Agile Market Engineering: Bridging the gap between business concepts and running markets

The agile market engineering process model (AMEP) is built on the insight, that market design and development is a wicked problem. Electronic markets are too complex to be completely designed upfront. Instead, AMEP tries to bridge the gap between theoretic market design and practical electronic market platform development using an agile, iterative approach that relies on early customer feedback and continuous improvement. The AMEP model is complemented by several supporting software artifacts

An evaluation of the challenges of Multilingualism in Data Warehouse development

In this paper we discuss Business Intelligence and define what is meant by support for Multilingualism in a Business Intelligence reporting context. We identify support for Multilingualism as a challenging issue which has implications for data warehouse design and reporting performance. Data warehouses are a core component of most Business Intelligence systems and the star schema is the approach most widely used to develop data warehouses and dimensional Data Marts. We discuss the way in which Multilingualism can be supported in the Star Schema and identify that current approaches have serious limitations which include data redundancy and data manipulation, performance and maintenance issues. We propose a new approach to enable the optimal application of multilingualism in Business Intelligence. The proposed approach was found to produce satisfactory results when used in a proof-of-concept environment. Future work will include testing the approach in an enterprise environmen

Improving Reuse of Distributed Transaction Software with Transaction-Aware Aspects

Implementing crosscutting concerns for transactions is difficult, even using Aspect-Oriented Programming Languages (AOPLs) such as AspectJ. Many of these challenges arise because the context of a transaction-related crosscutting concern consists of loosely-coupled abstractions like dynamically-generated identifiers, timestamps, and tentative value sets of distributed resources. Current AOPLs do not provide joinpoints and pointcuts for weaving advice into high-level abstractions or contexts, like transaction contexts. Other challenges stem from the essential complexity in the nature of the data, operations on the data, or the volume of data, and accidental complexity comes from the way that the problem is being solved, even using common transaction frameworks. This dissertation describes an extension to AspectJ, called TransJ, with which developers can implement transaction-related crosscutting concerns in cohesive and loosely-coupled aspects. It also presents a preliminary experiment that provides evidence of improvement in reusability without sacrificing the performance of applications requiring essential transactions. This empirical study is conducted using the extended-quality model for transactional application to define measurements on the transaction software systems. This quality model defines three goals: the first relates to code quality (in terms of its reusability); the second to software performance; and the third concerns software development efficiency. Results from this study show that TransJ can improve the reusability while maintaining performance of TransJ applications requiring transaction for all eight areas addressed by the hypotheses: better encapsulation and separation of concern; loose Coupling, higher-cohesion and less tangling; improving obliviousness; preserving the software efficiency; improving extensibility; and hasten the development process

ERP implementation methodologies and frameworks: a literature review

Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) implementation is a complex and vibrant process, one that involves a combination of technological and organizational interactions. Often an ERP implementation project is the single largest IT project that an organization has ever launched and requires a mutual fit of system and organization. Also the concept of an ERP implementation supporting business processes across many different departments is not a generic, rigid and uniform concept and depends on variety of factors. As a result, the issues addressing the ERP implementation process have been one of the major concerns in industry. Therefore ERP implementation receives attention from practitioners and scholars and both, business as well as academic literature is abundant and not always very conclusive or coherent. However, research on ERP systems so far has been mainly focused on diffusion, use and impact issues. Less attention has been given to the methods used during the configuration and the implementation of ERP systems, even though they are commonly used in practice, they still remain largely unexplored and undocumented in Information Systems research. So, the academic relevance of this research is the contribution to the existing body of scientific knowledge. An annotated brief literature review is done in order to evaluate the current state of the existing academic literature. The purpose is to present a systematic overview of relevant ERP implementation methodologies and frameworks as a desire for achieving a better taxonomy of ERP implementation methodologies. This paper is useful to researchers who are interested in ERP implementation methodologies and frameworks. Results will serve as an input for a classification of the existing ERP implementation methodologies and frameworks. Also, this paper aims also at the professional ERP community involved in the process of ERP implementation by promoting a better understanding of ERP implementation methodologies and frameworks, its variety and history

Sustainable Business Models

The dynamically changing world economy, in an era of intensive development and globalization, creates new needs in both the theoretical models of management and in the practical discussion related to the perception of business. Because of new economic phenomena related to the crisis, there is a need for the design and operationalization of innovative business models for companies. Due to the fact that in times of crisis, the principles of strategic balance are particularly important; these business models can be sustainable business models. Moreover, it is essential to skillfully use different methods and concepts of management to ensure the continuity of business. It seems that sustainable business models, in their essence, can support companies' effectiveness and contribute to their stable, sustainable functioning in the difficult, ever-changing market. This Special Issue aims to discuss the key mechanisms concerning the design and operationalization of sustainable business models, from a strategic perspective. We invite you to contribute to this Issue by submitting comprehensive reviews, case studies, or research articles. Papers selected for this Special Issue are subject to a rigorous peer review procedure, with the aim of rapid and wide dissemination of research results, developments, and applications

Foundational Practices of Online Writing Instruction

This is an Open Textbook available through the Open Textbook Library: https://open.umn.edu/opentextbooks/textbooks/foundational-practices-of-online-writing-instruction. Reviews are available there. Foundational Practices in Online Writing Instruction (OWI) addresses the questions and decisions that administrators and instructors most need to consider when developing online writing programs and courses. Written by experts in the field (members of the Conference on College Composition and Communication Committee for Effective Practices in OWI and other experts and stakeholders).... The editors believe that the field of writing studies is on a trajectory in which most courses will be mediated online to various degrees; therefore the principles detailed in this collection may become the basis for future writing instruction practices. ... [Amazon.com]https://digitalcommons.odu.edu/english_books/1017/thumbnail.jp

An Activity Theory-based Architecture To Enhance Context-aware Collaboration In Software Development In The Cloud

This research study reviews collaborative software development and assesses the impact of cloud computing in this domain. This is with a view towards identifying challenges to effective context-aware collaboration, as well as opportunities, risks, and potential benefits that could come from a well-defined structured leverage of cloud capabilities. Findings from systematic review of literature indicate that adoption of cloud computing played a significant part in bringing about trends such as: movement of traditional applications and processes to the cloud; cloud development environments; increased distribution in teams and resources; increased diversity in requirements; changes in how software is developed, tested, deployed, accessed, and maintained. These trends have in turn introduced factors such as: massive scale; additional layers of complexity in abstraction levels, entity characteristics and entity relationships within the development process. This additional layer of complexity translates into increase in contexts i.e., information that can be used to characterize states of entities. This is in addition to existing traditional complexity i.e., measure of proportionality of activities and tasks within the process. Some notable efforts towards improving collaboration in software development in the cloud include: transitioning development environments, tools and teams to the cloud; provision of code repositories and version control functionality to support collaboration between developers; provision of platforms to enhance collaboration between developers and end-users in early stages of the process via registered project campaigns and targeted questionnaires; provision of platforms with integrated social networking tools. However, an essential missing piece for more effective context-aware collaboration in the process is, the need for ways of addressing resultant complexity from cloud adoption and capturing actionable contexts. Capturing and communicating contextual information can help improve awareness and understanding and facilitate role-based coordination of distributed team members including users, and not just developers. This would ensure all stakeholders are always on the same page even if not in same location, across all phases of development. The main aim of this research study is to apply a new architecture framework underpinned by the right theoretical foundations, capable of leveraging cloud capabilities, harnessing contexts and addressing complexity to enhance context-aware collaboration in cloud-based software development. To achieve this aim, knowledge gleaned from the systematic literature review and the gap-impact analysis was thematized and synthesized to provide optimal recommendations to serve as roadmap guide for the development and evaluation carried out, and subsequent knowledge contributions. Key dimensions were adapted, along with development of classifications for approaches to enhancing collaboration in software development in the cloud. The key dimensions created were for - assessing collaboration needs; definition of context data and levels; collecting, categorizing, analysing, and applying contextual information to tasks, activities, and stages within software development in the cloud. These dimensions and classifications are useful for identification of reliable ways of measuring collaboration and success factors, as well as managing complexity and ensuring synchronous regularity of process and understanding within the development process in the cloud. A formal process was proposed to aid selection of an appropriate theoretical basis and assembling of a theoretical framework and methodology to underpin the architecture for enhancing context-aware collaboration in cloud-based software development. This was necessary due to the current lack of a de-facto architecture method for cloud-based software development. An activity theory-based architecture has been designed and developed, along with a Proof-of-Concept (POC) implementation that leverages cloud capabilities, for evaluation of the architecture. This architecture presents a novel approach for enhancing collaboration in software development in the cloud due to its underlying activity theory-based tenets that considers ‘activity’ as the unit of analysis, and ideal for activity systems and ease of identification of congruencies and contradictions present or capable impacting related components of the activity system and its ecosystem. The conclusions for this research study, limitations and future research directions have been discussed at the end of this thesis work

Business process modelling in ERP implementation literature review

Business processes are the backbone of any Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) implementation. Business process modelling (BPM) has become essential for modern, process driven enterprises due to the vibrant business environments. As a consequence enterprises are dealing with a substantial rate of organizational and business processes change. Business process modelling enables a common understanding and analysis of the business processes, which is the first step in every ERP implementation methodology (blueprint phase). In order to represent enterprise processes models in an accurate manner, it is paramount to choose a right business process modeling technique and tool. The problem of many ERP projects rated as unsuccessful is directly connected to a lack of use of business process models and notations during the blueprint phase. Also, blueprint implementation phase is crucial in order to fit planned processes in an organization with processes implemented in the solution. However, business analysts and ERP implementation professionals have substantial difficulties to navigate through a large number of theoretical models and representational notations that have been proposed for business process modeling (BPM). As the availability of different business process modeling references is huge, it is time consuming to make review and classification of all modeling techniques. Therefor, in reality majority of ERP implementations blueprint documents have no business process modeling included in generating blueprint documents. Choosing the right model comprise the purpose of the analysis and acquaintance of the available process modelling techniques and tools. The number of references on business modelling is quit large, so it is very hard to make a decision which modeling notation or technique to use. The main purpose of this paper is to make a review of business process modelling literature and describe the key process modelling techniques. The focus will be on all business process modeling that could be used in ERP implementations, specifically during the blueprint phase of the implementation process. Detailed review of BPM (Business process modeling) theoretical models and representational notations, should assist decision makers and ERP integrators in comparatively evaluating and selecting suitable modeling approaches