Linking Theory and Practice: Performing a Reality Check on a Model of IS Success

The issue of ‘rigour vs. relevance’ in IS research has generated an intense, heated debate for over a decade. It is possible to identify, however, only a limited number of contributions on how to increase the relevance of IS research without compromising its rigour. Based on a lifecycle view of IS research, we propose the notion of ‘reality checks’ in order to review IS research outcomes in the light of actual industry demands. We assume that five barriers impact the efficient transfer of IS research outcomes; they are lack of awareness, lack of understandability, lack of relevance, lack of timeliness, and lack of applicability. In seeking to understand the effect of these barriers on the transfer of mature IS research into practice, we used focus groups. We chose DeLone and McLean’s IS success model as our stimulus because it is one of the more widely researched areas of IS

Non-Technical Individual Skills are Weakly Connected to the Maturity of Agile Practices

Context: Existing knowledge in agile software development suggests that individual competency (e.g. skills) is a critical success factor for agile projects. While assuming that technical skills are important for every kind of software development project, many researchers suggest that non-technical individual skills are especially important in agile software development. Objective: In this paper, we investigate whether non-technical individual skills can predict the use of agile practices. Method: Through creating a set of multiple linear regression models using a total of 113 participants from agile teams in six software development organizations from The Netherlands and Brazil, we analyzed the predictive power of non-technical individual skills in relation to agile practices. Results: The results show that there is surprisingly low power in using non-technical individual skills to predict (i.e. explain variance in) the mature use of agile practices in software development. Conclusions: Therefore, we conclude that looking at non-technical individual skills is not the optimal level of analysis when trying to understand, and explain, the mature use of agile practices in the software development context. We argue that it is more important to focus on the non-technical skills as a team-level capacity instead of assuring that all individuals possess such skills when understanding the use of the agile practices.Comment: 18 pages, 1 figur

Investigating the Role of Stakeholders in Agile Information Systems Development Projects: A Mixed Methods Approach

Agile information systems development (ISD) strives for a high amount of interaction between the agile team and stakeholders to ensure that high quality software within commonly defined project goals is produced. The literature has acknowledged that agile ISD significantly changes the work of team members. How do agile practices affect the work of stakeholders? Unfortunately, little theory exists to answer this question. This paper addresses this gap by investigating the effect of agile practices on stakeholders’ job satisfaction. Adopting a mixed-methods approach, we use a review of the literature with an exploratory case study to develop the theoretical model, which was evaluated with a survey among stakeholders in agile ISD projects. We contribute to agile ISD literature by providing empirical evidence on stakeholders’ job satisfaction and highlight the relevance of interaction and collaboration between team members and stakeholders in agile ISD projects

The elicitation of key performance indicators of e-government providers: A bottom-up approach

Copyright @ 2013 EMCIS.Delivering an adequate e-Government service (e-service) is becoming more of a necessity in today's digital world. In order to improve e-services and increase the engagement of both users' and providers' side, studies on the performance evaluation of such provided e-services are taking places. However a clear identification of the key performance indicators from the e-Government providers’ side is not well explored. This shortcoming hampers the conduct of a holistic evaluation of an e-service provision from the perspective of its stakeholders in order to improve e-services as well as to increase e-services take-ups. In this paper, a systematic process to identify indicators is implemented based on a bottom-up approach. The process used three focus-group meetings with providers, users, and academics in Qatar, Lebanon and UK to collect, identify and validate key indicators from the perspective of e-services’ providers. The approach resulted in the identification of five factors levels (service, technology, employees, policy and management and social responsibilities) with fifteen sub-categories of SMART variables. Hence, leading to the development of a new model, STEPS, that can fully explain and predict e-government success from the providers’ point of view. It will work as a strategic management tool to align various stakeholders on common goal and values based on evidence based evaluation of e-services using smart measurable indicators for the improvement of an e-service at the engagement level in the field of e-government. In addition, other fields can benefit from the outcome of this work, such as logistics service providers, who make their services available across new and existing relationships between the Internet commerce firms, their customers, and their vendors

A qualitative study of success criteria in Norwegian agile software projects from suppliers’ perspective

This paper provides practical insights into the success criteria in agile projects in the Norwegian software industry. We conducted 32 interviews with practitioners working with agile projects. The findings revealed two fundamental differences that distinguish the perception of success in agile projects from that in projects that are based on the waterfall approach. Firstly, the evaluation is carried out on a regular basis after each increment. This regular and continuous measurement of success contributes several advantages, including greater commitment and involvement from the customer and a higher level of mutual trust between the supplier and the customer; and thus leads to better knowledge sharing and reduced task uncertainty. The reduction of task uncertainty provides more predictability about the direction of the project and better grounds for change control; not least, it allows room to consider multiple and subjective assessments by various stakeholders. Secondly, there is a stronger emphasis on customer satisfaction. Customer satisfaction is measured in terms of how quickly the customer obtains value from the project. The continuous assessment of success at the end of each iteration also has a significant, positive impact on the customer’s evaluation of the project outcome

A qualitative study of success criteria in Norwegian agile software projects from suppliers’ perspective

This paper provides practical insights into the success criteria in agile projects in the Norwegian software industry. We conducted 32 interviews with practitioners working with agile projects. The findings revealed two fundamental differences that distinguish the perception of success in agile projects from that in projects that are based on the waterfall approach. Firstly, the evaluation is carried out on a regular basis after each increment. This regular and continuous measurement of success contributes several advantages, including greater commitment and involvement from the customer and a higher level of mutual trust between the supplier and the customer; and thus leads to better knowledge sharing and reduced task uncertainty. The reduction of task uncertainty provides more predictability about the direction of the project and better grounds for change control; not least, it allows room to consider multiple and subjective assessments by various stakeholders. Secondly, there is a stronger emphasis on customer satisfaction. Customer satisfaction is measured in terms of how quickly the customer obtains value from the project. The continuous assessment of success at the end of each iteration also has a significant, positive impact on the customer’s evaluation of the project outcome

Success Lies in the Eye of the Beholder: A Quantitative Analysis of the Mismatch Between Perceived and Real IT Project Management Performance

Building on an earlier exploratory study, this paper investigates the drivers of the possible mismatch between traditional real IT project management performance criteria - quality, time and cost - and perceived project management performance. We use partial least squares structural equation modeling to test five main hypotheses with survey data from 248 managers with extensive IT/IS project involvement. The results demonstrate that mismatches between real and perceived project management performance indeed occur. They are predominantly driven by poor expectation management before and during the execution of IT projects, as well as by a low project sponsor commitment. A discussion of the findings and limitations, as well as suggestions for future research, conclude the article

ERP implementation methodologies and frameworks: a literature review

Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) implementation is a complex and vibrant process, one that involves a combination of technological and organizational interactions. Often an ERP implementation project is the single largest IT project that an organization has ever launched and requires a mutual fit of system and organization. Also the concept of an ERP implementation supporting business processes across many different departments is not a generic, rigid and uniform concept and depends on variety of factors. As a result, the issues addressing the ERP implementation process have been one of the major concerns in industry. Therefore ERP implementation receives attention from practitioners and scholars and both, business as well as academic literature is abundant and not always very conclusive or coherent. However, research on ERP systems so far has been mainly focused on diffusion, use and impact issues. Less attention has been given to the methods used during the configuration and the implementation of ERP systems, even though they are commonly used in practice, they still remain largely unexplored and undocumented in Information Systems research. So, the academic relevance of this research is the contribution to the existing body of scientific knowledge. An annotated brief literature review is done in order to evaluate the current state of the existing academic literature. The purpose is to present a systematic overview of relevant ERP implementation methodologies and frameworks as a desire for achieving a better taxonomy of ERP implementation methodologies. This paper is useful to researchers who are interested in ERP implementation methodologies and frameworks. Results will serve as an input for a classification of the existing ERP implementation methodologies and frameworks. Also, this paper aims also at the professional ERP community involved in the process of ERP implementation by promoting a better understanding of ERP implementation methodologies and frameworks, its variety and history

Customer Satisfaction in IS Projects: Assessing the Role of Process and Product Performance

Despite extensive research over the past several decades, assessing information system (IS) project success is still a challenging endeavor. While the traditional approach takes process performance (time and budget) and product performance (functional and non-functional requirements) into account, the contemporary perspective acknowledges the more comprehensive character of project success and emphasizes the criticality of stakeholder satisfaction. Continuing previous research, we propose and test a model with customer satisfaction as the uppermost criterion of IS project success and process performance and product performance as its determinants. Following recent calls for researchers to investigate the explicit linkage between success factors and success criteria, we also analyze the influence of process transparency on process and product performance. We conducted a survey via a questionnaire with IS experts in Germany. We contribute to a deeper understanding of IS project success by indicating that customer satisfaction is less a matter of time and budget and that a stronger emphasis should be placed on product performance. Moreover, our results illuminate the role of process transparency in IS projects showing that it contributes to both process and product performance