Effective Virtual Teams for New Product Development

At present, the existing literature shows that the factors which influence the effectiveness of virtual teams for new product development are still ambiguous. To address this problem, a research design was developed, which includes detailed literature review, preliminary model and field survey. From literature review, the factors which influence the effectiveness of virtual teams are identified and these factors are modified using a field survey. The relationship between knowledge workers (people), process and technology in virtual teams is explored in this study. The results of the study suggest that technology and process are tightly correlated and need to be considered early in virtual teams. The use of software as a service, web solution, report generator and tracking system should be incorporated for effectiveness virtual teams

Report of the user requirements and web based access for eResearch workshops

The User Requirements and Web Based Access for eResearch Workshop, organized jointly by NeSC and NCeSS, was held on 19 May 2006. The aim was to identify lessons learned from e-Science projects that would contribute to our capacity to make Grid infrastructures and tools usable and accessible for diverse user communities. Its focus was on providing an opportunity for a pragmatic discussion between e-Science end users and tool builders in order to understand usability challenges, technological options, community-specific content and needs, and methodologies for design and development. We invited members of six UK e-Science projects and one US project, trying as far as possible to pair a user and developer from each project in order to discuss their contrasting perspectives and experiences. Three breakout group sessions covered the topics of user-developer relations, commodification, and functionality. There was also extensive post-meeting discussion, summarized here. Additional information on the workshop, including the agenda, participant list, and talk slides, can be found online at http://www.nesc.ac.uk/esi/events/685/ Reference: NeSC report UKeS-2006-07 available from http://www.nesc.ac.uk/technical_papers/UKeS-2006-07.pd

Virtual teams: A literature review

In the competitive market, virtual teams represent a growing response to the need for fasting time-to-market, low-cost and rapid solutions to complex organizational problems. Virtual teams enable organizations to pool the talents and expertise of employees and non-employees by eliminating time and space barriers. Nowadays, companies are heavily investing in virtual team to enhance their performance and competitiveness. Despite virtual teams growing prevalence, relatively little is known about this new form of team. Hence the study offers an extensive literature review with definitions of virtual teams and a structured analysis of the present body of knowledge of virtual teams. First, we distinguish virtual teams from conventional teams, different types of virtual teams to identify where current knowledge applies. Second, we distinguish what is needed for effective virtual team considering the people, process and technology point of view and underlying characteristics of virtual teams and challenges they entail. Finally, we have identified and extended 12 key factors that need to be considered, and describes a methodology focused on supporting virtual team working, with a new approach that has not been specifically addressed in the existing literature and some guide line for future research extracted.Virtual team, Literature review, Effective virtual team,

Planning for Monitoring, Learning, and Evaluation at Small- to Medium-Sized Foundations

This report is based on findings from desktop research and interviews with selected foundations conducted between April and June 2016. It was developed to give the Oak Foundation a sense of how other foundations are tackling monitoring, evaluation, and learning (MEL) questions, and to show a range of options for Oak to consider as it develops its own MEL Plan. This summary of findings was developed for public distribution, anticipating that it may be useful for other donors.Key trends that emerged from the interviews and desktop research included the following:1. Foundations are spending more resources and putting more staff time into evaluation than they did in the past. Staff at smaller foundations tend to spend more time on individual grant evaluations, while staff at larger foundations tend to spend more time on assessments of broad program areas and on learning processes. While many foundations do not have consistent systems for tracking evaluation spending, some are deciding it would be useful to capture that information more methodically.2. Less attention has been put on learning to-date, but recognition of the importance of purposeful learning is growing quickly. Many foundations are hoping to improve upon their learning processes, but finding that it is not easy. It often requires an internal cultural shift and testing a variety of approaches. In contrast, foundations tend to have fairly clear processes and standards for monitoring and evaluation. Foundations that do have explicit learning efforts remain more focused on internal learning rather than communicating and sharing lessons externally. Foundations tend to be more transparent with external audiences about their grant-making processes, goals, and strategies, and less transparent about how they assess performance or their lessons learned. That said, both grantees and foundations are recognizing that sharing more lessons externally would be beneficial.3. Foundations are exploring appropriate and useful ways to evaluate work done through sub-granting organizations. Some are focusing on building the internal monitoring and evaluation capacity of those organizations. It would be useful for donors to coordinate approaches to evaluate work done through sub-granting organizations, which can allow for pooled resources and avoid putting an extra burden on the subgrantor

Seafloor characterization using airborne hyperspectral co-registration procedures independent from attitude and positioning sensors

The advance of remote-sensing technology and data-storage capabilities has progressed in the last decade to commercial multi-sensor data collection. There is a constant need to characterize, quantify and monitor the coastal areas for habitat research and coastal management. In this paper, we present work on seafloor characterization that uses hyperspectral imagery (HSI). The HSI data allows the operator to extend seafloor characterization from multibeam backscatter towards land and thus creates a seamless ocean-to-land characterization of the littoral zone

On the Design and Exploitation of User's Personal and Public Information for Semantic Personal Digital Photograph Annotation

Automating the process of semantic annotation of digital personal photographs is a crucial step towards efficient and effective management of this increasingly high volume of content. However, this is still a highly challenging task for the research community. This paper proposes a novel solution. Our solution integrates all contextual information available to and from the users, such as their daily emails, schedules, chat archives, web browsing histories, documents, online news, Wikipedia data, and so forth. We then analyze this information and extract important semantic terms, using them as semantic keyword suggestions for their photos. Those keywords are in the form of named entities, such as names of people, organizations, locations, and date/time as well as high frequency terms. Experiments conducted with 10 subjects and a total of 313 photos proved that our proposed approach can significantly help users with the annotation process. We achieved a 33% gain in annotation time as compared to manual annotation. We also obtained very positive results in the accuracy rate of our suggested keywords

DESIGNING THE ROLL-OUT OF ORGANIZATION-WIDE ICT INFRASTRUCTURES - THE FINTOP CASE

Implementing organization-wide ICT infrastructures is a challenging endeavor, even more so when the technology in question is both a network technology and raises privacy concerns among employees. This teaching case introduces students to the German insurance provider FINTOP in the final stages of planning its organization-wide roll-out of the Real Time Communication and Collaboration (RTC) technology IBM Lotus Sametime. FINTOP\u27s IT management is faced with the challenge of how to design the roll-out process in the face of a strong management vision, various stakeholder concerns and a culture of employee participation in decision making. The case is targeted at postgraduate or advanced undergraduate Information Systems students. Its aim is to provide instructors with a multi-faceted case that exposes students to the political nature of IT decision making, as well as the particular nature and characteristics of communication infrastructures. As network technologies, such infrastructures are quite different from more traditional enterprise systems due to their openness to accommodate a wide range of use cases. At the same time communication infrastructures, such as instant messaging and social media are making strong inroads into organizations currently

A study of personal information management strategies for online faculty

The literature suggests that personal information management is a serious challenge for many computer users. Online faculty are especially challenged because of the large number of electronic files necessitated by teaching online. Those who have experience in this environment may offer valuable insights regarding information management challenges and practices. Faculty who teach online courses as part of the WISE (Web-based Information Science Education) Consortium responded to a survey that questioned the ways they manage e-mail, computer desktops, web-based information, and learning management systems. The authors concluded that "filter failure" rather than information overload is the key issue in information management. The study concludes with a list of recommendations for faculty to manage their personal information