Crisis in American Information Systems Education: Innovations to Address the Threat of Offshoring

Our classrooms are nearly empty. The job prospects for our graduates are bleak. Offshoring is reconfiguring the American information technology industry. What are we to do? After years of unprecedented growth, demand, and skill shortages, IT faculty find themselves in a new environment. As a shortterm solution, some faculty are scrambling to develop and redesign courses. This is not enough and will not sustain the fundamental shifts needed in a global economy. How can individual faculty, Information Systems departments, and schools respond to survive the rapidly changing landscape? The situation calls for innovations in academic delivery. Academics must serve as examples of agility to students by rethinking and revising curricula. We have responded when faced with other changes such as DBMS, end-user computing, networking, and e-commerce when it was in our favor. Can we do it again? How do we instill in students how they can become innovators and not merely problem solvers? What new organizational forms can academic programs take to help students bridge global teams? The panel will discuss innovations to address the crisis of low enrollments and dated skill sets. The format lists panelists in order of presentation along with their relevant expertise

MIS-aligned Student Perspectives of Outsourcing and Offshoring

Outsourcing and offshoring (sourcing) aspects of IS functions have been common organizational activities for decades.However, the landscape is evolving. Organizations are shifting from primarily single vendor-client sourcing relationshipstoward innovative multi-vendor relationships integrated into organizational strategic plans. Current students are tomorrow’sleaders, and as such it is critical that IS programs teach cutting edge strategic sourcing concepts. We analyzed studentperceptions of the pros and cons of sourcing and found that current students largely anchor to a limited number of conceptsthat may be outdated and not representative of today’s competitive sourcing landscape. Current organizational trends insourcing require a different skill set for IS managers than those required in the past. More must be done to inform students ofcurrent trends in order to prepare them for the skills needed to be effective in their future IS roles. A framework of requiredskills for future IS managers is offered

Balancing offshoring and agility in the apparel industry: lessons from Benetton and Inditex

Based on a case study from the apparel industry, the paper addresses how the organizational innovations adopted by Benetton and Inditex allowed them to balance lower production costs in developing countries with an adequate response time to frequent preference changes and increasing demands for customisation. Findings confirm the fragility of multinationals whose offshoring strategy has not considered the costs of coordinating suppliers in far-off locations and suggest organisational improvements that make production costs, variety and time to market goals compatible. Our research thus provides a view of the conditions and processes that can overcome in increasingly volatile environments the misalignment between demand changes and the limited reactivity of industrial infrastructures. Furthermore the innovation strategy of textile companies has created generalizable lessons for other sectors in which demand uncertainty is high, life cycles short, and customers are, to some extent, prepared to pay for “speed to market”

Structuring the structure in outsourcing research A social network perspective on outsourcing relationship management

To what extent are structural assumptions veiled in extant outsourcing research? In this paper we suggest a unified view on social ties between individuals in outsourcing relationships. In a comprehensive literature analysis of outsourcing research since 2001, we identified structural assumptions and categorize them based on social network measures. Our analysis uncovers two salient patterns: 1) The gatekeeper vs. high density trade-off in interaction between client and vendor employees, and 2) the question whether the strength of ties between individuals can be too high for a professional outsourcing relationship. We present these patterns and other social network structures to formalize assumptions mostly not explicated yet considered important in existing outsourcing research. Based on our results, further research should analyze the impact of these patterns of social structure on outsourcing success

Information Systems Offshoring—A Literature Review and Analysis

IS offshoring has become one of the most discussed phenomena in IS research and practice. Particularly due to its rapid evolvement, current research on IS offshoring lacks a consolidated view on existing results. The article at hand seeks to meet this need by systematically reviewing and analyzing prior academic literature on IS offshoring. Based on a review of top-ranked IS and management journals as well as IS conference proceedings, we compile an exhaustive bibliography of ninety-six publications solely focusing on IS offshoring from a (project) management perspective. To adequately address the immense diversity of these publications, a multi-perspective research framework consisting of three perspectives, namely, research focus, research approach, and reference theory, is introduced and forms the basis for our literature analysis. The analysis results confirm the appropriateness of our framework and reveal directions for future research along the framework perspectives: Most importantly, in an effort to increase the significance and the trustworthiness of their results, researchers should apply a more theory-driven approach and provide a better description of their research context. Moreover, future research needs to pay particular attention to the pre-implementation stages of an IS offshoring initiative as well as the special nature of nearshoring and captive offshoring. Across all project stages, researchers should not only concentrate on the client point of view but incorporate multiple points of view

Model of Critical Factors for Outsourcing Agile Development

Companies are beginning to combine outsourcing with Agile software engineering techniques with the goal of receiving the benefits of both – faster time to market, greater quality, and smaller costs. Since Agile was originally developed to work principally with small collocated teams, scalability of Agile to the enterprise, and simultaneous use of Agile and outsourcing are questions concerning applicability of Agile techniques to global business environments. This paper first summarizes current experience studies and research in Agile, enterprise Agile and Agile outsourcing, to identify factors likely to affect success on Agile projects. It then extends a model originally developed by Chow and Cao (2007) to account for these factors. Finally it outlines an experiment whose goal is to determine which of these factors drives successful projects that use both Agile and outsourcing

Outsourcing: a way to Improve the Responsiveness and Agility within the Organisation

Outsourcing or offshoring as it is now known has been around for many decades. In the beginning itwas only very peripheral activities that were outsourced, blue collar (lower skilled) work but this is now all changing with the outsourcing of white-collar jobs. Historically, outsourcing was used whenorganisation could not perform to world-class excellence in all sectors of the organisation due toincompetence of staff and/or management, lack of capacity, financial pressures, and/or technologicalpressure. The research currently underway is initially focusing on a literature review of current outsourcing applications in the market place. From the literature review, a questionnaire has been developed to assess the impact outsourcing has on business performance. This research focuses on the Irish Market place. The paper will present the findings of the initial literature review, it will examine the main reasons companies outsource and the benefits they could accrue if gone about systematically and the associated problems. It will also discuss the methodology being followed to explore the Irish Industrial Sector. This is a working paper and as such, it is hoped that initial results from the survey will be available for presentation at the conference in September

We All Know How, Don’t We? On the Role of Scrum in IT-Offshoring

Part 2: Creating Value through Software DevelopmentInternational audienceOffshoring in the IT-industry involves dual interactions between a mother company and an external supplier, often viewed with an implicit perspective from the mother company. This article review general off shoring and IT offshoring literature, focusing on the proliferation of a globally available set of routines; Scrum and Agile. Two cases are studied; a small company and short process and a large mother company with a long process. The interactions of the set ups shows that global concepts like Scrum and Agile are far from a common platform. The “well known” concepts are locally shaped and the enterprises have mixed experiences

Process Models and Distribution of Work in Offshoring Application Software Development

Common process models for the development of application software (AS) are examined as to how well they are suited for offshoring projects. The need for communication and interaction among onsite and offshore project stakeholders is identified as a critical success factor. Process models used by organizations providing offshoring services are discussed, and a generalized offshoring life cycle model is developed. A specific focus is set on the distribution of work between the organization that outsources AS development and the offshore organization that carries out the major share of the development work. Problems and challenges that have to be faced, making offshoring a difficult task, are discussed. --