The Role of Project Modularity in Information Systems Development

Recent surveys have shown that ISD project success rates are particularly low. Organizations are applying a wide array of information systems development methodologies (ISDMs) -- both plan-based and agile, such as waterfall, scrum and XP -- to improve information systems development (ISD) performance. However, as ISD projects often have different characteristics such as size, scope and complexity, prior studies have been focused on helping organizations better choose an ISDM for projects. Nevertheless, prior research has not taken into consideration the notion of problem modularity of ISD projects. In this study, we utilize the NK fitness landscapes model to computationally examine via computer simulations the effects of problem modularity alongside various project environmental factors, and aim to answer the question: under various environmental factors, which ISDM should an ISD team adopt under various degree of problem modularity

Helping Data Science Students Develop Task Modularity

This paper explores the skills needed to be a data scientist. Specifically, we report on a mixed method study of a project-based data science class, where we evaluated student effectiveness with respect to dividing a project into appropriately sized modular tasks, which we termed task modularity. Our results suggest that while data science students can appreciate the value of task modularity, they struggle to achieve effective task modularity. As a first step, based our study, we identified six task decomposition best practices. However, these best practices do not fully address this gap of how to enable data science students to effectively use task modularity. We note that while computer science/information system programs typically teach modularity (e.g., the decomposition process and abstraction), and there remains a need identify a corresponding model to that used for computer science / information system students, to teach modularity to data science students

THE EFFECTS OF SPATIAL AND TEMPORAL DISPERSION ON VIRTUAL TEAMS' PERFORMANCE

Master'sMASTER OF SCIENC