Highly engaged, less likely to quit? – A theoretical perspective on work engagement and turnover in agile information systems development projects

Agile information systems development (ISD) has become a popular way to manage IT projects. One of the key claims of agile ISD is to increase employees’ work outcomes. At the same time, organizations increasingly struggle to gain and retain qualified IT professionals. Aim of this research is to understand how agile practices influence employees’ work engagement and, as a result, their turnover intention. In order to gain empirical evidence, we propose a theoretical model based on the conservation of resources theory. Practical and theoretical implications demonstrate what conclusions can be made regarding the influence of agile ISD on resources, work engagement and intention to quit and what companies can do to retain their IT employees in ISD projects

Who can assess HR performance in IT/IS projects: a review

Acting in markets characterized by a growing demand, organizations need to manage their human resources effectively and nowadays recognize that human resources (HR) are key elements to obtain success. In fact, organizations, by looking for operation optimization, have interest in enhancing the performance of human resources through systematic appraisals, by collecting and using information from individual and team performance. In the context of information technology/information systems (IT/IS) projects, the research that focuses on HR performance appraisal is scarce. To help fill this gap this paper presents a review of sources on performance information, which are applicable to these kind of projects.This work has been supported by COMPETE: POCI-01-0145-FEDER-007043 and FCT - Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia within the Project Scope: UID/CEC/00319/2013.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

The Impact of Virtual Team Consistency on Individual Performance and Perceptual Outcomes Over Time

This research examines how the provision of virtual team membership consistency may impact perceptions of the communication technology and interactions as well as performance. The results from a repeated measures experiment finds that virtual teams with expectations of inconsistency in membership have a more negative perception of the supporting technology, and perceive less coordination than consistent teams. Additionally, members on consistent teams perceive less interpersonal conflict, greater coordination, and enjoy greater performance outcomes. Virtual team consistency is an important construct that can provide insights to virtual team member concerns regarding team turnover and loss of social capital due to turnover. Given the ephemeral nature of virtual team membership, consistency may be a key construct for consideration in overcoming delay in virtual team engagement and social identity development

Aplicação de análises estatísticas para investigação do impacto da rotatividade no gerenciamento de um projeto de mapeamento de processos

Este trabalho originou-se de um projeto de mapeamento de processos firmado, através de um termo de cooperação, entre uma Universidade Pública Federal e um órgão público federal com a finalidade de subsidiar a criação de um novo software de controle físico de materiais. O projeto possui um grande índice de rotatividade ocasionando em novas contratações que necessitam de treinamentos e transmissões de conhecimento. Para o seu gerenciamento foram desenvolvidos padrões internos que devem ser seguidos e estes e todo o conhecimento além disponibilizado de forma acessível a todos os colaboradores. Este artigo teve como objetivo investigar se a rotatividade dos membros impacta no desempenho do projeto alterando o tempo necessário para o mapeamento. Para isto, foram realizadas análises estatísticas com os dados fornecidos caracterizando esta pesquisa como um estudo de caso de caráter exploratório com abordagem quantitativa. Estas análises identificaram que duas variáveis (Atrasos Internos e Atrasos Externos) demonstram impacto no tempo necessário e outras duas (Mudanças e Treinamento) não tiveram evidência de correlação com o mesmo

Using the PMO to enforce and standardize the attention of software project managers to needs of software project teams

Software project teams (SPTs) are critical stakeholders. Their contribution in successful delivery of software projects is unquestionable. However, the empirical evidence of their importance seems to exist on paper only, as software project managers (SPMs) and scholars in the project management field ignore their individual needs, and as a result, SPTs remain the most neglected stakeholder group in the software industry. In endeavoring to address the neglect of SPTs by SPMs, the authors of this study developed a model aimed at assisting SPMs to pay due consideration to the needs of this important stakeholder group. At the heart of the model’s functionality is the Project Management Office (PMO), which intends to enforce and standardize the gathering and addressing of software project team needs and interests by SPMs. The aim of the research study is to investigate how the functions of the PMO can be applied to operationalize the enforcement and standardization of the overall function of the model. Since the study is practical-oriented, the pragmatic interpretive approach was considered a suitable methodology. Through the interpretative methodology, several appropriate functions of the PMO, such as «Project management methodology, standards, and tooling», «Monitoring and controlling project performance», «Human resource management» and «Development of project management competencies» as established from project management literature were utilized to achieve the study’s purpose. Even though the interpretation process was guided by literature, the inference was also influenced, to a certain extent, by the researcher opinion as «interested observer». Therefore, the approach presents a limitation to the study. Future studies should include the validation of the feasibility of the study’s claim in a real-world project setup

Using the PMO to enforce and standardize the attention of software project managers to needs of software project teams

Software project teams (SPTs) are critical stakeholders. Their contribution in successful delivery of software projects is unquestionable. However, the empirical evidence of their importance seems to exist on paper only, as software project managers (SPMs) and scholars in the project management field ignore their individual needs, and as a result, SPTs remain the most neglected stakeholder group in the software industry. In endeavoring to address the neglect of SPTs by SPMs, the authors of this study developed a model aimed at assisting SPMs to pay due consideration to the needs of this important stakeholder group. At the heart of the model’s functionality is the Project Management Office (PMO), which intends to enforce and standardize the gathering and addressing of software project team needs and interests by SPMs. The aim of the research study is to investigate how the functions of the PMO can be applied to operationalize the enforcement and standardization of the overall function of the model. Since the study is practical-oriented, the pragmatic interpretive approach was considered a suitable methodology. Through the interpretative methodology, several appropriate functions of the PMO, such as «Project management methodology, standards, and tooling», «Monitoring and controlling project performance», «Human resource management» and «Development of project management competencies» as established from project management literature were utilized to achieve the study’s purpose. Even though the interpretation process was guided by literature, the inference was also influenced, to a certain extent, by the researcher opinion as «interested observer». Therefore, the approach presents a limitation to the study. Future studies should include the validation of the feasibility of the study’s claim in a real-world project setup

Consequences of Project Team Member Turnover for agile Information Systems Development Teams: A Multiple Case Study

Turnover of IT professionals has been at the center of IT workforce research, mainly focusing on individual level drivers and consequences. This paper explores how turnover events affect the dynamics of agile software development (ISD) teams. We conducted 25 semi-structured interviews in seven cases to understand team-level consequences of turnover events. We found that ISD teams who directly or indirectly experienced turnover events are confronted with the following four consequences on the group level: (1) group dynamics shift, leading to (2) interpersonal voids, and (3) voids of expertise which consequently leads to (4) rebalancing resources. Through our work, we contribute to a better understanding of how coping processes that start after collective turnover occurs in agile ISD teams are shaped at the group level

Mitigating Turnover with Code Review Recommendation: Balancing Expertise, Workload, and Knowledge Distribution

Developer turnover is inevitable on software projects and leads to knowledge loss, a reduction in productivity, and an increase in defects. Mitigation strategies to deal with turnover tend to disrupt and increase workloads for developers. In this work, we suggest that through code review recommendation we can distribute knowledge and mitigate turnover with minimal impact on the development process. We evaluate review recommenders in the context of ensuring expertise during review, Expertise, reducing the review workload of the core team, CoreWorkload, and reducing the Files at Risk to turnover, FaR. We find that prior work that assigns reviewers based on file ownership concentrates knowledge on a small group of core developers increasing risk of knowledge loss from turnover by up to 65%. We propose learning and retention aware review recommenders that when combined are effective at reducing the risk of turnover by -29% but they unacceptably reduce the overall expertise during reviews by -26%. We develop the Sophia recommender that suggest experts when none of the files under review are hoarded by developers but distributes knowledge when files are at risk. In this way, we are able to simultaneously increase expertise during review with a ΔExpertise of 6%, with a negligible impact on workload of ΔCoreWorkload of 0.09%, and reduce the files at risk by ΔFaR -28%. Sophia is integrated into GitHub pull requests allowing developers to select an appropriate expert or “learner” based on the context of the review. We release the Sophia bot as well as the code and data for replication purposes

Using the PMO to enforce and standardize the attention of software project managers to needs of software project teams

Software project teams (SPTs) are critical stakeholders. Their contribution in successful delivery of software projects is unquestionable. However, the empirical evidence of their importance seems to exist on paper only, as software project managers (SPMs) and scholars in the project management field ignore their individual needs, and as a result, SPTs remain the most neglected stakeholder group in the software industry. In endeavoring to address the neglect of SPTs by SPMs, the authors of this study developed a model aimed at assisting SPMs to pay due consideration to the needs of this important stakeholder group. At the heart of the model’s functionality is the Project Management Office (PMO), which intends to enforce and standardize the gathering and addressing of software project team needs and interests by SPMs. The aim of the research study is to investigate how the functions of the PMO can be applied to operationalize the enforcement and standardization of the overall function of the model. Since the study is practical-oriented, the pragmatic interpretive approach was considered a suitable methodology. Through the interpretative methodology, several appropriate functions of the PMO, such as «Project management methodology, standards, and tooling», «Monitoring and controlling project performance», «Human resource management» and «Development of project management competencies» as established from project management literature were utilized to achieve the study’s purpose. Even though the interpretation process was guided by literature, the inference was also influenced, to a certain extent, by the researcher opinion as «interested observer». Therefore, the approach presents a limitation to the study. Future studies should include the validation of the feasibility of the study’s claim in a real-world project setup

Strategies for Reducing High Turnover Among Information Technology Professionals

Organizations globally are spending millions of dollars replacing information technology (IT) professionals. IT professionals, who possess technical skills and competencies that interconnect business processes, are costly to replace. There are direct and indirect costs associated when an IT professional leaves, such as advertising fees, headhunting fees, and project delays. Lacking a firm understanding of the reasons why IT professionals leave their positions, many business leaders do not have strategies for reducing turnover rates. Building on Herzberg\u27s motivation-hygiene theory and March and Simon\u27s process model of turnover, this exploratory multiple case study sought to identify the strategies that business leaders view as essential for retaining IT professionals. Semistructured interviews were conducted with 10 IT managers in the Houston, Texas, area; participants were selected using a purposive sampling technique. Thematic analysis revealed eight strategies for addressing turnover: compensation, opportunity and advancement, rewards and recognition, relationship with the supervisor and coworkers, training and development, communications, meaningful work, and flexible work schedule. Findings from this study may contribute to positive social change by providing business leaders with more insight about how they can retain IT professionals. The high turnover among IT professionals affects individuals, families, communities, organizations, and the economy. Implementing strategies to reduce turnover rates can help keep individual employees and their family members together and reduce the unemployment rates