Success Factors in IT-Projects to Provide Customer Value Propositions

Rising external competition and cost-pressures compel internal service providers to re-define their customer- service approach. Providing value propositions to the intra-firm end-users instead of provisioning technical resources becomes a necessity to facilitate transparency in costs and customer satisfaction. With that, the complexity of IT projects, particularly international ones, rises and changes in regards to impacts of inter-social and human factors. This paper uses a cross-case study method based on five cases to identify critical success factors for achieving IT-project success and the provision of the needed value propositions. Our analysis found that seven major factors are essential for the project success when coupled with a clear customer-oriented value proposition: one of the most important ones is to understand the customer’s business and with it to identify the end-user’s requirements. Furthermore, a close project collaboration, process alignment and trustful, clear communication as well the right choice of personnel emerge as important factors. Inter-social factors like support of the top-management and the early identification of stakeholders are equally crucial. Top management support acts as enabler for all these success factors. With the insight into requirements and impacts of each success factor, this cross-case study poses as operational guidance to achieve value propositions in IT-projects

Advances in Automated Driving Systems

Electrification, automation of vehicle control, digitalization and new mobility are the mega-trends in automotive engineering, and they are strongly connected. While many demonstrations for highly automated vehicles have been made worldwide, many challenges remain in bringing automated vehicles to the market for private and commercial use. The main challenges are as follows: reliable machine perception; accepted standards for vehicle-type approval and homologation; verification and validation of the functional safety, especially at SAE level 3+ systems; legal and ethical implications; acceptance of vehicle automation by occupants and society; interaction between automated and human-controlled vehicles in mixed traffic; human–machine interaction and usability; manipulation, misuse and cyber-security; the system costs of hard- and software and development efforts. This Special Issue was prepared in the years 2021 and 2022 and includes 15 papers with original research related to recent advances in the aforementioned challenges. The topics of this Special Issue cover: Machine perception for SAE L3+ driving automation; Trajectory planning and decision-making in complex traffic situations; X-by-Wire system components; Verification and validation of SAE L3+ systems; Misuse, manipulation and cybersecurity; Human–machine interactions, driver monitoring and driver-intention recognition; Road infrastructure measures for the introduction of SAE L3+ systems; Solutions for interactions between human- and machine-controlled vehicles in mixed traffic

A Digital Game Maturity Model

Game development is an interdisciplinary concept that embraces artistic, software engineering, management, and business disciplines. Game development is considered as one of the most complex tasks in software engineering. Hence, for successful development of good-quality games, the game developers must consider and explore all related dimensions as well as discussing them with the stakeholders involved. This research facilitates a better understanding of important dimensions of digital game development methodology. The increased popularity of digital games, the challenges faced by game development organizations in developing quality games, and severe competition in the digital game industry demand a game development process maturity assessment. Consequently, this study presents a Digital Game Maturity Model to evaluate the current development methodology in an organization. The objective is first to identify key factors in the game development process, then to classify these factors into target groups, and eventually to use this grouping as a theoretical basis for proposing a maturity model for digital game development. In doing so, the research focuses on three major stakeholders in game development: developers, consumers, and business management. The framework of the proposed model consists of assessment questionnaires made up of key identified factors from three empirical studies, a performance scale, and a rating method. The main goal of the questionnaires is to collect information about current processes and practices. This research contributes towards formulating a comprehensive and unified strategy for game development process maturity assessment. The proposed model was evaluated with two case studies from the digital game industry

Eine Analyse der Literatur zur Referenzmodellierung im Geschäftsprozessmanagement unter Berücksichtigung quantitativer Methoden

Im Geschäftsprozessmanagement nimmt die Referenzmodellierung bei der Gestaltung von Geschäftsprozessen eine große Bedeutung ein, da auf bereits existierende Modelle zurückgegriffen werden kann. So kann Zeit für die Entwicklung der Prozesse eingespart und von bereits etabliertem Wissen profitiert werden. Die vorliegende Masterarbeit analysiert die Literatur im Bereich der Referenzmodellierung im Geschäftsprozessmanagement unter Berücksichtigung quantitativer Methoden. Es werden insbesondere die Forschungsrichtungen bzw. Themenbereiche, Entwicklungen und der aktuelle Stand der Literatur in diesem Bereich ermittelt. Zunächst werden deutsch- und englischsprachige Artikel nach bestimmten Kriterien ausgewählt. Anschließend folgt eine quantitativ orientierte Analyse der Literatur. Dabei kommt die Latente Semantische Analyse zum Einsatz, mit deren Hilfe Themenbereiche ermittelt werden und die einzelnen Beiträge den ermittelten Themenbereichen zugeordnet werden können. Darüber hinaus wird die Entwicklung der Anzahl der Artikel in den Themenbereichen im Zeitverlauf betrachtet und auf Unterschiede zwischen der deutsch- und englischsprachigen Literatur eingegangen. In der darauf folgenden qualitativ orientierten Analyse werden die Artikel der einzelnen Themenbereiche inhaltlich analysiert und der aktuelle Stand der Forschung dargestellt. Nicht zuletzt werden die Ergebnisse der qualitativen Analyse in Bezug zu den Ergebnissen der quantitativen Analyse gesetzt

Handbook of Easy Languages in Europe

The Handbook of Easy Languages in Europe describes what Easy Language is and how it is used in European countries. It demonstrates the great diversity of actors, instruments and outcomes related to Easy Language throughout Europe. All people, despite their limitations, have an equal right to information, inclusion, and social participation. This results in requirements for understandable language. The notion of Easy Language refers to modified forms of standard languages that aim to facilitate reading and language comprehension. This handbook describes the historical background, the principles and the practices of Easy Language in 21 European countries. Its topics include terminological definitions, legal status, stakeholders, target groups, guidelines, practical outcomes, education, research, and a reflection on future perspectives related to Easy Language in each country. Written in an academic yet interesting and understandable style, this Handbook of Easy Languages in Europe aims to find a wide audience

Handbook of Easy Languages in Europe

The Handbook of Easy Languages in Europe describes what Easy Language is and how it is used in European countries. It demonstrates the great diversity of actors, instruments and outcomes related to Easy Language throughout Europe. All people, despite their limitations, have an equal right to information, inclusion, and social participation. This results in requirements for understandable language. The notion of Easy Language refers to modified forms of standard languages that aim to facilitate reading and language comprehension. This handbook describes the historical background, the principles and the practices of Easy Language in 21 European countries. Its topics include terminological definitions, legal status, stakeholders, target groups, guidelines, practical outcomes, education, research, and a reflection on future perspectives related to Easy Language in each country. Written in an academic yet interesting and understandable style, this Handbook of Easy Languages in Europe aims to find a wide audience

New models and patterns for traceability

Includes bibliographical references.Traceability is a critical software engineering practice that manages activities across the product development lifecycle. It is the discipline of getting an entire organisation to work together to build better quality products. Traceability is also about relationships between traceability items, the management of change and requires good communication between personnel on matters that impact the system in any way. At the start of the 21st Century it is evident that there was a proliferation in new traceability research promoting techniques from a number of emerging research communities. However, some researchers still report that there are still many problems, in particular the lack of empirical data from small, medium and large organisations. In this study we address this shortcoming by performing two empirical studies. Firstly, we carry out a four year case study investigating traceability in a large multinational that develops complex enterprise systems. Ericsson's is a world leader in the development of large telecom's systems and is renowned for their mature development processes, tools and highly skilled staff. We examine the state of the art at Ericsson and the factors that influence traceability, paying particular attention to how these factors change during the study and the impact that these changes have on the traceability practices. Secondly, we execute an industrial survey across nineteen corporations to further our understanding of traceability in small and medium sized organisations. Using this empirical data as the major design inputs, we design and test a Traceability Framework consisting of three solution components namely, a TRAceability Model (TRAM), a TRAceability Process (TRAP) and Traceability Patterns. The TRAceability Model (TRAM) consists of semantic models, designed using a layered approach, with each layer presenting traceability semantics from different user perspectives. The TRAceability Process (TRAP) consists of process models also utilising a layered approach but in this case capturing process elements that can be used in the creation of a traceability process in a variety of different contexts. At the lowest layer the models represent the actual traceability situation in a project at Ericsson. While patterns are a widely accepted method for describing best practices and recurring problems in many aspects of software development, they have not been applied to the field of traceability. Structural patterns emerged from the semantic and process models. Furthermore, we utilise a pre-defined pattern template for formalising the findings of the empirical data and communicating the outcomes to different users. The three components together promote better communication, reusability and understandability of traceability concepts and practices

Impact estimation: IT priority decisions

Given resource constraints, prioritization is a fundamental process within systems engineering to decide what to implement. However, there is little guidance about this process and existing IT prioritization methods have several problems, including failing to adequately cater for stakeholder value. In response to these issues, this research proposes an extension to an existing prioritization method, Impact Estimation (IE) to create Value Impact Estimation (VIE). VIE extends IE to cater for multiple stakeholder viewpoints and to move towards better capture of explicit stakeholder value. The use of metrics offers VIE the means of expressing stakeholder value that relates directly to real world data and so is informative to stakeholders and decision makers. Having been derived from prioritization factors found in the literature, stakeholder value has been developed into a multi-dimensional, composite concept, associated with other fundamental system concepts: objectives, requirements, designs, increment plans, increment deliverables and system contexts. VIE supports the prioritization process by showing where the stakeholder value resides for the proposed system changes. The prioritization method was proven to work by exposing it to three live projects, which served as case studies to this research. The use of the extended prioritization method was seen as very beneficial. Based on the three case studies, it is possible to say that the method produces two major benefits: the calculation of the stakeholder value to cost ratios (a form of ROI) and the system understanding gained through creating the VIE table