Exploring the Customer Perspective of Agile Development: Acceptance Factors and On-Site Customer Perceptions in Scrum Projects

In recent years, agile development methodologies have attracted great attention. Although the success of agile development projects depends considerably on the willingness of customers to actively participate, little research has examined which factors of such methodologies customers perceive as benefits or drawbacks. Employing an exploratory, primarily qualitative study design and the Diffusion of Innovations Theory as theoretical lens, we identify several acceptance factors of Scrum as a specific methodology and describe how customers perceive them. As basis for our examination, we use empirical data that was collected at a world-wide leading insurance company and a mixed-method approach that combines qualitative with quantitative data analyses. The results suggest that customers found Scrum to deliver relative advantages. Furthermore, they indicate that Scrum is perceived as more compatible to the way customers prefer to work in development projects. Factors that characterize the perceived complexity of Scrum were viewed as potential acceptance barriers, however

BoSDL: An Approach to Describe the Business Logic of Software Services in Domain-Specific Terms

Modular SaaS platforms that can flexibly be configured with software services, microservices, and the advent of the API economy provide new opportunities to realize even highly customized solutions in the cloud. The success of such endeavors depends on the ability of consumers to discriminate between offered services and choose those best fulfilling the requirements, though. To facilitate the assessment of services against functional requirements, this article proposes the Business-Oriented Service Description Language (BoSDL). It consists of: (1) a meta-model with rules to describe the business logic, that is, the functionality of a software service from a business-oriented perspective; (2) a textual presentation format based on English natural language; (3) a graphical notation based on the UML. Findings from a controlled experiment indicate that, compared to the state of the art, the information provided with the BoSDL enhances the ability of consumers to judge if software services satisfy existing functional requirements

WHAT’S IN A SERVICE? SPECIFYING THE BUSINESS SEMANTICS OF SOFTWARE SERVICES

The success of the service-oriented computing (SOC) paradigm considerably depends on the ability of service consumers to distinguish between published services and choose the ones best suited for a development project. Current SOC standards primarily give information about technical service properties such as the programming interface and the binding information. This enables designers to analyze the technical compatibility of services with the rest of the system. On the basis of such technical information, it is difficult to assess which business semantics a service actually implements and whether it is suited to satisfy functional requirements, however. In this paper, we therefore propose the WS-Functionality language which allows providers to specify the business semantics of software services in business terms. In a design science approach, we firstly describe how conceptual models, which contain business terms and relationships between them, can be used to specify the business semantics of services. Building upon this solution concept, we present the language constructs of WS-Functionality and show a prototypic implementation as proof-of-concept. In a controlled experiment, we were able to support our claim that the information provided with WS-Functionality enhances the ability of service consumers to analyze the business semantics of services and judge whether it satisfies existing functional requirements

HOW PERFECT ARE MARKETS FOR SOFTWARE SERVICES? AN ECONOMIC PERSPECTIVE ON MARKET DEFICIENCIES AND DESIRABLE MARKET FEATURES

Global service markets, which efficiently coordinate the supply of services with the demand, are a cornerstone for the breakthrough of service-oriented computing (SOC). With the increasing popularity of SOC, forecasts hence predicted that service marketplaces would rapidly evolve and work profitable. Despite such promising prospects, only a few marketplaces were able to establish themselves until now, however. Trying to explain this situation, we analyzed leading service marketplaces like Salesforce’s AppExchange or Google’s Apps Marketplace from an economic perspective. Based on the theory of perfect markets with perfect competition, we describe several characteristics of service markets that cause market deficiencies. To adapt to the special characteristics of service markets, agents have to adjust their business strategies accordingly. While current literature primarily focuses on providing strategies for providers and consumers, marketplace operators as essential intermedi-aries are barely considered. We therefore derive desirable market features that can be integrated into the business strategies of marketplace operators and summarize them in a conceptual architecture of a model service marketplace. As a validation, we conducted a series of semi-structured interviews with SOC experts, who corroborated most of our findings and attested their practical relevance

HOW SUSTAINABLE ARE AGILE METHODOLOGIES? ACCEPTANCE FACTORS AND DEVELOPER PERCEPTIONS IN SCRUM PROJECTS

The introduction of agile methodologies such as Scrum considerably changes the working habits of developers. To ensure their successful dissemination, it is therefore particularly important that developers assimilate and remain committed to agile principles. In this paper, we examine the long-term acceptance of Scrum and present the results of a study conducted at a world-wide leading insurance company that began transitioning to Scrum in 2007. Taking the Diffusion of Innovations theory as a lens for analysis, we identify several acceptance factors of Scrum and hypothesize how they are perceived in comparison to traditional methodologies. We evaluate our hypotheses using a multi-method research approach that combines analyses of quantitative and qualitative field data. The results suggest that several factors of Scrum are perceived as relative advantages or as more compatible to the way developers prefer to work. Factors that characterize the complexity of Scrum are identified as potential barriers to acceptance, however

Selecting Cloud Service Providers - Towards a Framework of Assessment Criteria and Requirements

The on-demand usage of enterprise software services from the cloud rapidly evolves towards a viable IT outsourcing option. Although the successful use of software services considerably depends on the ability of the consumers to assess the various offerings and select the ones best suited, literature provides little support for the evaluation of software services and their providers. In this manuscript, we address the question of how to support the evaluation of software service providers. Building upon a design science research approach and a literature survey, we propose an assessment framework that assembles relevant criteria for the evaluation of software service providers. We examine the practical relevance of the assembled criteria using the results of an empirical study, in which we surveyed 28 experts on the subject matter. The results indicate that the framework is effective in supporting the assessment of service providers

A TAXONOMY OF FORKS IN THE CONTEXT OF DECENTRALIZED AUTONOMOUS ORGANIZATIONS

Decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs) are blockchain-based organizations that manage resources through self-executing rules defined in smart contracts and rely on decentralized governance approaches. Many DAOs were affected by forking, a phenomenon in which a new DAO–the fork–is created by copying another DAO’s–the parent’s–protocols, source code, and/or data. Current research unveiled various far-reaching implications of DAO forking but comparing and generalizing these is inhibited by a missing fine-grained understanding of the different types of DAO forks. This motivates us to develop a taxonomy of DAO forks. We developed our taxonomy based on research on forking of DAOs and software development projects and the examination of 21 real-world cases of DAO forking. Our taxonomy contributes a framework to researchers of DAOs and software forking as well as practitioners, who are now able to define and distinguish different types of DAO forks and their individual implications

Observen un fenomen magnètic amb possibles aplicacions en computació

En un article publicat en l'última edició de Nature Materials, científics de l'Institut Català de Nanotecnologia (ICN) dirigits per l'investigador ICREA i professor de la UAB Sergio O. Valenzuela, confirmen l'observació d'un elusiu fenomen físic, l'anomenat arrossegament de magnons. Es tracta d'un efecte termoelèctric que els científics fa 50 anys que intenten aïllar. El seu control obre les portes a millores en generadors compactes d'energia elèctrica i en el desenvolupament de memòries magnètiques

Which Factors Govern the Use of Emergency Response Information Systems? Insights from an Ethnographical Study of a Voluntary Fire Department

To realize the digitalization potential of emergency response processes, several information technologies have been proposed that shall support firefighters in their operations. In the incident command process, especially emergency response information systems (ERIS) are supposed to raise the situation awareness and overall efficacy. Despite their theoretical potential, these technologies only slowly disseminate in practice, however. While extant acceptance models can basically explain firefighters’ intention to use them, the actual usage so far remained unexplored. To gain an in-depth understanding of the specific domain and its influence on the usage of technologies, we ethnographically observed a voluntary fire department over several years. During its digitalization of command processes, we identified operational specialties like flexibility, organizational requirements like error culture, and social aspects like perceived importance that influence the introduction of an ERIS. These factors shall enrich existing acceptance models and help to better consider the special characteristics of the firefighter domain

Analyzing the Potential of Graphical BuildingInformation for Fire Emergency Responses: Findings from a Controlled Experiment

To better support firefighters during emergency response processes, novel information technologies are frequently being presented in research and practice. While such approaches are often technology-driven in nature, we present a task-centered approach to identify the actual information demand during emergency response scenarios. As an important example, we examine the search and rescue task. Combining the theory of situation awareness with findings from cognitive science, we hypothesize that providing graphical information about the building and the location of victims increases firefighters’ task performance in comparison to a verbal briefing. Findings from a controlled experiment that was developed in cooperation with a state firefighting academy show that such information might indeed facilitate the task performance. A continuous access to such information during the entire mission was found to be less effective, though. Our findings have implications for the development of novel information technologies and call for an adaption of current working routines