Contextual Issues in Groupware Applications for Educational Support Groups

The objective of this chapter was to identify a set of contextual issues in groupware applications used by educational support groups. The analysis was performed through a Needfindings study where 20 active members of three Mexican federal educational-support groups called USAER were recruited. The analysis considered both users and functional vantage point. The participants (from one USAER) provided feedback and insights from their daily activities related to communication with others and resources access helping to define and understand users' scenarios. This information was classified and distilled as design ideas in low fidelity prototypes constructed by participants themselves under guidance from authors. Finally, prototypes were evaluated by the members of the other two USAER group providing their perception as expert users. The study derived in a set of particular contextual issues that directly influence interactions in group applications. These findings could be take into account by designers as a reliable starting point for well-designed User Interfaces for groupware

Understanding conflicts in Agile adoption through technological frames

In this paper, adoption of a new software development method is viewed as socio-technical innovation and change and a framework based on Bijker’s Technological Frames (TF) is developed and used to model this innovation and change. To illustrate this process findings from one case study of a large organization adopting the agile software development method are presented. Qualitative data were collected from observations, interviews and documents and analysed using TFs. Our findings show that viewing agile adoption as socio-technical innovation and change provides results that resonate with existing research in the area, and extends them. The key contribution of this case study to the socio-technical literature on systems development is a practical demonstration of how TFs can be used to facilitate the socio-technical understanding and identification of conflicts between stakeholder groups while going through the adoption of a new software development method