We All Know How, Don’t We? On the Role of Scrum in IT-Offshoring

Part 2: Creating Value through Software DevelopmentInternational audienceOffshoring in the IT-industry involves dual interactions between a mother company and an external supplier, often viewed with an implicit perspective from the mother company. This article review general off shoring and IT offshoring literature, focusing on the proliferation of a globally available set of routines; Scrum and Agile. Two cases are studied; a small company and short process and a large mother company with a long process. The interactions of the set ups shows that global concepts like Scrum and Agile are far from a common platform. The “well known” concepts are locally shaped and the enterprises have mixed experiences

An affordance perspective of team collaboration and enforced working from home during COVID-19

COVID-19 has caused unprecedented challenges to our lives. Many governments have forced people to stay at home, leading to a radical shift from on-site to virtual collaboration for many knowledge workers. Existing remote working literature does not provide a thorough explanation of government-enforced working from home situations. Using an affordance lens, this study explores the sudden and enforced issues that COVID-19 has presented, and the technological means knowledge workers use to achieve their team collaboration goals. We interviewed 29 knowledge workers about their experiences of being required to work from home and introduced the term “enforced work from home”. This paper contributes to the affordance theory by providing an understanding of the substitution of affordances for team collaboration during COVID-19. The shifting of affordances results in positive and negative effects on team collaboration as various affordances of technology were perceived and actualised to sustain “business as usual”

Ptolemaic Metamodelling?: The Need for a Paradigm Shift

By consideration of scientific paradigm shifts, in this paper we evaluate possible parallels in the evolution of modelling, and particularly metamodelling and modelling language construction, as a basis for evaluating whether or not the time is ripe for a similar change of direction in model language development for software engineering. Having identified several inc onsistencies and paradoxes in the current orthodoxy, we then introduce a number of ideas from outside software engineering (including language use, philosophy and ontology engineering) that seem to solve many of these issues. Whether these new ideas, together, are sufficient to create a shift in mindset or whether they are simply the stimulus for others to create new and orthogonal ideas remains to be seen. We urge the modelling and metamodelling communities to search out that new orthodoxy (i.e. instigate a paradigm shift) that will, necessarily, ensure that our science will offer simpler and more satisfying solutions in the years to come.Peer Reviewe

Open Source and Open Data: Business Perspectives from the Frontline

Part 2: Lightning TalksInternational audienceOpen data initiatives on governmental data seem often to be linked to small software companies, which also use and release software under OSS licenses. This paper calls for more research to understand the similarities between open data and open source software vendors. We build a theoretical linkage between the more established OSS research and emerging research on open data in the context of small software companies

Software Modelling Languages: A Wish List

Publication of: Conference ICSE '15 37th International Conference on Software Engineering Florence/Firenze, Italy, May 16 - 24, 2015.Contemporary software engineering modelling tends to rely on general-purpose languages, such as the Unified Modeling Language. However, such languages are practice-based and seldom underpinned with a solid theory -- be it mathematical, ontological or concomitant with language use. The future of software modelling deserves research to evaluate whether a language base that is compatible with these various elements as well as being philosophically coherent offers practical advantages to software developers.Peer Reviewe

Artificial Intelligence in Information Systems: State of the Art and Research Roadmap

Many would argue that artificial intelligence (AI) is not only technology but also a paradigmatic shift in the relationship between humans and machines. Much literature assumes that AI-powered practices substantially differ from and profoundly change organizational structures, communication, affordances, and ecosystems. However, AI research remains fragmented and often lacks clarity. While the information systems (IS) discipline can play a pivotal role in AI’s emergence and use, the discipline needs a clear direction that specifies how it can contribute and its key research themes and questions. This paper draws on a professional development workshop that we organized at the 2020 International Conference on Information Systems and the discussions that followed. We summarize and synthesize how AI has impacted organizational practices over five decades and provide views from various perspectives. We identify weaknesses in the current AI literature as measured against conceptual clarity, theoretical glue, cumulative tradition, parsimony, and applicability. We also identify direct actions that the IS research community can undertake to address these issues. Finally, we propose a next-step research agenda to guide AI research in the coming years. © 2022 by the Association for Information Systems.Immediate accessThis item from the UA Faculty Publications collection is made available by the University of Arizona with support from the University of Arizona Libraries. If you have questions, please contact us at [email protected]