The strategic role of software development within the software industry of the Western Cape (South Africa)

Philosophiae Doctor - PhDAfrica’s mobile phone penetration has surpassed that of the United States of America and information communication technologies, according to the World Bank, contribute more to its gross domestic product than the global average. What has been the enabling environment for the development of software and mobile applications to sustain this information revolution? India, an affiliate of the family of economic nations consisting of Brazil, Russia, China and South Africa, has enjoyed remarkable success as a software developing country and thus could provide some guidelines in this respect. Ireland on the other hand, as a developed country, has also established a successful software industry. In this thesis, the key initiatives taken by both India and Ireland to establish their software industries were investigated. A grounded research approach, incorporating case studies of India, Ireland and South Africa, using a content analysis approach, was used to analyse cited literature about software development in these countries. India’s approach, which includes enabling policies, economic incentives, educational and human resource initiatives, attracting outsourced businesses from other countries and a combination of government and industry initiatives, has contributed to its software industry’s success. Ireland’s approach was industry initiatives, policies, software products and educational developments. Since India and South Africa share similar challenges and Ireland and South Africa have a common heritage, the initiatives by India and Ireland were juxtaposed with known initiatives in South Africa to determine what initiatives are needed for potential success of the software industry in the Western Cape region and in developing countries beyond. A better understanding of the software industry in the Western Cape Province of South Africa and the views of software practitioners in the region has been formulated. Recommendations on what needs to be done to promote the software industry in the Western Cape Province in terms of policy (local, provincial and national government), educational (school, tertiary), practice and other criteria are presented.National Research Foundation (NRF

Perspectives on improving software maintenance

Vliet, J.C. van [Promotor

An Exploration of Baby Boomer Mass Retirement Effects on Information Systems Organizations

The potential knowledge loss from Baby Boomer generation employee retirements can negatively affect information systems organizations. The purpose of this hermeneutic phenomenology study was to explore the lived experiences of the leaders and managers of information systems organizations as they tried to maintain operational continuity after Baby Boomer worker retirements. The impact of this issue was the operational continuity after the Baby Boomer worker retirement. The social impact of this issue was the knowledge loss events that might result in business loss or even bankruptcy. McElroy\u27s knowledge life cycle model was the conceptual framework for this study that included knowledge production and knowledge integration processes within a feedback loop. The lived experiences of 20 knowledgeable participants who had experienced institutional knowledge loss from retired Baby Boomer generation employees were captured through purposeful sampling. Data were collected through individual interviews using either face-to-face or a web conferencing tool such as Skype and analyzed through a modified Van Kaam. Five themes were identified: business climate, delivery practices, work processes, camaraderie, and management response. Significant attributes that added to the body of knowledge were workplace navigation, alternate focus, and outsourcing management. The results of the study may enable organizations to be better able to understand and manage the Baby Boomer knowledge loss effects and subsequently create systems to help maintain their competitive edge and avoid knowledge loss that might result in business loss or even bankruptcy

The impact of system features on call centre agents' job performance and on their service delivery

Includes bibliographical references (leaves 73-79).The study was conducted with the agents in a contact centre environment in one of the leading insurance organisations in South Africa. The framework adopted was Theoretical Framework of User Satisfaction with a Web Interface which is adapted from Herzberg's Motivation-Hygiene theory.It was found that there are several factors impacting agents' job performance and customer service, including systems performance, page loading capacity, complexity and speed of information seeking tasks, system-telephonic integration, system-emails integration, system-system integration, frequent changes of service delivery processes, and difficulties of combining products with systems training. It was found that the greatest impact of these factors was on average handling time (AHT) and 'not ready' time

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

Factors Affecting Success in Migration of Legacy Systems to Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) - Shared Experiences from Five Case Companies

Background: The term ‘legacy systems’ refers to existing Information Systems that have been deployed in the past and have been running critical business processes within an enterprise in its current IT architecture. Based on their important role, legacy systems are considered the heart of a company’s operating enterprise system and therefore are of significant business value to the company. Therefore IT architects have not neglected the value these existing assets can bring to the adoption of service-oriented architecture and have been studying different methods and factors to migrate the legacy investments into the new architecture and take advantage of their business value. However, not in all cases has the process of migrating legacy systems into SOA been successful. In fact, the level of success in adapting the legacy systems in a company with the new service-oriented architecture is dependant on some factors which vary from one legacy infrastructure and series of business processes to another. There is no quick fix to transforming the existing legacy assets which highlights the fact that considering the right factors to reach legacy system migration success in a specific company is of key value. Therefore, we hereby studied the factors influencing success of migrating these legacy investments into SOA in five different companies which include a Large European Bank, SAS, a Large globally-known Company in Sweden, Sandvik AB and a large UK Bank. Purpose: To identify factors affecting successful migration of legacy systems into SOA in five companies. Method: The main adopted research method in this study has been interviews for different case studies. Through separate interviews, critical success factors of migrating legacy systems into SOA have been collected and identified in each case. Finally collected results are analyzed and presented as the recognized factors affecting successful migration of legacy assets into SOA in five different enterprises with their own Information System infrastructures. Conclusion: The success factors identified include potential of legacy systems for being migrated, strategy of migration, SOA governance, the business process of the company, budgeting and resources, legacy architecture, close monitoring, dependence on commercial products, information architecture, testing and technical skills of the personnel. Out of all these factors, only three factors have been applied and mentioned by all the case companies in this study, which are the potential of legacy systems for being migrated into SOA, strategy of migration and SOA Governance