Communication, culture, competency, and stakeholder that contribute to requirement elicitation effectiveness

In the context of software development, requirement engineering is one of the crucial phases that leads to software project success or failure. According to several disruptive changes in the software engineering landscape as well as the world’s challenge of virus pandemic, the provision of practical and innovative software applications is required. Therefore, issues resolution in requirement elicitation is potentially one of the key success factors resulting in enhanced quality of system requirement. The authors have striven to create new ways of requirement elicitation according to factor effects of communication, culture, competency, and stakeholder, by incorporating tools, processes, methods, and techniques to solve the problems comprehensively, and then proposed an adaptive and applicable conceptual framework. To illustrate these effects, the authors performed a literature review from the past 8 years, and then data analysis from interviews of 27 practitioners, observations and focus groups of software development in real-life projects

Leadership competencies in the requirements phase of IS/IT development projects

Doutoramento em GestãoWhile the successful implementation of an Information Systems/Information Technology (IS/IT) project is widely recognised as being a key research topic, yet recent surveys continue to show significant failure rates. Inadequate requirements management together with inadequate project management have frequently been identified as the principal causes of failure. As a result, the requirements phase has been considered to be one of the most critical phases of the IS/IT project life cycle, especially in relation to software development projects, where new systems must be defined. Moreover, a review of the literature suggests that management leadership is considered to be one of the most important factors in team, project and organisational effectiveness. Management leadership is regarded as being a vital factor in achieving project success, namely in the field of IS/IT. Further research acknowledges that leadership effectiveness may depend on contingency factors, such as the project type, or the project life cycle phase. However, few studies have focussed on the impact of leadership along the software project life cycle, and the literature review found no study that focusses on any particular phase. This is surprising, as the literature suggests that each phase has specific characteristics which are distinguishable by the activities that must be performed. Thus, this research study aims to integrate all these elements within a framework, through a multiple case study using exploratory research. Therefore, this framework will identify which leadership competencies are considered to be relevant to the requirements phase of software development projects’ life cycle. Contingency factors are also be identified and discussed, as well as their impact on the set of identified competencies. Finally, the practical and theoretical contribution of the results are presented, as well as new insights into the requirements and leadership research streams.O estudo da gestão de projetos de Sistemas e Tecnologias de Informação (SI/TIs) é largamente reconhecido como um tópico de investigação atual e relevante. No entanto, estudos empíricos recentes continuam a demonstrar um elevado nível de falhas no processo. Algumas das principais causas mais frequentemente identificadas envolvem a gestão inadequada de requisitos, bem como práticas inadequadas ao nível da gestão global do projeto. Assim, não é surpreendente que a fase que envolve as atividades dos requisitos seja considerada como uma das mais criticas fases de todo o ciclo de vida dos projetos de SI/TI, nomeadamente dos projetos de desenvolvimento de software onde se define um novo sistema a implementar. Para além disso, a revisão da literatura sugere que a liderança é considerada como um dos fatores mais importantes para a obtenção de eficácia das equipas, dos projetos e ainda das organizações. A liderança da gestão é considerada como um fator vital na obtenção do sucesso do projeto, nomeadamente na área dos SI/TIs. Adicionalmente, a literatura reconhece que a eficácia da liderança depende de fatores contingenciais, tais como o tipo de projeto ou a fase do ciclo de vida a que se aplica. No entanto, apenas uma pequena parte desses estudos focam o impacto da liderança ao longo do ciclo de vida do projeto. Surpreendentemente, não foi encontrado nenhum estudo que foque alguma fase em particular, mesmo considerando que a literatura sugere que diferentes fases têm características e atividades que as distingue das demais. Assim, este projeto de investigação pretende explorar a integração de todos estes elementos num quadro de análise comum, através da execução de múltiplos casos de estudos. Este quadro de análise pretende identificar quais as competências de liderança relevantes para a execução da fase de requisitos do ciclo de vida de projetos de desenvolvimento de software. Também se pretende explorar os fatores contingenciais que influenciam o conjunto de competências encontradas, bem como compreender a forma como isso se processa. Finalmente, são apresentadas as contribuições teóricas e práticas, e ainda enumerados os tópicos de investigação futura decorrentes dos resultados obtidos

Design for occupational safety and health: Key attributes for organisational capability

Purpose: Against the backdrop of the contribution of design to the occurrence of occupational injuries and illnesses in construction, design for occupational safety and health (DfOSH) is increasingly becoming prominent in the construction sector. To ensure that design interventions are safe for construction workers to build and maintain, design firms need to have the appropriate organisational capability in respect of DfOSH. However, empirical insight regarding the attributes that constitute DfOSH organisational capability is lacking. The purpose of this paper, which trailblazes the subject of DfOSH organisational capability in construction, is to address two key questions: what organisational attributes determine DfOSH capability? What is the relative priority of the capability attributes? Design/methodology/approach: The study employed three iterations of expert focus group discussion and a subsequent three-round Delphi technique accompanied by the application of voting analytic hierarchy process.Findings: The study revealed 18 capability attributes nested within six categories, namely: competence (the competence of organisation’s design staff); strategy (the consideration of DfOSH in organisation’s vision as well as the top management commitment); corporate experience (organisation’s experience in implementing DfOSH on projects); systems (systems, processes and procedures required for implementing DfOSH); infrastructure (physical, and information and communication technology resources); and collaboration (inter- and intra-organisational collaboration to implement DfOSH on projects). Whilst these categories and their nested attributes carry varying weights of importance, collectively, the competence-related attributes are the most important, followed by strategy. Originality/value: The findings should enable design firms and other key industry stakeholders (such as the clients who appoint them) to understand designers’ DfOSH capability better. Additionally, design firms should be able to prioritise efforts/investment to enhance their DfOSH capability

Visual literacy, student employability and the role of librarians

In the UK we live in a society that tacitly equates information with the written word. Clues to the precedence accorded to text-based data over visual information surround us. The most recent Higher Education Academy Employability paper (HEA, 2007) makes no mention of the need for visual literacy skills. By neglecting visual literacy, we run the risk of sending our students into the job market, and into society, ill equipped to consciously decode the images streaming towards them, and conversely, unable to create and encode visual data, whether it be for business graphs or to commission a website etc. Since 2004, the library at the University of Northampton has run a successful undergraduate Information Management module, which is available to all first years and has an annual cohort of around 80 students. In 2007, a strand dedicated to visual literacy was developed by the University’s arts library team and added to the module programme. From the favourable student response, the content awakened something within the students, and proved stimulating and timely. We now have a growing research interest in understanding the role librarians have to play in developing and delivering visual literacy programmes and the impact of visual literacy on student employability. The “Learning Dialogues” conference will enable us to share our research project whilst it is in progress in particular: the methods we are employing to understand the need for visual literacy to enhance employability (dialogue with students), how we are bench marking other UK institutions (through visiting these institutions) and comparing our role with that of information professionals in the USA and Australia (through interactive dialogue). Rees, C., Forbes P., and B. Kubler (2007) Student Employability Profiles: A Guide for Higher Education Practitioners [online]. York: Higher Education Academy. Available from http://www.heacademy.ac.uk/assets/York/documents/ourwork/tla/employability_enterprise/student_employability_profiles_apr07.pdf [Accessed on 26, November 2009

Towards a business analysis capability model: a South African and United Kingdom comparison

The increasing demand for business analysts in recent years has brought about the need for a proper articulation of the Business Analyst’s role. Despite the growth of the business analysis field, and its value, academic research on the practices, competencies and capabilities of a business analyst is still limited. Drawing on the Resource-Based View of the firm theory and the concept of practice, this study proposes a business analysis capability model. A positivist qualitative research methodology has been conducted using a directed content-based analysis approach. This research analysed 300 business analyst online job advertisements in order to identify the practices, competencies and capabilities of business analysts as perceived by employers based in South Africa (SA) and the United Kingdom (UK). The findings suggest that, both in SA and the UK, analysts with systems skills, practices, competencies and capabilities are preferred by employers over those with business skills. The results of the study suggest that South African employers demand additional skills, practices and competencies from a business analyst than are required by employers based in the UK. This suggests that SA based business analysts are capable of competing for employment in the UK without the need for them to acquire additional skills. This research makes conceptual contributions to academia, and also offers managerial contributions to practice

Learning across business sectors: knowledge sharing between aerospace and construction

This report addresses the extent that managerial practices can be shared between the aerospace and construction sectors. Current recipes for learning from other industries tend to be oversimplistic and often fail to recognise the embedded and contextual nature of managerial knowledge. Knowledge sharing between business sectors is best understood as an essential source of innovation. The process of comparison challenges assumptions and better equips managers to cope with future change. Comparisons between the aerospace and construction sectors are especially useful because they are so different. The two sectors differ hugely in terms of their institutional context, structure and technological intensity. The aerospace sector has experienced extensive consolidation and is dominated by a small number of global companies. Aerospace companies operate within complex networks of global interdependency such that collaborative working is a commercial imperative. In contrast, the construction sector remains highly fragmented and is characterised by a continued reliance on small firms. The vast majority of construction firms compete within localised markets that are too often characterised by opportunistic behaviour. Comparing construction to aerospace highlights the unique characteristics of both sectors and helps explain how managerial practices are mediated by context. Detailed comparisons between the two sectors are made in a range of areas and guidance is provided for the implementation of knowledge sharing strategies within and across organisations. The commonly accepted notion of ‘best practice’ is exposed as a myth. Indeed, universal models of best practice can be detrimental to performance by deflecting from the need to adapt continuously to changing circumstances. Competitiveness in the construction sector too often rests on efficiency in managing contracts, with a particular emphasis on the allocation of risk. Innovation in construction tends to be problem-driven and is rarely shared from project to project. In aerospace, the dominant model of competitiveness means that firms have little choice other than to invest in continuous innovation, despite difficult trading conditions. Research and development (R&D) expenditure in aerospace continues to rise as a percentage of turnovers. A sustained capacity for innovation within the aerospace sector depends crucially upon stability and continuity of work. In the construction sector, the emergence of the ‘hollowed-out’ firm has undermined the industry’s capacity for innovation. Integrated procurement contexts such as prime contracting in construction potentially provide a more supportive climate for an innovation-based model of competitiveness. However, investment in new ways of working depends upon a shift in thinking not only amongst construction contractors, but also amongst the industry’s major clients

OpenUP/MDRE: A Model-Driven Requirements Engineering Approach for Health-Care Systems

The domains and problems for which it would be desirable to introduce information systems are currently very complex and the software development process is thus of the same complexity. One of these domains is health-care. Model-Driven Development (MDD) and Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) are software development approaches that raise to deal with complexity, to reduce time and cost of development, augmenting flexibility and interoperability. However, many techniques and approaches that have been introduced are of little use when not provided under a formalized and well-documented methodological umbrella. A methodology gives the process a well-defined structure that helps in fast and efficient analysis and design, trouble-free implementation, and finally results in the software product improved quality. While MDD and SOA are gaining their momentum toward the adoption in the software industry, there is one critical issue yet to be addressed before its power is fully realized. It is beyond dispute that requirements engineering (RE) has become a critical task within the software development process. Errors made during this process may have negative effects on subsequent development steps, and on the quality of the resulting software. For this reason, the MDD and SOA development approaches should not only be taken into consideration during design and implementation as usually occurs, but also during the RE process. The contribution of this dissertation aims at improving the development process of health-care applications by proposing OpenUP/MDRE methodology. The main goal of this methodology is to enrich the development process of SOA-based health-care systems by focusing on the requirements engineering processes in the model-driven context. I believe that the integration of those two highly important areas of software engineering, gathered in one consistent process, will provide practitioners with many benets. It is noteworthy that the approach presented here was designed for SOA-based health-care applications, however, it also provides means to adapt it to other architectural paradigms or domains. The OpenUP/MDRE approach is an extension of the lightweight OpenUP methodology for iterative, architecture-oriented and model-driven software development. The motivation for this research comes from the experience I gained as a computer science professional working on the health-care systems. This thesis also presents a comprehensive study about: i) the requirements engineering methods and techniques that are being used in the context of the model-driven development, ii) known generic but flexible and extensible methodologies, as well as approaches for service-oriented systems development, iii) requirements engineering techniques used in the health-care industry. Finally, OpenUP/MDRE was applied to a concrete industrial health-care project in order to show the feasibility and accuracy of this methodological approach.Loniewski, G. (2010). OpenUP/MDRE: A Model-Driven Requirements Engineering Approach for Health-Care Systems. http://hdl.handle.net/10251/11652Archivo delegad

Organizational ambidexterity: using project portfolio management to support project-level ambidexterity

The aim of this study is to assess the ability of project portfolio management practices to support the pursuit of ambidexterity at the project level through engagement with specific dimensions and mechanisms. The focus is on examining the operating/business model and challenges that are imposed on the firms, but deemed resolvable through the simultaneous pursuit of multiple projects emphasizing contradictory strategic goals. Data are obtained from multiple exploratory interviews of senior executives involved in project-level activities who were drawn from 12 case organizations in the Middle East. The study finds evidence of four forms of ambidexterity dimensions and mechanisms. Analysis undertaken against operating/business model and challenges of these dimensions and mechanisms of ambidexterity suggests that they are not only inter-related, but do so at various organizational levels