The Impact of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act on IT Project Management: A Case Study

In 2002, the Sarbanes-Oxley Act was passed into law requiring all U.S. based, publicly traded companies to report on the status of their internal controls governing the reporting of financial information. Because of the close relationship between financial reporting and IT, the requirements of the Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) Act has also greatly impacted IT Governance and the way IT projects are managed. This study is investigating the impact of SOX on IT Project Management within a large corporation. The study is evaluating three areas of impact: 1) The introduction and formalization of internal controls as defined by the COBIT framework, 2) The positive and negative effects on IT project implementation, and 3) The additional costs to an IT project to maintain compliance to the SOX requirement. In addition, the study also considers if the introduction of internal controls has impacted the organization’s development maturity when evaluated against standard maturity models

The Impact of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act on IT Project Management

This case study investigated the impact of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX) on IT project management within a large, nationwide retail corporation. Using the teleological motor as a framework to evaluate process change, this study observed three primary impacts the SOX mandates had on IT project management: (1) an increase in project management formalization, (2) an increase in project duration, and (3) the need to support project management and audit activities with project management software. The study also observed three secondary effects resulting from the changes made to IT project management practices to support SOX: (1) an increase in process maturity, (2) an increase in the size of the IT staff, and (3) a breaking down of larger projects into more, smaller projects. This dual iteration of the teleological cycle appeared to be a natural action / reaction process to the changes resulting from SOX requirements

Using Real-World Team Projects: A Pedagogical Framework

The use of team projects in a program capstone course for computer science or information systems majors has been a popular method for reinforcing and assessing program learning objectives for students in their final semester. Using real-world group projects as a learning activity is an excellent pedagogical approach in helping students develop critical thinking, team work, real-world problem solving, and communication skills. However, real-world group projects also provide many challenges to both the instructor and students alike. Instructors or students must find real-world projects appropriate for the learning objectives in the course. Instructors must determine how to provide teams with appropriate learning activities and provide effective feedback to reinforce learning objectives while fairly assessing project deliverables to individual team members. Students must find a common time to work together and learn to appropriately delegate project activities so each student fairly participates in the project. Finally, real-world projects have the real risk of failing due to circumstances outside the control of the instructor and students. There have been papers presented in the past describing methods to address these challenges and successfully use real-world team projects. This presentation gives a summary of these methods and presents a successful and practical approach that has been used for the past seven years in an information technology program capstone course. This framework is based on traditional project management methodologies which allow students the opportunity to successfully meet learning objectives even if the project success factors are not met

The Relationship Between Trauma Exposure and College Student Adjustment: Factors of Resilience as a Mediator

Adjustment to college is an important developmental task for students entering institutions of higher education. More than half of students who enter college report exposure to a potentially traumatic event (PTE), with many students reporting multiple event exposure (Banyard & Cantor, 2004). Many students adjust well to college despite experiencing PTEs, suggesting that certain factors may mitigate the effects of exposure. This study utilized archival data to explore the relationship between the type of PTE, accumulation of PTEs, underlying factors of resilience, and adjustment to college in a national sample of treatment-seeking college students. The data were analyzed using hierarchical regression and multivariate analysis of covariance (MANCOVA). The results of the regression analyses indicated that type and accumulation of PTE were associated with increased adjustment difficulties when controlling for demographic variables. The presence of factors of resilience was predictive of lower adjustment difficulties following PTE exposure. The results of the MANCOVA analyses indicated the type of PTE was predictive of levels of social support. The findings of this study may inform theories of adjustment, higher education policy and clinical practice

Assessment of Energetic Heterogeneity of Reversed-Phase Surfaces Using Excess Adsorption Isotherms for HPLC Column Characterization

This research is to explore a more general column categorization method using the test attributes in alignment with the common mobile phase components. As we know, the primary driving force for solute retention on a reversed-phase surface is hydrophobic interaction, thus hydrophobicity of the column will directly affect the analyte retention. This research describes a method to determine the column hydrophobicity by the ratio of adsorbed acetonitrile and methanol to water on the column surface using excess adsorption isotherm estimation. An excess adsorption isotherm for a binary mobile phase system represents a competitive interaction of both solvent components with the adsorption sites. In the presence of two distinct types of adsorption sites on the surface, an overall isotherm may be represented as a superposition of two isotherms on the different types of surfaces. Assuming complete independence of surface energy on each type of adsorption site, it is possible to mathematically describe this superposition as a sum of two independent isotherms, where coefficient of each individual term represents a relative amount of surface that is responsible for a particular interaction

Examining the Role of the Catholic Environment in Students’ Search for Meaning

Emerging research illustrates that undergraduate students are searching for meaning in their lives, yet postsecondary institutions generally do little to support them in exploring such issues (Astin et al., 2005b). We speculated that religiously affiliated institutions might offer guidance on supporting students’ spiritual development, and thus examined students in the context of Catholic postsecondary environments, focusing on whether the students’ religious affiliations and perceptions of their institution as supporting their spiritual development affected their search for meaning. Further, we examined the aspects of the environment that strengthened students’ perceptions of their college environment as closely aligned with the Catholic mission, and thus supportive of their spiritual development. We discuss implications for secular and religious institutions

Boundary graph grammars with dynamic edge relabeling

AbstractMost NLC-like graph grammars generate node-labeled graphs. As one of the exceptions, eNCE graph grammars generate graphs with edge labels as well. We investigate this type of graph grammar and show that the use of edge labels (together with the NCE feature) is responsible for some new properties. Especially boundary eNCE (B-eNCE) grammars are considered. First, although eNCE grammars have the context-sensitive feature of “blocking edges,” we show that B-eNCE grammars do not. Second, we show the existence of a Chomsky normal form and a Greibach normal form for B-eNCE grammars. Third, the boundary eNCE languages are characterized in terms of regular tree and string languages. Fourth, we prove that the class of (boundary) eNCE languages properly contains the closure of the class of (boundary) NLC languages under node relabelings. Analogous results are shown for linear eNCE grammars