Exploring Win-Win Contracts: An Appreciative Inquiry into IT Project Management

IT project management research largely adopts a negative approach with an emphasis on risks, problems and failures. Although that approach has led to important theoretical and practical insights, this study adopts a positive approach to explore complementary ways to improve current practices. Accordingly, we report from a small software firm, TelSoft, in which we applied appreciative inquiry (AI) to identify “win-win contracts” as generative metaphor for IT project management and to develop action strategies to manage scope, time, cost, and quality in TelSoft’s IT projects. As a contribution to the IT project management literature, we show how the generative metaphor and related action strategies were developed at TelSoft and discuss relationships to existing theory, most notably Theory W. In addition, as a contribution to the participatory change literature within the Information Systems discipline, we show how AI and the four steps of initiating, inquiring, imagining, and innovating were applied at TelSoft to learn about existing strengths in IT project management and to improve current practices through a series of workshops for project managers. We present the AI process in detail and discuss our experiences in relation to other approaches to participatory change

Empirical Standards for Software Engineering Research

Empirical Standards are natural-language models of a scientific community's expectations for a specific kind of study (e.g. a questionnaire survey). The ACM SIGSOFT Paper and Peer Review Quality Initiative generated empirical standards for research methods commonly used in software engineering. These living documents, which should be continuously revised to reflect evolving consensus around research best practices, will improve research quality and make peer review more effective, reliable, transparent and fair.Comment: For the complete standards, supplements and other resources, see https://github.com/acmsigsoft/EmpiricalStandard

Stakeholder Theory: The State of the Art

A variety of forces are changing the way managers and executives make sense of their responsibilities. Globalization has brought a larger variety of participants into contemporary businesses, technological innovation has increased the pace of change, and managers are discovering that their actions have the potential to affect a broader range of people all over the globe (Clement, 2005). Additionally, the pursuit of corporate objectives can be easily disrupted by the actions of unexpected groups. These challenges, driven by change and interconnectedness, reveal a need for managers and academics to re-think the traditional ways of conceptualizing the responsibilities of the firm. Fortunately, for the last 30 years a growing number of scholars and practitioners have been experimenting with concepts and models that facilitate our understanding of the complexities of today’s business challenges. Among these, “stakeholder theory” or “stakeholder thinking” has emerged as a new narrative to understand and remedy three interconnected business problems—the problem of understanding how value is created and traded, the problem of connecting ethics and capitalism, and the problem of helping managers think about management such that the first two problems are addressed. In this article, we review the major uses and adaptations of stakeholder theory in a variety of disciplines such as business ethics, corporate strategy, finance, accounting, management, and marketing. We also evaluate these uses in terms of how they help or hinder the original goals of stakeholder theory, and suggest future directions in which research on stakeholder theory can continue to provide useful insights into the practice of sustainable and ethical value creation

Métricas e Indicadores de Inovação: proposta de desenvolvimento de sistema de medição de desempenho da OI em EBTS de pequeno porte / Innovation Metrics and Indicators: Development Proposal for OI Performance Measurement System for Small EBTS

Vários estudos apontam as dificuldades das empresas em medir a inovação e, mais recentemente, a inovação aberta ou “OI”, práticas onde se obtém a inovação também por fontes externas e colaborativas. Este artigo, além de mapear os principais pesquisadores, suas descobertas e aplicações sobre o tema, propõe analisar essas práticas em empresas de base tecnológica (EBTs) tendo como foco, pequenas empresas. Baseado em pesquisa bibliográfica exploratória, documental aplicada em centros de inovação considerados "referências" no Brasil, como São José dos Campos, Itajubá e Santa Rita do Sapucaí e do mundo, com amostras de EBTs localizadas em Cambridge MA, propõe-se elaborar um constructo (questionários) para reconhecer e medir o impacto de atividades inovadoras. Com os estudos e práticas adotadas, foi possível verificar que o papel da "OI" é fortalecido nas empresas e que a disponibilidade desse conhecimento gera cada vez mais inovações originais, no entanto, ainda existem poucas ferramentas disponíveis e confiáveis e mínimas metodologias para medir essa inovação. Assim, procurou-se preencher essa lacuna identificando e discutindo a importância do desenvolvimento de “OI”. Sobre trabalhos futuros, espera-se multiplicar e consolidar a pesquisa, bem como testá-la em outros ambientes e empresas. 

Towards Information Polycentricity Theory: Investigation of a Hospital Revenue Cycle

This research takes steps towards developing a new theory of organizational information management based on the ideas that, first, information creates ordering effects in transactions and, second, that there are multiple centers of authority in organizations. The rationale for developing this theory is the empirical observation that hospitals have great difficulty in managing information relating to transactions with patients. The research illustrates the detailed workings of an initial conceptual framework based on an action research project into the revenue cycle of a hospital. The framework facilitates a deeper understanding of how information technology can help to transform information management practices in complex organizations, such as hospitals. At the same time, this research adds to the literature on Polycentricity Theory by linking its two core concepts—multiple nested centers of decision making and context-dependent governance—with Transaction Cost Theory and information management theories to establish a new foundation for understanding the role of information technology in organizational contexts

Improving Practices in a Small Software Firm: An Ambidextrous Perspective

Despite documented best practices and specialized tools, software organizations struggle to deliver quality software that is on time, within budget, and meets customer requirements. Managers seeking improved software project outcomes face two dominant software paradigms which differ in their emphasis on upfront planning, customer collaboration, and product documentation: plan-driven and agile. Rather than promoting one approach over the other, this research advocates improving software management practices by developing the organization’s ambidextrous capability. Ambidextrous organizations have the ability to simultaneously succeed at two seemingly contradictory capabilities (e.g. discipline and agility) which leads to enhanced organizational performance. Overall, this study asks the question: How can an ambidextrous perspective facilitate improvement in software practices? Driven by this question, and based on a two year action research study at a small software firm, TelSoft, the objectives of this research are to: 1. Identify dualities involved in improving software practices 2. Design interventions based on these dualities to improve software practices 3. Explore the process of becoming an ambidextrous software organization The resulting dissertation consists of a summary and four papers that each identify and address particular dualities encountered during software process improvement. The first paper asserts that both process-driven and perception-driven inquiry should be used during assessment of software practices, presents a model that shows how this combination can occur, and demonstrates the use of this model at TelSoft. The second paper explicates two theories for understanding and resolving issues in requirements engineering practice – repeat-ability and response-ability – and argues for the need to negotiate between the two. The third paper identifies a tension between managing legacy and current processes and proposes a model for software process reengineering, a systematic process for leveraging legacy processes created during prior SPI efforts. Finally, the fourth paper applies the theoretical lens of ambidexterity to understand the overall change initiative in terms of the tension between alignment and adaptability. The study used a variety of data sources to diagnose software practices, including semi-structured interviews, software process documents, meeting interactions, and workshop discussions. Subsequently, we established, facilitated, and tracked focused improvement teams in the areas of customer relations, requirements management, quality assurance, project portfolio management, and process management. Furthermore, we created and trained two management teams with responsibility for ongoing management of SPI and project portfolio management respectively. We argue that these activities improved software practices at TelSoft and provided a stronger foundation for continuous improvement. Keywords: Ambidexterity, software process improvement (SPI), action research, requirements engineering assessment, action planning, software process reengineering, software management