On the Design of a Knowledge Management System for Incremental Process Improvement for Software Product Management

Incremental software process improvement deals with the challenges of step-wise process improvement in a time where resources are scarce and many organizations are struggling with the challenges of effective management of software products. Effective knowledge sharing and incremental approaches are essential for improving the success rate of process improvement efforts. Recently, the authors' have worked on the development of a knowledge management system, the Online Method Engine, that enables incremental, situational process improvement in the field of software product management. This has resulted in an initial system design. The authors describe the findings from seven exploratory case studies on incremental process improvement. The lessons learned during these case studies are used to refine the design of the Online Method Engine. Copyright © 2012, IGI Global

Design Science Research

In this introductory piece to the special issue on design science research (DSR) in information systems, the authors probe the past research in DSR, introduce the papers in the special issue, discuss their contributions to the field, and conclude the paper by highlighting some potential directions for future research. To provide a good overview of the research domain, the authors review the key research approaches (or processes) that have been proposed and identify the concrete products of DSR that come in the form of artifacts. As the production of artifact is only part of the DSR process, the authors discuss the role of theorizing about these results and propose avenues for future design-oriented research. It is the authors' strong belief that DSR should be at the heart of information systems discipline because it invites people to research the issues surrounding the development and organizational implementation of new systems

The Integration of Systems Dynamics and Balanced Scorecards in Strategic Healthcare Policy Simulation Analysis

This paper uses simulation modelling techniques and presents summarized model outputs using the balanced scorecard approach. The simulation models have been formulated with the use of empirical health, clinical and financial data extracted from clinical data warehouses of a healthcare group. By emphasising the impact of strategic financial and clinical performance measures on healthcare institutions, it is argued that hospitals, in particular, need to re-focus cost-cutting efforts in areas that do not impact clinicians, patient satisfaction or quality of care. The authors have added a real time component to business activity monitoring with the executive dashboards shown as graphs in this paper. This study demonstrates that it is possible to understand health policy interactions and improve hospital performance metrics through evaluation using balanced scorecards and normalized output data. Evidence from this research shows that the hospital executives involved were enthusiastic about the visual interactive interface that provides the transparency needed to isolate policy experimentation from complex model structures that map strategic behaviour