Understanding the Curriculum Gap in Systems Analysis and Design: An Exploratory Study

This research in progress describes an exploratory study that investigates the Systems Analysis and Design (SA&D) skills, knowledge, and practices that are considered most important by industry practitioners and compares with the course content, skills, and coverage in a typical undergraduate SA&D course. We present preliminary results and analysis of semi-structured interviews conducted with industry practitioners and outline the next steps. We believe that the final findings of this study should lead to a better understanding of the gap between what is currently taught in a typical SA&D course and what is considered as important by practitioners. It should assist educators in structuring their SA&D course to be more aligned with the contemporary needs of the industry

Understanding the Role of Business Analysts in Digital Transformation: A Multivocal Literature Review

In recent years, Digital Transformation (DT) has emerged as an important phenomenon in both academic and practitioner literature. Organisations are striving to transform to meet the dynamic needs and expectations of customers as social, mobile, and digital technologies continue to transform people’s lives. While the significance of business analysts in bridging the business/information technology and client-developer gap has been recognised in the industry, there has been limited research into the skills and practices employed by business analysts. In particular, there is lack of empirical research in understanding the relevance and significance of the role of business analysts in DT. This instigated the need for a Multivocal Literature Review (MLR) - we adopted the context, content, process, and outcomes framework to review both peer-reviewed and a selection of grey literature to investigate the skills, practices, and services employed by business analysts in DT. Our findings reveal that business analysts must build a skill set composed of deep business knowledge, collaboration and facilitation skills, agile methods and continuous learning to effectively meet expectations of DT initiatives

IO Vision – an integrated system to support the visually impaired

Security questions are one of the techniques used to recover passwords. The main limitation of security questions is that users find strong answers difficult to remember. This leads users to trade-off security for the convenience of an improved memorability. Previous research found that increased fun and enjoyment can lead to an enhanced memorability, which provides a better learning experience. Hence, we empirically investigate whether a serious game has the potential of improving the memorability of strong answers to security questions. For our serious game, we adopted the popular “4 Pics 1 word” mobile game because of its use of pictures and cues, which psychology research found to be important to help with memorability. Our findings indicate that the proposed serious game could potentially improve the memorability of answers to security questions. This potential improvement in memorability, could eventually help reduce the trade-off between usability and security in fall-back authentication

Agile Usage: Refining a Theoretical Model

Agile methodologies (AM), which emphasize iterative and incremental development with just-in-time processes and documentation, have been adopted by an increasing number of organisations. Despite this progress there is lack of clarity on their effective use after initial adoption. While there is much research on the use of various agile methods and practices, there is very limited understanding on the critical factors that impact their continued and effective usage. To address this gap, an integrated model called the Agile Usage Model (AUM) was developed, by coalescing insights from organisational level Information Systems implementation, traditional innovation diffusion models, and post-adoptive agile usage. The objective of this study is to use multiple data collection methods to further evaluate and refine the AUM. The final refined conceptual model of Agile Usage is presented along with implications for research and practice

Coordination in Distributed Agile Software Development: Insights from a COTS-based Case Study

This study investigates the practices of a development team that uses an Agile system of working where some team members and stakeholders were distributed geographically and temporally. The focus of the investigation was to study the dependencies and related coordination activities as the team collaborated on their work, which was the installation and customization of a complex Commercial Off-The-Shelf (COTS) software system in this case. We collected data by interviewing eight key team members and observing three team meetings over a 2-month period. We made detailed field notes and used thematic analysis to identify the key globally distributed dependencies in the development process. We identify and discuss the coordination mechanisms and tools that address these dependencies, along with the main coordination challenges. We conclude by discussing some ideas and lessons learned by the participants which we expect to be useful for other teams in a similar context

A Safe Subarachnoid Block in Idiopathic Thrombocytopenic Purpura with Severe Thrombocytopenia

BACKGROUND: Idiopathic thrombocytopenic purpura (ITP) still presents particular challenges for anesthetists, especially when the patient needs surgery. Preparing a patient with ITP in elective surgery is an advantage for anesthetists since it gives us time to prepare the patient properly. CASE REPORT: We present a case of a 36-year-old woman scheduled for an elective laparotomy due to an ovarian cyst. She had been diagnosed with ITP in 2015 and was admitted to the intensive care unit (ICU) for post-operative bleeding. CONCLUSION: Individual experience in elective surgery should lead anesthetists to a better judgment in emergency cases with ITP

Coordination in Distributed Agile Software Development: A Systematic Review

In order to decrease the consumer return transaction cost, e-commerce platform Alibaba invited an insurance company to develop a new type of insurance to compensate consumers for returns, which is called return-freight insurance. The new insurance has resulted in online return\u27s explosive growth. However, some online retailers still choose to offer complimentary return-freight insurance to signal their products\u27 quality. Using signaling theory, we build a conceptual economic model to explore what kind of online retailer should adopt this strategy under incomplete information. Based on the fact that each product\u27s return probability, profit, and insurance compensation are different, our main results show the separating equilibria, where only high-quality online retailers will offer complimentary return-freight insurance. Interestingly, return-freight insurance profit and compensation play different roles in the signal effect. The insurance premium plays a deep role while the compensation plays at the surface, because consumers could only observe the compensation when purchasing