Now showing 1 - 6 of 6
  • Publication
    How soon is now? Theorising temporality in Information Systems research
    Time is an inherent quality of human life and the temporal nature of our being in this world has fundamentally shaped our knowledge and understanding of it: the concept of time pervades everyday language: 'time is of the essence'; 'timing is everything'; and 'a stitch in time saves nine'. Thus, many disciplines are concerned with Time – physics of course, and also history, philosophy, psychology, computer science, communication studies and media. Nevertheless, our understanding of it is fundamentally limited because our consciousness moves along it . The goal of this paper is to develop a conceptualization of time that can be used to investigate the impact of temporality on the design, development, adoption and use of Information Systems and to trace the societal and business impact of that association.
      295
  • Publication
    Mind the Gaps: increasing the impact of IS research on ISD performance improvement
    (Australasian Association for Information Systems, 2015) ; ;
    Poor performance has pervaded the last forty years of software development, evident across industry sectors, project size, budget, geographic location, system quality and functionality, and exacerbated by increased criticality of IT in organizational mission and strategy. A significant body of research has investigated the potential of emerging development methodologies to address these shortcomings but the effectiveness of these methods is largely supported by anecdotal evidence. At the same time, metrics and measurement are known to affect ISD performance but the existing literature on ISD metrics is misaligned with practitioners’ needs, leading to a lack of clarity about ISD metrics in practice. This paper presents an interdisciplinary literature review on ISD metrics to identify the underlying reasons for this misalignment and evaluate the extent to which existing literature can be used to better understand the impact of emerging software development methodologies on ISD performance.
      494
  • Publication
    A Clockwork Organisation: Proposing a New Theory of Organisational Temporality
    Time is an inherent quality of human life, yet it remains a hidden dimension in Information Systems (IS) research. In our 'real time' world, time has become a fundamentally important business performance indicator but the hidden costs associated with increased speed in firms are frequently overlooked. In research, there has been a lack of synthesis and coherence on the topic of time, largely because a reliance on myopic measures of time has resulted in a shortage of research on temporal construct associations. To address the conceptual weaknesses in studies of time, the aim of this research is to provide a rich definition and conceptualisation of time in an organisational context. Our framework of organisational temporal performance is based on a multidisciplinary literature review, where variants and sub-components of the concept have originated, matured, and have been applied and tested thoroughly over time. The paper concludes with a discussion of the implications of the study and possible avenues for future research.
      144
  • Publication
    Decision-Making In Agile Software Development Teams: Solving the Optimal Timing Problem
    Agile methods are a recent but widely diffused innovation in Information Systems development (ISD). Agile methods call for the creation of organic, flexible and empowered teams who work in active and close collaboration with customers over a series of rapid development iterations. Agile methods can deliver productivity and quality gains by improving task prioritisation, design flexibility, and communication and coordination within and across teams. However, teams must overcome a range of obstacles if these advantages are to be realised. In particular, decision-making in agile settings is challenging, decentralised and pluralistic, frequent and short-term, dynamically complex (decisions are highly interrelated), time and resource constrained, often unstructured, and minimally documented. As such, there have been repeated calls for research on decision making in agile settings.
      96
  • Publication
    Mind the gaps: increasing the impact of IS research on ISD performance improvement
    Poor performance has pervaded the last forty years of software development, evident across industry sectors, project size, budget, geographic location, system quality and functionality, and exacerbated by increased criticality of IT in organisational mission and strategy. A significant body ofresearch has investigated the potential of emerging development methodologies to address these shortcomings but the effectiveness of these methods is largely supported by anecdotal evidence. At the same time, metrics and measurement are known to affect ISD performance but the existing literature on ISD metrics is misaligned with practitioners' needs, leading to a lack of clarity about ISD metrics in practice. This paper presents an interdisciplinary literature review on ISD metrics to identify the underlying reasons for this misalignment and evaluate the extent to which existing literature can be used to better understand the impact of emerging software development methodologies on ISD performance.
      208
  • Publication
    It's About Time: Investigating The Temporal Parameters Of Decision-Making In Agile Teams
    The emergence and widespread adoption of agile methodologies is often explained by the need to improve time management in Information Systems Development (ISD). Indeed, a growing body of evidence supports the view that agile methodologies are an effective means of delivering productivity gains through time savings. That is to say, agile methodologies can be used to increase speed and efficiency in ISD projects. In addition, lightweight agile methodologies are designed, by definition, to minimise wastes in the design and delivery of Information Systems and can therefore be used to support sustainability in IS projects (cf. Schmidt et al., 2009). However, the impact of agile methodologies on ISD project outcomes is less clear. In addressing this question, this research-inprogress paper uses a combination of existing literature and empirical data to construct a conceptual framework to explain how three different temporal aspects of agile methodologies (time pressure, polychronicity and periodicity) impact upon decision quality, thereby affecting ISD project outcomes. It is envisaged that this framework will be used to shed light on how agile methodologies impact upon project effectiveness or velocity, which is defined in this context as movement in the 'right' direction.
      158