The Influence Of Commitment To Project Objectives In Information Technology (IT) Projects

Managing successful Information Technology (IT) projects remains a challenging and perplexing ambition in today’s complex IT environment where project deliverables continue to be brought in behind schedule, over budget, and with less functionality than originally planned.  This study delves into goal commitment theory to investigate the potential role of commitment to project objectives in improving the performance of IT projects.  The following two questions are considered in this research:  (1) How does commitment influence perceptions of project performance, and (2) What key factors predict commitment?  Survey responses were collected from professionals currently involved in IT projects and data was analyzed using structural equation modeling.  Results indicate that commitment to project objectives has a positive influence on perceptions of project performance both directly and indirectly through individuals’ propensity to report project status information.  Time pressure in the project was found to have a negative influence on commitment to project objectives, while perceptions of personal investment had a positive effect on commitment to project objectives.  Time pressure also had a positive influence on perceptions of personal investment and a negative influence on perceptions of project performance.  Implications for research and practice are discussed

Personality And IT Project Team Makeup

IT project success continues to present major problems for organizations.  The CHAOS survey results for 2004 report that only 29% of IT projects were considered successful, 53% were challenged, and 18% were considered failures.  Many of these problems are avoidable and it is important to understand the various success factors associated with IT projects.  This study provides insight into improving these inadequate IT project outcomes by investigating the influence of IT project team member personality traits on project success factors. The “Big Five” factor model of personality is utilized to measure team member personality characteristics.  Relationships between the Big Five personality traits and the project success factors of “on schedule” and “quality” are evaluated.  Results indicate the personality trait of extroversion is positively associated with keeping the project on schedule, while the trait of openness to experience is negatively associated with keeping the project on schedule.  In addition, conscientiousness was found to have a positive influence on project quality.  Agreeableness was not evaluated and no significant relationship was found between emotional stability and project success

The Influence of Participants' Personality on Quantitative and Qualitative Metrics in Usability Testing

We present the results of a usability study with 35 participants investigating the influence of personality on various metrics used in usability engineering. We conduct a task based usability test with a website integrating tasks of various difficulty and measure performance metrics like task completion rate and time on task. We also use standard questionnaire based usability metrics like the System Usability Scale. Furthermore, we gather qualitative data via open-ended questions and count the number of words as well as the mentions of positive and negative aspects. We measure personality using the well-known big five model, also often referred to as OCEAN model (openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, neuroticism) and three basic needs (need for influence and power, need for recognition and performance, need for security and tranquility). We analyze the relationship between personality and usability metrics via correlations and regression models. We identify multiple significant results and show that in our study the personality correlated with some of the usability metrics we inspected. Extraversion and the need for influence and power show the most and strongest correlations. Furthermore, we also show that regression models based on personality traits can explain up to 37% of the variance in usability metrics. The results have implications for the improvement of the selection process of usability test participants as well as for the interpretation of test results. We discuss these implications and give an outlook on further research in this area

The Application of Writing Across the Curriculum (WAC) Techniques in a Systems Analysis & Design Flipped Classroom 35. Themed Learning with Music and Technology 45. Assessing Faculty Perceptions and Techniques to Combat Academic Dishonesty in Online Cours

The Information Systems Education Journal (ISEDJ) is a double-blind peer-reviewed academic journal published reviewed published by ISCAP, Information Systems and Computing Academic Professionals. The first year of publication was 2003. ISEDJ is published online (http://isedj.org). Our sister publication, the Proceedings of EDSIGCon (http://www.edsigcon.org) features all papers, panels, workshops, and presentations from the conference. The journal acceptance review process involves a minimum of three double-blind peer reviews, where both the reviewer is not aware of the identities of the authors and the authors are not aware of the identities of the reviewers. The initial reviews happen before the conference. At that point papers are divided into award papers (top 15%), other journal papers (top 30%), unsettled papers, and non-journal papers. The unsettled papers are subjected to a second round of blind peer review to establish whether they will be accepted to the journal or not. Those papers that are deemed of sufficient quality are accepted for publication in the ISEDJ journal. Currently the target acceptance rate for the journal is under 40%. Information Systems Education Journal is pleased to be listed in the 1st Edition of Cabell's Directory of Publishing Opportunities in Educational Technology and Library Science, in both the electronic and printed editions. Questions should be addressed to the editor at [email protected] or the publisher at [email protected]. Special thanks to members of AITP-EDSIG who perform the editorial and review processes for ISEDJ. AITP Education Special Interest Group (EDSIG) Board of Directors Abstract Research utilizing the Theory of Planned Behavior to understand behavior should first elicit beliefs about the phenomenon from the target population. In order to understand the reasons why students choose to major or not major in Management Information Systems (MIS), we elicited beliefs from 136 students attending university in the United States and in Zambia. We employed a questionnaire with open-ended questions to elicit beliefs about majoring in MIS. The gender split of study participants was 52%-48% with a female majority and their ages ranged from 19 to 35. Using content analysis of the generated qualitative data, we identified 11, 5 and 9 categories of behavioral, normative and control beliefs respectively. The results of our study indicate that student beliefs about the MIS major and profession have changed over the past decade; students now favorably perceive the MIS job market and attach importance to the opinions of industry professionals when making the decision to major in MIS. Analysis of the ranked elicited beliefs shows that most students believe that the MIS degree grants them competitive advantage in the employment marketplace