Higher CMM levels attained by QA certified software developers

[Abstract]: This paper addresses the question: is higher capability maturity associated with adoption of Quality Assurance (QA) certification? To assess the extent of adoption of third-party QA certification by Australian software developers, a survey of 1,000 software developers was recently conducted. The questionnaire also included an assessment of their capability maturity based on the capability maturity model (CMM). Cynics who criticise the value of QA certification may be surprised by the strong association found between adoption of QA certification and capability maturity

Critical sucess factors in software process improvement

The aim of the thesis project was to identify Software Process Improvement (SPI) success factors through a deeply literature review. Objectives: • Identify the models of SPI • To identify SPI success factors through literature review. • To identify the most important SPI success factors based on the frequency of occurrence in published research. • To identify the variety of definitions or explanations of the most important SPI success factors in published research

Critical sucess factors in software process improvement

The aim of the thesis project was to identify Software Process Improvement (SPI) success factors through a deeply literature review. Objectives: • Identify the models of SPI • To identify SPI success factors through literature review. • To identify the most important SPI success factors based on the frequency of occurrence in published research. • To identify the variety of definitions or explanations of the most important SPI success factors in published research

Impact of Social Media on the Firm’s Knowledge Exploration and Knowledge Exploitation: The Role of Business Analytics Talent

Social media is one of the most disruptive technologies in executing a firm’s digital business transformation strategies. Does the firm’s ability to use social media affect its proficiency in exploring and exploiting knowledge? What should be the role of business analytics talent in this equation? We study theoretically and empirically these cutting-edge research questions. Our proposed research model argues that social media capability enables the development of knowledge exploration and knowledge exploitation, and business analytics talent exerts a positive reinforcing role in the impact of social media on knowledge exploration. We empirically tested the proposed research model with a secondary dataset from a sample of US firms using PLS path modeling. After running a robustness test by estimating eight alternatives/competing models, the empirical analysis revealed that social media capability is positively related to knowledge exploration and knowledge exploitation, but with a stronger effect on knowledge exploration. Moreover, business analytics talent plays a positive moderator role in the relationship between social media capability and knowledge exploration. This study contributes to the IS research by (1) introducing, developing, and operationalizing the concepts of social media capability and business analytics talent; and (2) theoretically arguing and empirically showing the pivotal role of social media capability in exploring new knowledge and the complementary role of business analytics talent. Our study also provides several critical lessons learned for top executives and proposes promising future IS research avenues.European Regional Development Fund (European Union)Spanish Government ECO201784138-P FPU14/01930 FPU13/01643Junta de Andalucia A-SEJ-154-UGR18Endowed Chair of Digital Business Transformation at Rennes School of BusinessSlovenian Research Agency - Slovenia P5-041

Environmental proactivity and firms' performance: Mediation effect of competitive advantages in Spanish wineries

The main aim of this paper is to show the extent to which environmental proactivity is able to generate competitive advantages in a firm in order to improve their economic-financial performance by introducing the role of managerial perception into the analysis. This study focuses on Spanish wineries and their environmental practices and covers a total of 4598 wineries with a sample of 142 valid responses during the month of November 2015. The results can be summarized as follows. Firstly, there is positive environmental proactivity in terms of obtaining both cost-based and differentiation-based competitive advantages. Likewise, this proactivity has a positive impact on the manager’s perception of performance. Secondly, obtaining differentiation-based competitive advantages has a positive impact on the manager’s perception of performance although a negative impact on performance itself. There is, however, no significant evidence of the impact of cost-based competitive advantages on financial performance nor on the perception of performance itself, nor the impact of environmental proactivity on financial performance

DISCO: Distributed Multi-domain SDN Controllers

Modern multi-domain networks now span over datacenter networks, enterprise networks, customer sites and mobile entities. Such networks are critical and, thus, must be resilient, scalable and easily extensible. The emergence of Software-Defined Networking (SDN) protocols, which enables to decouple the data plane from the control plane and dynamically program the network, opens up new ways to architect such networks. In this paper, we propose DISCO, an open and extensible DIstributed SDN COntrol plane able to cope with the distributed and heterogeneous nature of modern overlay networks and wide area networks. DISCO controllers manage their own network domain and communicate with each others to provide end-to-end network services. This communication is based on a unique lightweight and highly manageable control channel used by agents to self-adaptively share aggregated network-wide information. We implemented DISCO on top of the Floodlight OpenFlow controller and the AMQP protocol. We demonstrated how DISCO's control plane dynamically adapts to heterogeneous network topologies while being resilient enough to survive to disruptions and attacks and providing classic functionalities such as end-point migration and network-wide traffic engineering. The experimentation results we present are organized around three use cases: inter-domain topology disruption, end-to-end priority service request and virtual machine migration

Environmental proactivity and firms' performance: Mediation effect of competitive advantages in Spanish wineries

The main aim of this paper is to show the extent to which environmental proactivity is able to generate competitive advantages in a firm in order to improve their economic-financial performance by introducing the role of managerial perception into the analysis. This study focuses on Spanish wineries and their environmental practices and covers a total of 4598 wineries with a sample of 142 valid responses during the month of November 2015. The results can be summarized as follows. Firstly, there is positive environmental proactivity in terms of obtaining both cost-based and differentiation-based competitive advantages. Likewise, this proactivity has a positive impact on the manager’s perception of performance. Secondly, obtaining differentiation-based competitive advantages has a positive impact on the manager’s perception of performance although a negative impact on performance itself. There is, however, no significant evidence of the impact of cost-based competitive advantages on financial performance nor on the perception of performance itself, nor the impact of environmental proactivity on financial performance

Organizational Change Perspectives on Software Process Improvement

Many software organizations have engaged in Software Process Improvement (SPI) and experienced the challenges related to managing such complex organizational change efforts. As a result, there is an increasing body of research investigating change management in SPI. To provide an overview of what we know and don’t know about SPI as organizational change, this paper addresses the following question: What are the dominant perspectives on SPI as organizational change in the literature and how is this knowledge presented and published? All journals on the AIS ranking list were screened to identify relevant articles and Gareth Morgan’s organizational metaphors (1996) were used to analyze this literature considering the following dimensions of each article: organizational perspective (metaphor), knowledge orientation (normative versus descriptive), theoretical emphasis (high versus low), main audience (practitioner versus academic), geographical origin (Scandinavia, the Americas, Europe, or the Asia-Pacific), and publication level (high versus low ranked journal). The review demonstrates that the literature on SPI as organizational change is firmly grounded in both theory and practice, and Scandinavia and the Americas are the main contributors to this research. The distribution of articles across Morgan’s metaphors is uneven and reveals knowledge gaps that present new avenues for research. The current literature offers important insights into organizational change in SPI from machine, organism, and brain perspectives. Practitioners may use these articles as a guide to SPI insights relevant to their improvement initiatives. In contrast, the impact of culture, dominance, psychic prison, flux and transformation, and politics in SPI have only received scant attention. We argue that these perspectives offer important insights into the challenges involved in managing change in SPI. Researchers are therefore advised to engage in new SPI research based on one or more of these perspectives. Overall, the paper provides a roadmap to help identify insights and specific articles related to SPI as organizational change.Software Process Improvement; Organizational Change; Organizational Metaphors; Images of Organization; Literature Review