja niitä edistävien kyvykkyyksien lisäämistä yrityksessä. Tutkimuksen perusteella suurimmat haasteet liiketoiminnalle ketterän kehittämisen omaksumisessa ovat projektisuunnittelussa, liiketoimintaedustajien sitouttamisessa ja uusien järjestelmien käyttöönotoissa. Ketterän kehittämisen omaksuminen edellyttää projektin sidosryhmiltä aiempaa suurempaa sitoutumista ja kykyä sietää epävarmuutta. Uusiin rooleihin siirtyminen vaatii työntekijöiltä uusia kyvykkyyksiä, joissa yhdistyvät teknologiaosaaminen ja liiketoiminnan ymmärtäminen. Projektin suoriutuminen heikkenee, mikäli suunnittelussa ei oteta huomioon ketterän kehittämisen tarpeita, projektin ydinryhmä muodostuu liian kevyeksi, tai mikäli tuoteomistajan ja projektipäällikön rooleja ei ole eriytetty riittävästi. Liiketoimintaosapuolten sitouttamista voi kehittää kohdistamalla riittävästi resursseja muutosjohtamiseen ja odotustenhallintaan aikaisessa vaiheessa. Järjestelmäkehitysprojekteissa prosessi- ja organisaatiomuutosten varhainen huomioiminen varmistaa liiketoimintaosapuolten paremman tuen kehitysprojekteille. Ketterän järjestelmäkehitysprojektin käyttöönottovaihe todennäköisesti epäonnistuu suunnittelun puuttellisuuden ja projektin kasvavan kompleksisuuden johdosta. On suositeltavaa, että ketterissä projekteissa hyödynnetään perinteisiä suunnitelmavetoisia käytäntöjä , jotta kriittiset virstanpylväät voidaan saavuttaa. Ketterien- ja suunnitelmavetoisten projektinhallintamenetelmien yhdistäminen sekä syvemmän analyysin toteuttaminen ketterien projektien tuotosten jalkauttamisesta ovat suositeltuja jatkotutkimuskohteita. Ketterä kehittäminen osoittautui hyvin soveltuvaksi järjestelmäkehitysprojekteissa mahdollistaen innovatiiviset ja asiakaslähtöiset ratkaisut. Se tarjoaa suuren valikoiman työkaluja ja tekniikoita, joita on suositeltavaa jakaa ja ottaa käyttöön laajemmin liiketoiminnassa. Työjonojen hallinta, asiakaslähtöisyys kehitystyössä ja systemaattinen kommunikointimalli ovat esimerkkejä käytännöllisistä opeista ketteristä projekteista, jotka todennäköisesti parantavat minkä tahansa päivittäisen työn laatua

IT-enabled Process Innovation: A Literature Review

The importance of Information Technology (IT) is growing, and in a hypercompetitive market IT must be used as a strategic asset for companies to succeed. In order to gain strategic benefits from IT, companies need to be innovative when deploying IT. This can be achieved by reengineering business processes to take advantage of the possibilities IT provides. In 1993 Thomas H. Davenport presented a framework describing the role of IT in process innovation . Based on this framework, the purpose of this paper is to conduct a literature review to answer the following research question: What kind of opportunities does IT provide for process innovation? . Davenport\u27s framework is used as an analytical lens to review articles from the top 20 IS and management journals. The paper provides an overview and an in-depth analysis of the literature on IT-enabled process innovation and suggests avenues for future research as well as recommendations for practitioners. Our analyses reveal five distinct themes related to opportunities for IT-enabled process innovation, all of which offer guidance to practitioners and highlight gaps in our current knowledge about how to leverage IT for innovation purposes

The resilient innovation team:A study of teams coping with critical incidents during innovation projects

Innovatieteams zijn succesvoller als hun werkomgeving 'mindful' is waardoor zij in staat zijn probleemsituaties op te lossen, zo blijkt uit het promotie-onderzoek van Peter Oeij. Hierdoor daalt de faalkans van innovatieprojecten en daarmee kunnen desinvesteringen worden verkleind. De slaagkans van innovatieprojecten neemt toe. Voor dit promotieonderzoek bestudeerde Peter Oeij 18 projectteams en hun innovatieprojecten. De nadruk lag op teamdynamiek. Hoe gaan teams om met kritieke incidenten in hun project, die aanleiding kunnen vormen voor falende projecten? En dus mislukte innovaties. De promovendus stelde vast dat twee kenmerken de kans op succes vergroten. Dat is ten eerste de aanwezigheid van een 'mindful' werkomgeving. Dat wil zeggen een teamklimaat waarin sprake is van vier factoren. Allereerst psychologische veiligheid, om fouten te mogen maken. Daarnaast een teamleerklimaat, waarin kan worden geëxperimenteerd. Verder is inspraak over de gang van zaken van teamleden ('team voice') belangrijk. En vervolgens dient leiderschap in staat te zijn synergie te halen uit soms tegenstrijdige belangen, zoals: wees vernieuwend, maar let op de centen