Its time to act:understanding and assessing agility in information systems development

This paper focuses on addressing the question of how agile are agile methods. To do this I synthesize seven general features of agility, drawing on management and sociology disciplines, into a framework, to act as a ‘gold standard’ by which to compare agile methods. I found that agile methods did not entirely measure up to this framework and that they were lacking in terms of (i) survival, (ii) prospering or thriving on change, and (iii) being able to regulate and leverage emotions in action responses to change. This paper offers: (i) a framework for assessing agility in software development, (ii) the elucidation of a knowledge gap in agile methods with respect to emotion, and, (iii) a conceptualization that reveals the need to incorporate emotional regulation and leverage into assessments of agility

Science and data: the forbidden fruit

Science and data: the forbidden frui

Conceptualizing emotion in information systems development

The purpose of this theory paper is to develop a contextual theory of appraisal that may be drawn on to understand emotional processes in IS development (ISD). In short, emotion matters to ISD because managers/professionals lack capacity in dealing with emotionality whether positively or negatively, and there are very few ISD studies that directly focus on emotion. We develop a theoretical lens by inductively examining the substance and intellectual heritage of four emotion theory streams: feeling-centered (e.g. stimulus-response), traditional cognitivist, contemporary cognitivist and socio-cultural. Our model particularly draws on process appraisal theory and extends it with derivative concepts of structuration theory. The resulting contextualized appraisal theory (CAT) constitutes our main contribution to the ISD field

Development Process of Intrinsic Gamification in a Learning Difficulty Context

The paper explores the development process of intrinsic gamification in a learning difficulty context through an in-depth case study. We found out that simplicity is the most vital mechanic and the freedom in the software benefits users physically, mentally and socially. As a result, the software meets user’s competence, autonomy and connection needs and thus intrinsically motivates them to use it more

A Paradox of Progressive Saturation: The Changing Nature of Improvisation over Time in a Systems Development Project

In this paper, we investigate improvisation in a systems development project in the context of safety-critical, rigid quality-management standards. This study took place in a technology company in the automotive industry over a 31-month period and focused on the development of an innovative information system for automobiles. Our analysis traced different forms of improvised practice over the course of a systems development project at the company along with various triggers of improvisation. We found that, as the project progressed, the latitude to improvise became saturated by the increasing structural influences on improvisation. Yet, paradoxically, these structural influences provoked developers to improvise in ways that were progressively more innovative by drawing on accumulated knowledge; we call this phenomenon a “paradox of progressive saturation”. We identify ten forms of improvisation that unfold across different stages of a systems development project. We offer a conceptualization of the paradox of progressive saturation to represent the changing nature of improvisation over time, which contributes to the literature on improvisation in information systems development

Assessing the role of cloud computing in the strategic agility of banking

This manuscript assesses the role of a relatively new technology ‘cloud computing’ in achieving strategic agility within the UK banking sector. While there is research on how ‘cloud’ can enhance innovation capacity, there is little on the implications for strategic agility - an increasingly important topic in the IS/IT literature (Doz and Kosonen, 2010). Mell and Grance (2010) define cloud as: “a model for enabling ubiquitous, convenient, on-demand network access to a shared pool of configurable computing resources (e.g., networks, servers, storage, applications, and services) that can be rapidly provisioned and released with minimal management effort or service provider interaction.” Such new technologies have accelerated global competition per se and as a result organizations must be able to rapidly adapt their strategies as well as their operations; agility is ‘cascading’ up the organization from operations to C-Suite. Banking is no exception (Baskerville et al., 2005) and given the industry’s reputation for conservatism, we felt this was ripe for study since cloud and strategic agility are in tension with the industry’s usual pace of change. According to Lewis et al. (2014) organizational survival today very much depends on strategic agility, which in brief involves flexible and mindful responses to constantly changing environments. Our question is whether cloud enables or constrains such responses. According to Doz and Kosonen (2010) there are three dimensions to strategic agility: (i) Strategic sensitivity; (ii) Leadership unity; (iii) Resource fluidity. Can cloud deliver on all three dimensions for banking? We set out to explore these questions

An exploratory study assessing the role cloud computing has in achieving strategic agility with the banking industry

This paper will seek to assess the role of Cloud computing in achieving strategic agility within the UK banking sector and provides implications on how organizations in the banking sector can become more agile in their operations. Previous research has shed light on how using Cloud technology can enhance an organization’s innovation, which is a key factor in any rapidly changing sector. In order to assess the role Cloud technology has on achieving strategic agility in the banking sector, we identify the facilitators or barriers to achieving strategic agility successfully. An exploratory research design is adopted since there is little or no similar research in this area

Development and Simulation Testing of a Computerized Adaptive Measure of Communicative Functioning in Aphasia

Computerized adaptive testing (CAT), based on the mathematical framework of item response theory (IRT), has increasingly been implemented in patient reported outcome measures over the past decade (Fries, Bruce, & Cella, 2005). Given a calibrated item pool fit by an appropriate IRT measurement model, a CAT can produce reliable ability estimates more efficiently than traditional paper-and-pencil tests by administering items that are most informative given the examinee’s estimated ability level (Wainer, 2000). As conventional measures employed in the measurement of aphasia were developed under traditional measurement theory, many of these measures are long and inefficient, and are consequently unsuitable for regular clinical care. In addition, these conventional measures often fail to meet the needs of many community-dwelling stroke survivors whose impairments falls outside the range reliably measured by these tests (Doyle et al. 2012). IRT-based and in particular CAT patient reported outcome measures offer the possibility of substantial improvements in measurement technology for persons with aphasia

Birds of a Feather Talk Together: User Influence on Language Adoption

Language is in constant flux be it from changes in meaning to the introduction of new terms. At the user level it changes by users accommodating their language in relation to whom they are in contact with. By mining diffusion's of new terms across social networks we detect the influence between users and communities. This is then used to compute the user activation threshold at which they adopt new terms dependent on their neighbours. We apply this method to four different networks from two popular on-line social networks (Reddit and Twitter). This research highlights novel results: by testing the network through random shuffles we show that the time at which a user adopts a term is dependent on the local structure, however, a large part of the influence comes from the global structure and that influence between users and communities is not significantly dependent on network structures