The Effects of User Partnering and User Non-Support on Project Performance

Information system software development projects suffer from a high failure rate. One of many obstacles faced by project managers is non-supportive users, those not actively sharing in development responsibilities. The coordination activity of early partnering has been proposed in the literature to promote collaboration and enhance user support. The extent of partnering is considered in a model that relates partnering to the risks of user non-support and eventual project success. The model is developed from contingency theory, with residual performance risk as an intermediary variable. A survey of IS project membership provides the data, which indicates that partnering significantly relates to higher user support, less residual risk, and better project performance. Researchers may use variations on the model to examine other barriers to success and the techniques applied to lower the barriers. Practitioners should consider applying partnering techniques to improve software development project performance

The Roles and Skill Sets of Systems vs Business Analysts

The role of business analysts and systems analysts appears to be very closely related, and there is no agreement on the definitions of the roles or the required skill set to become one of the said analysts. Though the number of these positions is increasing, the understanding of what the business and systems analysts are remains unclear and differs between organisations. A review of literature shows that there are common roles and skills between the two positions, as well as very distinct roles and skills that are clear. This research has demonstrated that although there is some harmony between the articles and interviews on the distinctions between the business analyst and the systems analyst, there are still discrepancies that can only be understood through further research

Traditional versus Modern? Perceptions and Preferences of Urban Park Users in Iran

This study involved four parks in Iran—two modern ones located in Tehran and two historical, traditional examples, one in Kashan and one in Esfahan—in order to ask what are the key factors contributing to the satisfaction of visitors to the two types of park and also to compare user’s perceptions and values of the different types. An extensive questionnaire survey was conducted in each park, with a target of 300 responses, using a random sampling technique. Respondents were asked to rate the importance of a number of factors, while thinking about the park they were visiting, using a 5-point Likert scale. Descriptive and inferential statistical analysis was undertaken. The results of the scores revealed differences between the two types of park. A factor analysis of the pooled results revealed that the key aspects contributing to a visit were named as ‘having fun and enjoying oneself’, in a place with ‘no barriers to using the park’ and ‘leaving one’s cares behind’ followed by ‘relaxing in the presence of natural beauty’. A further Nonmetric Multidimensional Scaling analysis was undertaken to determine the main factors affecting the differences in preference for each type of park in relation to the key demographic variables. This revealed that the modern parks were preferred over the traditional ones for three significant sets of factors—recreation, accessibility and culture—and that there was a tendency for the historical parks to been favoured by more educated people. The conclusions are that the modern parks support the main preferred activities to support the quality of life of the population—not through their design per se but because they offer many more recreational opportunities. There is potential to include traditional elements such as water features more into parks. Park planners can take the findings and use them to help improve the quality of the parks over time

Entangled Design Knowledge: Relationships as an Approach to Claims Reuse

As a discipline, human-computer interaction produces creative and innovative designs that could provide a reusable collection of design knowledge on which future efforts could build. It is unfortunate that so much of this knowledge is not fully reused by designers today. To encourage the use of previously identified HCI knowledge, we propose a model of reuse building on Carroll?s notion of claims, design knowledge components that capture the positive and negative psychological effects of design features. We address four challenges associated with reuse in a library of claims, adopted from software engineering?a discipline in which the notion of reuse has been prevalent for quite some time. Building on Krueger?s definition of reuse and his conceptualization of four key aspects?abstraction, selection, specification, and integration?we propose a reuse approach based on incorporating these four aspects into the design process. To abstract, select, specify and integrate claims, we identify claim relationships, descriptions of connections between claims. We portray how claim relationships can be used to aid in identifying claim types, searching for claims, creating new claims, and aggregating claims. By integrating relationships into a claims library, we demonstrate how they can be applied to assist claims reuse and present studies related to each application of the relationships

Designing an e-learning tool to support health practitioners caring for patients taking multiple medications

Background: Population ageing and improvements in healthcare mean the number of people living with two or more chronic conditions, or ‘multimorbidity’, is rapidly increasing. This presents a challenge to current disease-specific care delivery models. Adherence to prescribed medications appears particularly challenging for individuals living with multimorbidity, given the often-complex drug regimens required to treat multiple conditions. Poor adherence is associated with increased mortality, as well as wasted healthcare resources. Supporting medication adherence is a key priority for general practitioners (GPs) and practice nurses as they are responsible for much of the disease counselling and medication prescribing associated with chronic illnesses. Despite this, practical resources and training for health practitioners on how to promote adherence in practice is currently lacking. Informed by the principles of patient and public involvement (PPI), the aim of this research was to develop a patient informed e-learning resource to help GPs and nurses support medication adherence. Method: Utilising collective intelligence (CI) and scenario-based design (SBD) methodology, input was gathered from key stakeholders in medication adherence to gain insights into barriers to supporting people with multimorbidity who are receiving polypharmacy, strategies for overcoming these barriers, and user needs and requirements to inform the design of the e-learning tool. Results: In total, 67 barriers to supporting people who are taking multiple medications were identified across 8 barrier categories. 162 options for overcoming the identified barriers were then generated. This data was used in the design of a flexible e-learning tool for continuous professional development, that has been integrated into general practice and clinical education programmes as a supportive tool. Conclusions: Using CI and SBD methodology was an effective way of facilitating collaboration, idea-generation, and the co-creation of design solutions amongst a diverse group of stakeholders. This approach could be usefully applied to address other complex healthcare-related challenges

The IS History Initiative: Looking Forward by Looking Back

After officially appointing an AIS historian and forming the AIS history task force at the beginning of 2013, the AIS supported a set of systematic efforts, named IS history initiative, to preserve and represent the IS field’s history. From the perspective of the first AIS historian, I provide some background for the IS history initiative. Then I outline a detailed strategic plan and current status of its implementation. Ultimately, the IS history initiative has three goals: (1) to collect, represent, and preserve the IS field’s history; (2) to interpret, write, disseminate, and review the IS field’s history; and (3) to discover/identify IS genealogy, roots, sources, and facets that deserve to be examined from a historical point of view. Correspondingly, the strategic plan contains three parts. Each part has several specific tasks, many of which were already completed at the time of this writing, and several are either in progress or are planned for future efforts. This paper overviews both current efforts and guiding future efforts related to preserving and representing IS history

Smart process monitoring of machining operations

The following thesis explores the possibilities to applying artificial intelligence techniques in the field of sensory monitoring in the manufacturing sector. There are several case studies considered in the research activity. The first case studies see the implementation of supervised and unsupervised neural networks to monitoring the condition of a grinding wheel. The monitoring systems have acoustic emission sensors and a piezoelectric sensor capable to measuring electromechanical impedance. The other case study is the use of the bees' algorithm to determine the wear of a tool during the cutting operations of a steel cylinder. A script permits this operation. The script converts the images into a numerical matrix and allows the bees to correctly detect tool wear