Initial report on Object Spreadsheets

There is a growing demand for data-driven web applications that help automate organizational and business processes of low to medium complexity by letting users view and update structured data in controlled ways. We present Object Spreadsheets, an end-user development tool that combines a spreadsheet interface with a rich data model to help the process administrators build the logic for such applications themselves. Its all-in-one interface with immediate feedback has the potential to bring more complex tasks within reach of end-user developers, compared to existing approaches. Our data model is based on the structure of entity-relationship models and directly supports nested variable-size collections and object references, which are common in web applications but poorly accommodated by traditional spreadsheets. Object Spreadsheets has a formula language suited to the data model and supports stored procedures to specify the forms of updates that application users may make. Formulas can be used to assemble data in the exact structure in which it is to be shown in the application UI, simplifying the task of UI building; we intend for Object Spreadsheets to be integrated with a UI builder to provide a complete solution for application development. We describe our prototype implementation and several example applications we built to demonstrate the applicability of the tool

Living labs as a driver for change in regional television

Traditional television production and distribution organizations are increasingly being challenged by a rapidly changing technological environment. These evolutions force the television industry to leave their comfort zone. This context in mind, regional television broadcasters often lack the resources, knowledge and organizational flexibility to cope with this external pressure. In this paper, we discuss the use of Living Labs as ‘innovation intermediaries’ and ‘change facilitators’ that foster and enable user-centric innovation development processes, both inside and outside the organization. This phenomenon is approached from both an open innovation and a user innovation point of view. This paper considers Living Labs as open innovation ecosystems, enabling organizations to reach out and collaborate with their (potential) audience and other external actors, but also as an open ‘battle arena’ for the organization itself. The Living Lab process governs different expectations and enables conflicting opinions to come together and to steadily grow towards a mutual solution. Moreover, the innovation development process in the Living Lab seems to have innovation spill-over effects on the organizational level, catalyzing a broader organizational change

A dashboard-based approach for efficient requirements change management

Requirements gathering and documentation are important first steps for a successful software engineering project. The documented requirements act as a guideline for design and development of software products. Requirements also represent customer expectations for the end product. Since these documented requirements serve important purposes for many stakeholders, managing requirement changes effectively plays a major role in the overall success of any project. Changes in requirements are very common in software engineering and can occur during any phase of software development lifecycle (SDLC). Though the impact of requirement changes differs depending on the SDLC phase in which it occurred, there is almost always a setback that happens in terms of the project timeline. This scenario is common in projects that follow both Agile/Scrum methodology and ones that follow the more traditional Waterfall model. In this report, I will first present two case studies of how requirement changes impacted the timelines of two projects (one following Agile/Scrum methodology and another following Waterfall methodology). In the second part of this report, I will propose and design a user-friendly dashboard, which could be used to speed up the delays caused by changing requirements.Electrical and Computer Engineerin

A Framework proposal for monitoring and evaluating training in ERP implementation project

During the last years some researchers have studied the topic of critical success factors in ERP implementations, out of which 'training' is cited as one of the most ones. Up to this moment, there is not enough research on the management and operationalization of critical success factors within ERP implementation projects.Postprint (published version

Value creation through HR shared services: towards a conceptual framework

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to derive a measure for the performance of human resource shared service providers (HR SSPs) and then to develop a theoretical framework that conceptualises their performance.\ud \ud Design/methodology/approach – This conceptual paper starts from the HR shared services argument and integrates this with the knowledge-based view of the firm and the concept of intellectual capital.\ud \ud Findings – We recommend measuring HR SSP performance as HR value, referring to the ratio between use value and exchange value, that together reflect both transactional and transformational HR value. We argue that transactional HR value directly flows from the organisational capital in HR SSPs, whereas human and social capitals enable them to leverage their organisational capital for HR value creation. We argue that the human capital of HR SSPs has a direct effect on transformational HR value creation, while their social and organisational capitals positively moderate this relationship.\ud \ud Originality/value – The suggested measure paves the way for operationalising and measuring the performance of HR shared services providers. This paper offers testable propositions for the relationships between intellectual capital and the performance of HR shared service providers. These contributions could assist future research to move beyond the descriptive nature that characterises the existing literature

Supporting knowledge exchange isn't easy: lessons learnt from a case study

A knowledge management system is introduced in a large insurance company. It is meant to become a virtual knowledge network for a group of insurance professionals. Despite the fact that the introduction was met with enthusiasm and user participation in the design was ensured, the system did not live up to the expectations. In this paper we investigate this failure by uncovering and analyzing the requirements engineering processes underlying the system's\ud conception, design and introduction. The demise of the system can be attributed to a lack of attention for the use context of the end users and a tendency in the development process to focus mostly on the technical solution instead of problem analysis

Knowing A Few Rules Doesn’t Mean You Can Play the Game : The Limits of “Best Practice” in Enterprise Systems.

We examine the common claim that "best practices" are encompassed and represented in Enterprise Systems (ES). We suggest that an ES can at best only represent the ostensive and not the performative elements of work tasks. Thus, representation of best practice in an ES does not take practical action into account. This has two important implications. First, ostensive abstractions of best practice in an ES are a sparse and superficial representation of a "good" business process, at a specific moment in time. Second, the practical understanding required for performance is often ignored in the ostensive representation of best practice in the implementation of an ES. This constrains user and business adaptability. Inflexible coding of ostensive business tasks furthermore leads to rigidity where flexibility should be sought, to keep on top of the competition. Implications and directions for further research are discussed

Design Ltd.: Renovated Myths for the Development of Socially Embedded Technologies

This paper argues that traditional and mainstream mythologies, which have been continually told within the Information Technology domain among designers and advocators of conceptual modelling since the 1960s in different fields of computing sciences, could now be renovated or substituted in the mould of more recent discourses about performativity, complexity and end-user creativity that have been constructed across different fields in the meanwhile. In the paper, it is submitted that these discourses could motivate IT professionals in undertaking alternative approaches toward the co-construction of socio-technical systems, i.e., social settings where humans cooperate to reach common goals by means of mediating computational tools. The authors advocate further discussion about and consolidation of some concepts in design research, design practice and more generally Information Technology (IT) development, like those of: task-artifact entanglement, universatility (sic) of End-User Development (EUD) environments, bricolant/bricoleur end-user, logic of bricolage, maieuta-designers (sic), and laissez-faire method to socio-technical construction. Points backing these and similar concepts are made to promote further discussion on the need to rethink the main assumptions underlying IT design and development some fifty years later the coming of age of software and modern IT in the organizational domain.Comment: This is the peer-unreviewed of a manuscript that is to appear in D. Randall, K. Schmidt, & V. Wulf (Eds.), Designing Socially Embedded Technologies: A European Challenge (2013, forthcoming) with the title "Building Socially Embedded Technologies: Implications on Design" within an EUSSET editorial initiative (www.eusset.eu/