Realizing Shared Services - A Punctuated Process Analysis of a Public IT Department

IT services are increasingly being offered via a shared service model. This model promises the benefits of centralization and consolidation, as well as an increased customer satisfaction. Adopting shared services is not easy as it necessitates a major organizational change, with few documented exemplars to guide managers. This research explores a public IT unit’s realization of shared services with the intent to improve the transparency of its value proposition to their stakeholders. An ethnographic field study enabled in-situ data collection over a 24-month period. We analyzed the resulting, rich process data using the Punctuated Socio-Technical IS Change (PSIC) model. This resulted in several contributions: an explanatory account of shared services realization, an empirically grounded punctuated process model with seventeen critical incidents, and twelve key lessons for practitioners. Several extensions to extant process research methods are developed. These contributions combine to form a detailed and nuanced understanding of the process of realizing IT shared services at a large public university over a multi-year period

Model-driven requirements engineering: Synchronising models in an air traffic management case study

Different modelling techniques from different disciplines are needed to model complex socio-technical systems and their requirements. This paper describes the application of RESCUE, a process that integrates 4 modelling techniques to model and analyse stakeholder requirements for DMAN, a system for scheduling and managing the departure of aircraft from major European airports. It describes how human activity, use case and i* modelling were applied and integrated using synchronisation checks to model requirements on DMAN. Synchronisation checks applied at predefined stages in RESCUE revealed omissions and potential inconsistencies in the models and stakeholder requirements that, in turn, led to improvements to the models and resulting specification. The paper ends with implications for requirements model integration, and describes future work to extend and apply RESCUE

Service-Oriented Framework for Developing Interoperable e-Health Systems in a Low-Income Country

e-Health solutions in low-income countries are fragmented, address institution-specific needs, and do little to address the strategic need for inter-institutional exchange of health data. Although various e-health interoperability frameworks exist, contextual factors often hinder their effective adoption in low-income countries. This underlines the need to investigate such factors and to use findings to adapt existing e-health interoperability models. Following a design science approach, this research involved conducting an exploratory survey among 90 medical and Information Technology personnel from 67 health facilities in Uganda. Findings were used to derive requirements for e-health interoperability, and to orchestrate elements of a service oriented framework for developing interoperable e-health systems in a low-income country (SOFIEH). A service-oriented approach yields reusable, flexible, robust, and interoperable services that support communication through well-defined interfaces. SOFIEH was evaluated using structured walkthroughs, and findings indicate that it scored well regarding applicability, usability, and understandability

Seeing the full picture: the case for extending security ceremony analysis

The concept of the security ceremony was introduced a few years ago to complement the concept of the security protocol with everything about the context in which a protocol is run. In particular, such context involves the human executors of a protocol. When including human actors, human protocols become the focus, hence the concept of the security ceremony can be seen as part of the domain of socio-technical studies. This paper addresses the problem of ceremony analysis lacking the full view of human protocols. This paper categorises existing security ceremony analysis work and illustrates how the ceremony picture could be extended to support a more comprehensive analysis. The paper explores recent weaknesses found on the Amazon\u27s web interface to illustrate different approaches to the analysis of the full ceremony picture

Exploring how to use scenarios to discover requirements

This paper investigates the effectiveness of different uses of scenarios on requirements discovery using results from requirements processes in two projects. The first specified requirements on a new aircraft management system at a regional UK airport to reduce its environmental impact. The second specified new work-based learning tools to be adopted by a consortium of organizations. In both projects scenarios were walked through both in facilitated workshops and in the stakeholders’ workplaces using different forms of a scenario tool. In the second project, scenarios were also walked through with a software prototype and creativity prompts. Results revealed both qualitative and quantitative differences in discovered requirements that have potential implications for models of scenario-based requirements discovery and the design of scenario tools

Measuring Tasks, Time, and Priorities: A Study of an Alternative School Leader in Action

This study explored whether conventional means to evaluate principal instructional leadership were appropriate in alternative school settings. The mixed methods research included shadowing an alternative school principal over two days during the fall semester, 2011. Data was collected using the Vanderbilt Assessment of Education in Leadership\u27s (VAL-ED) Time Task Analysis ToolTM checklist supplemented by naturalistic observations and ongoing explanations by the principal. Leader activities were categorized within three major categories: instructional, management, and personal. Additional activity descriptions were based on instrument subcategories, multiple cycles of coding, and analytic memoing. Conclusions indicated that the VAL-ED instrument failed to accurately define the range of entrepreneurial and outreach activities this alternative principal undertook. The checklist was insensitive to the degree to which the principal multitasked, combining management with instructional duties. The observations provided important clues to principal function, suggesting a more nuanced evaluation useful in nontraditional settings

Software Development Life Cycles and Methodologies:Fixing the old and adopting the new

Information Systems as a discipline has generated thousands of research papers yet practice still suffers from poor-quality applications. This research evaluates the current state of application development, finding practice wanting in a number of areas. Changes recommended to fix historical shortcomings include improved management attention to risk management, testing, and detailed work practices. In addition, for industry\u27s move to services orientation, recommended changes include development of usable interfaces and a view of applications as embedded in the larger business services in which they function. These business services relate to both services provided to parent-organization customers as well as services provided by the information technology organization to its constituents. Because of this shift toward service orientation, more emphasis on usability, applications, testing, and improvement of underlying process quality are needed. The shift to services can be facilitated by adopting tenets of IT service management and user-centered design and by attending to service delivery during application development