Leveraging Global Resources: A Process Maturity Framework for Managing Distributed Software Product Development

Distributed software development is pervasive in the software industry as companies vie to leverage global resources. However popular quality and process frameworks do not specifically address the key processes needed for managing distributed software development. We develop an evolutionary process maturity framework for globally distributed software development that incorporates 24 new key process areas essential for managing distributed software product development We test the validity of our process framework using data collected from more than sixty large, distributed enterprise product development projects. We believe we have laid new ground for software process research by extending generic quality process frameworks to address the distributed development scenario

Modeling Coordination in Offshore Software Development

Controlling and minimizing coordination costs has been shown to be an important factor to reduce overall project performance in distributed software development. In this research-in-progress paper we investigate the effects of software complexity, software integration, distributed labor division policies, learning effects on software coordination costs. Drawing from data collected on 130 software construction cycles in 34 large projects of a leading offshore development firm, we first present our analysis on how coordination costs relate to team organization factors and complexity of evolving software. We base our analytic model of coordination costs in offshore software development on these empirical relationships, and give an overview of our modeling approach. We apply our model of software coordination costs to develop resource allocation policies in the projects we studied. We consider both waterfall and iterative software development methodologies and also tandem and parallel integration schemes. Our modeling approach helps managers to develop a dynamic coordination policy to aid iterative software development in distributed development environments

Leveraging global resources: A distributed process maturity framework for software product development

Distributed software development is pervasive in the software industry as companies vie to leverage global resources. However popular quality and process frameworks do not specifically address the key processes needed for managing distributed software development. We develop an evolutionary process maturity framework for globally distributed software development that incorporates 24 new key process areas essential for managing distributed software product development We test the validity of our process framework using data collected from more than sixty large, distributed enterprise product development projects. We believe we have laid new ground for software process research by extending generic quality process frameworks to address the distributed development scenario

Orchestrating Service Innovation Using Design Moves: The Dynamics of Fit between Service and Enterprise IT Architectures

Service science perspectives highlight the central role of information technology (IT) in transforming the design and delivery of services. To discern the mechanisms through which IT impacts service innovation, we explore the dynamics of the relationship between enterprise IT and service architectures, and how these dynamics influence the performance of service innovation projects. We conducted six case studies to investigate how firms orchestrated service innovation, focusing on the design of the service architecture and its relationship to enterprise systems. We synthesize the case findings to develop a set of propositions on the antecedents and consequences of fit (or misfit) between service architecture and enterprise IT architecture. We then study how the case firms attempted to achieve congruence between the service and system architectures—both in design and in operation—by viewing the design moves they made as efforts to build and strike digital options

Does complexity deter customer‐focus?

Economic models suggest that firms use a simple cost‐benefit calculation to evaluate customer requests for new product features, but an extensive organizational literature shows the decision to implement innovation is more nuanced. We address this theoretical tension by studying how firms respond to customer requests for incremental product innovations, and how these responses change when the requested innovation is complex. Using large sample empirical analyses combined with detailed qualitative data drawn from interviews, we find considerable variance in the relationship between customer demands, complexity, and investments in incremental innovations. The qualitative study revealed the importance of organization structures, competitive pressures, and incentives for resource allocation processes. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/89508/1/947_ftp.pd

Effect of Website Characteristics on Consumer Behavior: A Multilevel Analysis

This paper uses a hierarchical linear modeling approach to examine factors that affect Website effectiveness from a customer viewpoint. Use of hierarchical linear modeling allows analysis of multilevel and cross-level interactions that have not been explicitly considered in previous research. Our preliminary analysis of online Web survey data suggests that the relative importance of different Website features may vary depending on the domain in which Websites are nested

How information management capability influences firm performance

How do information technology capabilities contribute to firm　performance? This study develops a conceptual model linking IT-enabled information management capability with three important organizational capabilities (customer management capability, process management capability, and performance management capability). We argue that these three capabilities mediate the relationship between information management capability and firm performance. We use a rare archival data set from a conglomerate business group that had adopted a model of performance excellence for organizational transformation based on the Baldrige criteria. This data set contains actual scores from high quality assessments of firms and intraorganizational units of the conglomerate, and hence provides unobtrusive measures of the key constructs to validate our conceptual model. We find that information management capability plays an important role in developing other firm capabilities for customer management, process management, and performance management. In turn, these capabilities favorably influence customer, financial, human resources, and organizational effectiveness measures of firm performance. Among key managerial implications, senior leaders must focus on creating necessary conditions for developing IT infrastructure and information management capability because they play a foundational role in building other capabilities for improved firm performance. The Baldrige model also needs some changes to more explicitly acknowledge the role and importance of information management capability so that senior leaders know where to begin in their journey toward business excellence