Agile software development in a context of plan-based organizations

Agile software development has increasingly been used in the last fifteen years with the goal of improving traditionally time-consuming and rather non-user friendly process of developing software code. As implications of agile development and its impact on employees are still unclear, it is important to understand the benefits, opportunities and limitations of this development or collaboration mechanism. Thus, empirical evidence with implications for decision makers in the field of corporate policy and software development is an open research field. This master thesis analyzes the potentials of agile software development and how this approach can be used to support the development processes in companies, in terms of efficiency, shorter time-to-market as well as better customer fit of the developed products or services. By exploring some of the key features of different methods and processes, the potentials and limitations of the selected approaches are analyzed and linked to recent literature insights

Agile software development in a context of plan-based organizations

Agile software development has increasingly been used in the last fifteen years with the goal of improving traditionally time-consuming and rather non-user friendly process of developing software code. As implications of agile development and its impact on employees are still unclear, it is important to understand the benefits, opportunities and limitations of this development or collaboration mechanism. Thus, empirical evidence with implications for decision makers in the field of corporate policy and software development is an open research field. This master thesis analyzes the potentials of agile software development and how this approach can be used to support the development processes in companies, in terms of efficiency, shorter time-to-market as well as better customer fit of the developed products or services. By exploring some of the key features of different methods and processes, the potentials and limitations of the selected approaches are analyzed and linked to recent literature insights

Institutional Support for E-learning Implementation in Higher Education Practice: a Case Report of University of Rijeka, Croatia

E-learning implementation in the teaching and learning process has been presented as an institutional, strategically planned operation at University of Rijeka, Croatia. Motivated by poor use of ICT in teaching and learning process, together with the Bologna process changes needed in transformation of curricula, as well as by participation in one Tempus project on e-learning implementation in higher education, the University management decided to facilitate the activities for e-learning implementation with supporting policy documents as well as through allocating budget. The implementation started practically from ground zero, with the aim of building capacities - setting up the infrastructure and environment ready for the implementation, as well as building a community of practitioners. The three-year long process has resulted with achievements that exceeded the expectations

Establishing an Institutional Framework for an E-learning Implementation – Experiences from the University of Rijeka, Croatia

Faced with the need of transforming the university structure, processes, and programs according to the Bologna reform, and in order to become more flexible and more responsive to the environment, the University of Rijeka management decided to enable e-learning implementation as an institutional, strategically planned operation. The manuscript describes the three years long process of building an implementation framework for the use of information and communication technology (ICT) in teaching and learning in the form of blended e-learning - combined classroom and online learning via e-learning platform (or learning management system, LMS). The implementation started practically from ground zero, with the goal of preparing the infrastructure and the environment for the implementation, while also building a community of educated practitioners. A few points for getting support and networking have been established within the university infrastructure: faculty e-learning teams and/or representatives taking care of the institutional promotion and deployment of e-learning and connected to the university Committee for e-learning as a policy making body, the e-learning centre, which provides e-learning platform (LMS) maintenance, development, and technical user’s support, and the IT Academy which assures delivery and development of education from general ICT to specialized e-learning programs. All the processes and activities within the network are assured for quality control. Two years after the deployment, the platform hosts more than 400 e-courses with 15,000 estudents. The survey among teachers using e-learning to perform blended courses revealed satisfaction and general acceptance, indicating the increase in effectiveness of teaching and learning processes