An approach to reconcile the agile and CMMI contexts in product line development

Software product line approaches produce reusable platforms and architectures for products set developed by specific companies. These approaches are strategic in nature requiring coordination, discipline, commonality and communication. The Capability Maturity Model (CMM) contains important guidelines for process improvement, and specifies "what" we must have into account to achieve the disciplined processes (among others things). On the other hand, the agile context is playing an increasingly important role in current software engineering practices, specifying "how" the software practices must be addressed to obtain agile processes. In this paper, we carry out a preliminary analysis for reconciling agility and maturity models in software product line domain, taking advantage of both.Postprint (published version

The social foundations of the bureaucratic order

This article views the bureaucratic form of organization as both an agent and an expression of key modern social innovations that are most clearly manifested in the non-inclusive terms by which individuals are involved in organizations. Modern human involvement in organizations epitomizes and institutionally embeds the crucial yet often overlooked cultural orientation of modernity whereby humans undertake ac-tion along well-specified and delimited paths thanks to their capacity to isolate and suspend other personal or social considerations. The organizational involvement of humans qua role agents rather than qua persons helps unleash formal organizing from being tied to the indolence of the human body and the languish process of per-sonal or psychological reorientation. Thanks to the loosening of these ties, the bu-reaucratic organization is rendered capable to address the shifting contingencies un-derlying modern life by reshuffling and re-assembling the roles and role patterns by which it is made. The historically unique adaptive capacity of bureaucracy remains though hidden behind the ubiquitous presence of routines and standard operating procedures –requirements for the standardization of roles– that are mistakenly ex-changed for the essence of the bureaucratic form

From service-oriented architecture to service-oriented enterprise

Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) was originally motivated by enterprise demands for better business-technology alignment and higher flexibility and reuse. SOA evolved from an initial set of ideas and principles to Web services (WS) standards now widely accepted by industry. The next phase of SOA development is concerned with a scalable, reliable and secure infrastructure based on these standards, and guidelines, methods and techniques for developing and maintaining service delivery in dynamic enterprise settings. In this paper we discuss the principles and main elements of SOA. We then present an overview of WS standards. And finally we come back to the original motivation for SOA, and how these can be realized

Internationalization of professional service firms

This chapter examines the internationalization of Professional Service Firms (PSFs), outlining its drivers, varying forms, and organizational implications. It argues that conventional internationalization theory does not apply straightforwardly to PSFs. The authors identify three key sources of PSF distinctiveness—governance, clients, and knowledge—and show how these generate not only differences between PSFs and other types of organizations but also heterogeneity amongst PSFs themselves. Based on this, four different forms of PSF internationalization are identified—network, project, federal, and transnational—and the authors note that scholarly interest has mostly focused on the last two of these. The chapter highlights change towards the transnational model as an underlying theme in PSF research. It finds little convincing evidence that this model has been successfully implemented and it is argued that, in general, PSFs are better understood as federal structures controlled by a few powerful offices than as transnational enterprises

Collaborative method to maintain business process models updated

Business process models are often forgotten after their creation and its representation is not usually updated. This appears to be negative as processes evolve over time. This paper discusses the issue of business process models maintenance through the definition of a collaborative method that creates interaction contexts enabling business actors to discuss about business processes, sharing business knowledge. The collaboration method extends the discussion about existing process representations to all stakeholders promoting their update. This collaborative method contributes to improve business process models, allowing updates based in change proposals and discussions, using a groupware tool that was developed. Four case studies were developed in real organizational environment. We came to the conclusion that the defined method and the developed tool can help organizations to maintain a business process model updated based on the inputs and consequent discussions taken by the organizational actors who participate in the processes.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Organizational Culture and Ethical Decision-Making During Major Crises

By integrating various behavioral and ethical theories, such as Organizational Culture and the Social Construction of Knowledge, this research argues that emergency micro-cultures often emerge in times of crisis. Smaller, localized environments, permeated by this crisis culture, often produce an ethical myopia that corrupts wise decision-making. Unless insiders, either leaders or followers within a local setting, are able to meaningfully access ethical frames of reference existing outside the immediate context of the crisis culture, choices remain highly influenced by misaligned values distorted by proximate and introspective survival priorities with minimal regard for external or long-term ethical consequences. In this regard, Follett’s (1949) concept of “the invisible leader,” in which transcendent values for the “common purpose” of leadership are embodied, provides a potentially meaningful way forward in addressing this dilemma. Since social constructs significantly drive the values that influence decision-making (McLeod and Chaffee, 2017), respected, culturally rich, moral frames of reference that transcend the boundaries of the room emerge as important values clarifiers during important organizational decision-making, particularly in the midst of organizational crises

A participatory design approach for the development of support environments in eGovernment services to citizens

The introduction of eGovernment services and applications leads to major changes in the structure and operation of public administrations. In this paper we describe the work in progress in an Italian project called “SPO.T.” aimed at the analysis, development, deployment and evaluation of tools and environments to support the people who plan, deliver, use and evaluate user-centred provision of One-Stop-Shop services to citizens. The “SPO.T.” project has focused on two requirements: 1. the support tools and environments must facilitate the active involvement of all stakeholders in the definition and evolution of eGovernment applications and services, and it is argued that through participatory design changes of structure, process and culture can be delivered effectively; 2. they must embody a set of architecturally coherent resources which reflect the new roles and relationships of public administration and which are sufficiently generic to be relevant to a wide range of local contexts across the community

Autonomous agile teams: Challenges and future directions for research

According to the principles articulated in the agile manifesto, motivated and empowered software developers relying on technical excellence and simple designs, create business value by delivering working software to users at regular short intervals. These principles have spawned many practices. At the core of these practices is the idea of autonomous, self-managing, or self-organizing teams whose members work at a pace that sustains their creativity and productivity. This article summarizes the main challenges faced when implementing autonomous teams and the topics and research questions that future research should address