A Paradox of the Change to User Stories: The Application of the Theory of Competing Commitments

Software development projects are about change, yet change is problematic in any situation. Individuals resist change and software developers are no different than other organizational actors in this regard. This paper describes a case study which examines the changes to the IS development environment wrought by the introduction of a new software development methodology. One aspect of the new methodology involves the use of user stories in place of traditional requirements documentation. The findings of this longitudinal study illustrated that developers’ commitment to the use of user stories diminished greatly, ranging from initial commitment to skepticism, to virtual abandonment. In order to explain the underlying reasons for the reduction in commitment, the authors used the theory of competing commitments. Competing commitments are typically subconscious forces that work against behaviors and actions that social actors were previously committed to. While competing commitment theory has been applied in other fields, it has not been applied previously in the field of IS to understand IS-based phenomena. Further to the use of the competing commitment process, this paper’s analysis of the software development project suggested the presence of hierarchical group think influencing the diminishing commitments

Team Transformational Leadership, Trust, Satisfaction, And Commitment: The Testing Of A Structural Equation Model In Software Development Teams

This paper studied the relationship among team transformational leadership, team trust, job satisfaction, and team commitment of the team members in software development teams in the United States of America. A total of 5,375 surveys were distributed and only 69 respondents completed the online survey. Based upon 65 validated respondents, this study conducted a confirmatory factor analysis and evaluated the direct and indirect weights of path coefficients among the latent variables at 5% level of significance. The results using path analysis indicate that team transformational leadership is strongly positively related to team empowerment (r= .86, p= .00) and team trust (r= .82, p= .00) in software development teams while team empowerment (r= .27, p=. 55) and team trust (r= .29, p= .55) are not related to job satisfaction in software development teams. There is a slight positive relationship between team job satisfaction and the team commitment (r= .18, p= .04)

Antecedents of Coordination Effectiveness of Software Developer Dyads from Interacting Teams: An Empirical Investigation

Among numerous reasons for software project failure, coordination failure is considered as especially salient. Prior studies on coordination in software development are confined to team internal coordination and do not explicitly differentiate team internal and external coordination processes. This study proposes a research model to explain the antecedents of coordination effectiveness of software developer dyads from interacting teams. We explore the antecedents by integrating inter-personal coordination and technology-based coordination. Data were collected from 59 software developer dyads from different interacting teams as well as software developers’ managers. The results reveal that implicit knowledge sharing has a significant positive impact on coordination effectiveness. Social capital (mutual trust and project commitment) has a significant impact on knowledge sharing with mutual trust directly affecting both implicit and explicit knowledge sharing. Project commitment also has a direct impact on explicit knowledge sharing and mutual trust, but it does not directly affect implicit knowledge sharing

SEXUAL BEHAVIORS OF COLLEGE STUDENTS

This research study examined sexual behaviors of college students in relation to the effects of race, socioeconomic status, and religious commitment. One hundred and ninety eight ECU students responded to a survey administered through Perseus. Data were analyzed using the SPSS analysis software. Results indicated that those with a high religious commitment have a lower level of sexual risk-taking. There was a significant difference between college student's religious commitment and sexual risk-taking. Students with low and moderate religious commitment participated in moderate sexual risk-taking behaviors. When variables were assessed together, there were no apparent differences in sexual risk-taking behaviors based on race or religious commitment, which indicates that race and religious commitment are interrelated and the effects of each independently are difficult to determine. These research findings can be useful in guiding the development of culturally-relevant sexuality education programs.  M.S

Large-Scale Agile Transformation: A Case Study of Transforming Business, Development and Operations

Today, product development organizations are adopting agile methods in units outside the software development unit, such as in sales, market, legal, operations working with the customer. This broader adoption of agile methods has been labeled large-scale agile transformation and is considered a particular type of organizational change, originating in the software development units. So far, there is little research-based advice on conducting such transformations. Aiming to contribute towards providing relevant research advice on large-scale agile transformation, we apply a research-based framework for evaluating organizational agility on a product development program in a maritime service provider organization. We found that doing a large-scale agile transformation involves many significant challenges, such as having a shared understanding of the problem, getting access to users, and getting commitment to change that needs to be done. In order to overcome such challenges, we discuss the need for a holistic and integrated approach to agile transformation involving all the units linked to software development.publishedVersio

Measuring Student Engagement and Commitment on Private Academic Institutions Using Fuzzy Logic Expert System Metrics Applications

Even though academic knowledge is provided to academic institutions under very specific academic standards in teaching and research, the instruction’s management can impact significantly the student engagement and commitment on receiving and utilizing such knowledge. To analyse this challenge, a Fuzzy Logic, expert system-based software application has been developed and applied on a private academic institution. In this research the institution participated with 40 undergraduate students, from 24 different countries from two different semesters on the same course. The technology measures the student engagement and commitment via the co-evolute methodology for knowledge elicitation. By utilizing this approach, the management of academic institutions can make development analysis based on concrete bottom-up results. The collective analysis of the test results clearly identifies where students see the needs for greatest development and how they view their current state of engagement

A contingency-based decision support instrument for selecting lean production tools and techniques

This study is about the development of decision support instrument for selecting lean tools and techniques based on the contingency factors to help Malaysian organizations to select the right lean tools and techniques based on their context. Most of the prior studies were found focusing on the selection lean tools but did not assess the critical contingency factors that may influence the selection of lean tools and techniques. Adding to that, there were no similar studies on the selection of lean tools and techniques within the Malaysian context. The right tools and techniques to be used may vary depending on several factors, therefore to keep away from unnecessary waste and dissatisfaction, it would be better for organization to choose the right lean tools and techniques that will fit with organization’s situation and give benefits to the organization. A mixed-methods study exclusively focused on the development, evaluation, and refinement of a decision support instrument or specifically known as “Decision Aid for Lean Tools and Techniques Selection” (DEALS) was used. The developed decision support instrument, which incorporates 10 most widely used lean tools and techniques was emphasises the use of holistic processes which start from diagnose their current state of waste until the guidance of selecting the appropriate lean tools and techniques. Additionally, contingency factors were employed to include multifaceted viewpoints and contexts in the development of DEALS, such as the adeptness to acquire the commitment and support from the top management and the advantages of implementing lean tools and techniques. The developed decision support instrument includes two selection methods, namely (1) simple additive weighting (SAW) for basic selection and (2) analytic hierarchy process (AHP) for more advanced selection. Based on the evaluation results, all respondents (100%) agreed on the usability, accuracy, and novelty of DEALS as well as the relevance and validity of the selection and the clarity of the purpose of DEALS. The final results of validation testing also shows less than 5% errors when comparing final results of DEALS with two established software which are Expert Choice 11 software and Super Decision Software. By having this DEALS, it expected significantly benefit to managers, practitioners, consultants, researchers, and academicians as a guidance instrument in the selection of lean tools and techniques and generally to organization to have knowledge workers

Multi-Platform Generative Development of Component & Connector Systems using Model and Code Libraries

Component-based software engineering aims to reduce software development effort by reusing established components as building blocks of complex systems. Defining components in general-purpose programming languages restricts their reuse to platforms supporting these languages and complicates component composition with implementation details. The vision of model-driven engineering is to reduce the gap between developer intention and implementation details by lifting abstract models to primary development artifacts and systematically transforming these into executable systems. For sufficiently complex systems the transformation from abstract models to platform-specific implementations requires augmentation with platform-specific components. We propose a model-driven mechanism to transform platform-independent logical component & connector architectures into platform-specific implementations combining model and code libraries. This mechanism allows to postpone commitment to a specific platform and thus increases reuse of software architectures and components.Comment: 10 pages, 4 figures, 1 listin

Superiority of Islamic Banking in Comparison with Conventional Banking in Bangladesh - A Comparative Study

This paper investigates the financial performance of interest- based conventional commercial banks and interestfree Islamic banks in Bangladesh using descriptive statistics ttest and test of hypotheses Data has been processed through Statistical Package for Social Science SPSS software The data consist of accounting figures of 4 interests based conventional commercial banks and 4 interest free Islamic banks from 2009 to 2013 The study revealed mixed results The study found that conventional commercial banks are superior in terms of performance regarding in commitment to economy and community development productivity and efficiency where performance of Islamic banks in terms of business development profitability liquidity and solvency is superior to that of conventional bank

Identifying Potential Risks and Benefits of Using Cloud in Distributed Software Development

Cloud-based infrastructure has been increasingly adopted by the industry in distributed software development (DSD) environments. Its proponents claim that its several benefits include reduced cost, increased speed and greater productivity in software development. Empirical evaluations, however, are in the nascent stage of examining both the benefits and the risks of cloud-based in-frastructure. The objective of this paper is to identify potential benefits and risks of using cloud in a DSD project conducted by teams based in Helsinki and Ma-drid. A cross-case qualitative analysis is performed based on focus groups con-ducted at the Helsinki and Madrid sites. Participants’ observations are used to supplement the analysis. The results of the analysis indicated that the main ben-efits of using cloud are rapid development, continuous integration, cost savings, code sharing, and faster ramp-up. The key risks determined by the project are dependencies, unavailability of access to the cloud, code commitment and inte-gration, technical debt, and additional support costs. The results revealed that if such environments are not planned and set up carefully, the benefits of using cloud in DSD projects might be overshadowed by the risks associated with it.Peer reviewe