Do agile managed information systems projects fail due to a lack of emotional intelligence?

YesAgile development methodologies (ADM) have become a widely implemented project management approach in Information Systems (IS). Yet, along with its growing popularity, the amount of concerns raised in regard to human related challenges caused by applyingADMare rapidly increasing. Nevertheless, the extant scholarly literature has neglected to identify the primary origins and reasons of these challenges. The purpose of this study is therefore to examine if these human related challenges are related to a lack of Emotional Intelligence (EI) by means of a quantitative approach. Froma sample of 194 agile practitioners, EI was found to be significantly correlated to human related challenges in agile teams in terms of anxiety, motivation, mutual trust and communication competence. Hence, these findings offer important new knowledge for IS-scholars, project managers and human resource practitioners, about the vital role of EI for staffing and training of agile managed IS-projects

Relationship benefits: conceptualization and measurement in a business-to-business environment

This article offers both a conceptually valid measure of the relationship benefits derived from the relationship marketing, networks, services marketing and strategy literature and demonstrates the concept’s effect on business-to-business bonds. Four types of relationship benefit labelled cost, service, flexibility and image benefits are identified and their measures tested for reliability and validity. A structural model incorporating associations between a second-order relationship benefits construct and other salient relationship concepts is also tested, with significant direct associations between relationship benefits, trust and relationship investments evident, together with indirect associations between relationship benefits and instrumental, affective and normative commitment, absence of conflict, acquiescence, satisfaction and switching. The article calls for further refinement of the concept and evaluation of its associations in other contexts and in light of noted shortcomings in the literature