Theory, practice and policy: An inquiry into the uptake of HCI practices in the software industry of a developing country

With almost four decades of existence as a community, human–computer interaction (HCI) practice has yet to diffuse into a large range of software industries globally. A review of existing literature suggests that the diffusion of HCI practices in software organizations lacks theoretical guidance. Although many studies have tried to facilitate HCI uptake by the software industry, there are scarce studies that consider HCI practices as innovations that software organizations could or should adopt. Furthermore, there appears to be a lack of structure in the facilitation of HCI methodological development within the specialized emerging regions field such as Sub-Saharan Africa. In order to address this gap, an exploratory investigation regarding the state of uptake of HCI practices in Nigeria is conducted. The aim of this article is to improve our understanding regarding the state of HCI uptake in developing countries and the challenges prevailing. The findings show that HCI practice still remains within its infancy stage in most software companies. Universities are also lacking the required knowledge transfer of HCI to the students, and in effect themselves contributing to the lack of HCI skills in industry. Furthermore, government policies are in need of refinement and end-users’ involvement in software development is not prioritized

Emerging technologies for learning (volume 1)

Collection of 5 articles on emerging technologies and trend

A Guideline Tool for Ongoing Product Evaluation in Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises

As consumer demand for user friendly software increases, usability evaluation is crucial to develop software systems which are easy to learn and use. However, implementation of usability evaluation is challenging for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) due to factors such as lack of technical expertise, knowledge and experience of methods and standards. This results in neglect, or poorly executed evaluations of projects, resulting in software that disappoints and frustrates clients. To overcome this loss of competitiveness, we propose here a visual incorporation tool derived from ISO standards that would assist software development teams in SMEs in understanding and implementing usability evaluations. It shows fundamental Usability Engineering (UE) and Software Engineering (SE) activities and artifacts relevant to the usability evaluation and software development process, with potential incorporation points being highlighted. Dependencies and relationships are shown by links between activities and artifacts. Additionally, convergent artifacts of both disciplines were identified and shown. Evaluation of the proposed tool was based on the questionnaire results of software development practitioners from SMEs

Realities and perspectives of software development in Puerto Rico: a new analysis

Currently, within the field of Software Engineering (SE), it has been proposed to integrate four variables to developquality software: i.) A flexible development methodology (traditional, agile, or hybrid) and adapted to the contextparticular to each application, ii.) a work team (trained, experienced, highly innovative, and with leadership), iii.)cutting-edge technologies,represented in the quality of the equipment and tools (automated or semi-automated)facilitating the planning, design, and manufacturing processes of products and, iv.) the inclusion of usabilitytechniques in the process, as a guarantee to manufacture products according to customer needs.A literature search indicates that in Puerto Rico so far,there are no published articles that allow knowing the stateof the art of the SE on the Island and, therefore; the organizational schemes and the type of workgroup thatpredominates in software development companies are unknown. Almost twenty years after the promulgation ofthe Agile Manifesto, in Puerto Rico, the degree of adoption of the new paradigms is still unknown. It is necessaryto search for information within companies to understand what strategies are used by developers and whatbenefits report with their use.This new study seeks to evaluate, synthesize and present the empirical findings on software development inPuerto Rico (PR), to contrast or update the previously collected data and to know the type of applications that arecarried out on the Island, what methodologies of work are the most used, how agile methods are perceived and ifthe approach towards usability techniques has changed in recent decades. These aspects are centralto proposingto software developers an integration framework according to their needs and the demands of their clients.Fil: Alvear Suárez, Alcides. Universidad Rey Juan Carlos; EspañaFil: Bollati, Verónica Andrea. Universidad Tecnológica Nacional. Facultad Reg.resistencia. Departamento de Ingeniería En Sist.de Informacion; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Nordeste; ArgentinaFil: Vara Mesa, Juan Manuel. Universidad Rey Juan Carlos; Españ

Overview and Guidance on Agile Development in Large Organizations

A continual debate surrounds the effectiveness of agile software development practices. Some organizations adopt agile practices to become more competitive, improve processes, and reduce costs. Other organizations are skeptical about whether agile development is beneficial. Large organizations face an additional challenge in integrating agile practices with existing standards and business processes. To examine the effects of agile development practices in large organizations, we review and integrate scientific literature and theory on agile software development. We further organize our theory and observations into a framework with guidelines for large organizations considering agile methodologies. Based on this framework, we present recommendations that suggest ways large organizations with established processes can successfully implement agile practices. Our analysis of the literature and theory provides new insight for researchers of agile software development and assists practitioners in determining how to adopt agile development in their organizations

Overview and Guidance on Agile Development in Large Organizations

A continual debate surrounds the effectiveness of agile software development practices. Some organizations adopt agile practices to become more competitive, improve processes, and reduce costs. Other organizations are skeptical about whether agile development is beneficial. Large organizations face an additional challenge in integrating agile practices with existing standards and business processes. To examine the effects of agile development practices in large organizations, we review and integrate scientific literature and theory on agile software development. We further organize our theory and observations into a framework with guidelines for large organizations considering agile methodologies. Based on this framework, we present recommendations that suggest ways large organizations with established processes can successfully implement agile practices. Our analysis of the literature and theory provides new insight for researchers of agile software development and assists practitioners in determining how to adopt agile development in their organizations

How usability is seen by software development organizations and their end-users?

Abstract. Software usability is usually the main thing a user thinks of along with functionality. For user it is important that they can use a software with ease to do their tasks. They pay attention to how it feels to use a software. For software developers, usability can be more complex topic that needs attention. Developer organizations need to focus on usability in order to make a product usable and manage to achieve that goal. This paper discusses about usability, its benefits and measure opinions between developing organizations and end-users. Thesis is based around usability literature and two questionnaires, one for developing organizations and other for end-users. There were 22 developers and 14 end-users answering to the questionnaires

Persona preparedness : a survey instrument for measuring the organizational readiness for deploying personas

User-centric design within organizations is crucial for developing information technology that offers optimal usability and user experience. Personas are a central user-centered design technique that puts people before technology and helps decision makers understand the needs and wants of the end-user segments of their products, systems, and services. However, it is not clear how ready organizations are to adopt persona thinking. To address these concerns, we develop and validate the Persona Readiness Scale (PRS), a survey instrument to measure organizational readiness for personas. After a 12-person qualitative pilot study, the PRS was administered to 372 professionals across different industries to examine its reliability and validity, including 125 for exploratory factor analysis and 247 for confirmatory factor analysis. The confirmatory factor analysis indicated a good fit with five dimensions: Culture readiness, Knowledge readiness, Data and systems readiness, Capability readiness, and Goal readiness. Higher persona readiness is positively associated with the respondents’ evaluations of successful persona projects. Organizations can apply the resulting 18-item scale to identify areas of improvement before initiating costly persona projects towards the overarching goal of user-centric product development. Located at the cross-section of information systems and human–computer interaction, our research provides a valuable instrument for organizations wanting to leverage personas towards more user-centric and empathetic decision making about users.© The Author(s) 2022. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.fi=vertaisarvioitu|en=peerReviewed

Persona preparedness: A survey instrument for measuring the organizational readiness for deploying personas

User-centric design within organizations is crucial for developing information technology that offers optimal usability and user experience. Personas are a central user-centered design technique that puts people before technology and helps decision makers understand the needs and wants of the end-user segments of their products, systems, and services. However, it is not clear how ready organizations are to adopt persona thinking. To address these concerns, we develop and validate the Persona Readiness Scale (PRS), a survey instrument to measure organizational readiness for personas. After a 12-person qualitative pilot study, the PRS was administered to 372 professionals across different industries to examine its reliability and validity, including 125 for exploratory factor analysis and 247 for confirmatory factor analysis. The confirmatory factor analysis indicated a good fit with five dimensions: Culture readiness, Knowledge readiness, Data and systems readiness, Capability readiness, and Goal readiness. Higher persona readiness is positively associated with the respondents’ evaluations of successful persona projects. Organizations can apply the resulting 18-item scale to identify areas of improvement before initiating costly persona projects towards the overarching goal of user-centric product development. Located at the cross-section of information systems and human–computer interaction, our research provides a valuable instrument for organizations wanting to leverage personas towards more user-centric and empathetic decision making about users.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

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