Reflections on Supervising the Postgraduate Students’ Design Science Research Thesis

Design science research (DSR) is an appropriate method for postgraduate-level (MSc) thesis work, where the students need to combine and apply theoretical knowledge and hands-on skills to solve practical problems. Students face considerable challenges, however, when applying DSR in timeboxed situations with limited competences. In this paper, I reflect on my experiences supervising more than 200 MSc theses, many using—and some that intended to use—DSR. My reflections provide teaching tips to educators and supervisors and show a need for new DSR process and evaluation methods

Factors influencing the alignment of SOA development with business objectives

Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) has gained focus as a driver for bridging and aligning business and IT-oriented views in information system development. The critical aspect of successful SOA is aligning technology and business; without proper alignment, the full potential of SOA will not be achieved. The current academic literature includes only few empirical studies on business-IT alignment aspects related to SOA adoption. In this exploratory study we explore factors influencing successful SOA implementation. We interview IT and business people from nine organisations appearing as SOA forerunners in Finland. Our findings indicate that successful SOA adoption is affected by several factors varying from organisation culture to processes and methods, communication and technology. The findings form a basis for future SOA research and a set of guidelines for practitioners

The Benefits of Enterprise Architecture in Organizational Transformation

Today, as organizations constantly adjust their activities to meet ever-changing circumstances, continuous business transformation is taking place. However, planning and steering this transformation can be a daunting task as complexity has been built into the organization over the years. Enterprise Architecture (EA) has been widely adapted as a planning and governance approach to manage the complexity and constant change, and to align the organization toward a common goal. This article studies the EA benefit-realization process by clarifying how EA benefits are realized. Specifically, the focus is on the strategies, resources, and practices which the EA benefits stem from. The findings, derived from an in-depth case study, show that the EA benefit-realization process con- stitutes a long, intertwined chain of activities. Organiza- tions benefit from EA through various means: from the initiation, when comprehensive understanding starts to form, until years later, when measurable outcomes such as cost savings materialize. Suggestions on what to incorpo- rate into EA programs are presented

Searching Success in a Successful IS Acquisition

In today’s business world, information systems (IS) are often acquired from an external vendor rather than being developed in-house. Although the number of studies related to the success of IS acquisitions has increased, there is limited understanding of the relationship between acquisition project success, the final IS success, and their role in defining whether the acquisition endeavor was ultimately successful. For instance, in public sector organizations, there is a tendency for the acquisition project to be conducted outside the acquiring unit. This means that success can be evaluated at multiple levels in the organization, and the different levels might not have identical aspirations related to the acquisition. This can cause organizational issues, especially when the evaluation of success is left in the hands of only one of these parties. In this paper, we study the facets of IS acquisition success by presenting differing aspects that are used in defining IS acquisition success, pointing out a contradiction between the formally measured success and the perceived success. As a result, we propose an IS acquisition success model. The study is conducted as a single case study of a public sector organization in Finland

Introduction to Information Systems Success and Benefits Realization Minitrack

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Timing the Information System Upgrade

A system upgrade requires careful planning as its implications to organizational systems might beenormous. Although in IS literature the requirements and process of systems upgrade have been discussed,the timing when to upgrade and what factors guide it has been of lesser interest. Consequently,in this paper we focus on information systems upgrading and its timing from the perspectiveof the user organization. Upgrading is enabled by the availability of a new software version. When toupgrade, meanwhile, is determined by the business interests of the customer organization, businesscalendar, development projects, and the vendor. These factors were identified by interviewing 14 ITmanagers, mainly CIOs, from middle size to large organizations in Finland. They presented 16 differentcases of upgrading or modifications of enterprise systems or similar undertakings. The analysis ofthe cases and the identification of the upgrade timing factors not only increase our understanding ofthe phenomena in general, but also reveal the customer’s motives and interests regarding IS upgradingand its timing

Impacts of Digitalization: Many Agendas on Different Levels

Contemporary organizations investing in digitalization initiatives aim at enhancing their productivity, streamlining their processes, or quite often simply cutting their costs. However, little is known about the results and effectivity, i.e. impacts of how digitalization initiatives create value, for whom or where does this happen, and when. In this paper, we study what kind of impacts different digitalization initiatives in a mid-size city create and for who. We show that the impacts vary for different stakeholders and according to a perspective. Potential impacts diverge for city employees, decision-makers, citizens, organizational activities, and public sector in general. Our findings show that potential impacts are multifaceted and numerous. This has implications to the assessment of the success and benefits of the digitalization initiatives; they vary according to the stakeholders and their expectations. The distinction between the experiment and the standardized service is vital to keep in mind