Bridging Global Boundaries for IS Project Success

The management of teams in a distributed IS development project is challenging. It has even been suggested that a new breed of managers for the management of dispersed teams is needed, especially when relationships cross national boundaries. Challenges in distributed, global IS development are understood as related to three dimensions of distance: geographic, temporal, and cultural distance, which affect the manager's ability to control and coordinate distributed IS development projects. This chapter argues that combining a relationship perspective with a success perspective is fruitful for understanding distributed IS development projects. In this context there are several significant conditions that draw the attention to the challenges in the practice of distributed IS development projects. The chapter ends with the provision of a conceptual framework addressing relational-oriented conditions for the management of distributed IS development projects. Using the framework, managers can identify the relational-oriented conditions for realizing the benefits of distributed IS development projects.

The push and pull provided by information technology and rapidly changing business demands have led to virtual work becoming increasingly important in organizations. Virtual work can take various forms, from telecommuting to global project development teams. In virtual organizations and communities, individuals can be part of groups that have no physical co-location, and often do not meet, except virtually. Increased globalization, tightened traveling budgets, and heightened security awareness foster the growth of virtual environments. This mini-track focuses on issues related to challenges presented by and effectiveness of virtual work, teams, organizations, and communities. We sought papers addressing these issues from an organizational, managerial, team, community, or individual perspective, as well as papers on enabling technologies and their use in this environment. The resulting twelve papers published in the HICSS-38 proceedings investigate a variety of important topics of interest to researchers and practitioners. Walther, Bunz, and Bazarova address the development of trust in virtual groups. They propose communication rules based on social information processing theory, and empirically test them. Keim and Weitzel also explore trust development in establishing successful virtual partnerships. Factors influencing performance of virtual teams are of critical interest to researchers and practitioners. Staples and Cameron report results from a field study examining relationships between team performance and interpersonal skills, team size, and turnover. DeLone, Espinosa, Lee, and Carmel present a conceptual framework for global IS development project success. They conduct interviews with global project managers to validate the framework. Role coordination -preventing the emergence of individual roles and building shared team interaction mental models -is an important aspect of task performance in teams. Sutanto, Phang, Kuan, Kankanhalli, and Tan investigate this phenomenon in two global virtual teams and offer suggestions on how effective role coordination can be achieved. Galvin, McKinney, and Chudoba also investigate individuals’ integration with the team in pursuit of common objectives, proposing a model to help better understand the process of transformation from being individually centric to being team centric. Zhang, Fjermestad, and Tremain analyze and identify drawbacks and inconsistencies in previous empirical literature on leadership style in the virtual team context. They develop propositions for future research. Misiolek and Heckman examine leadership behavior in virtual teams by observing a virtual collaboration exercise and developing insights into how leadership behaviors emerge and are distributed. Addressing an increasingly important virtual team structure, Mark and Abrams investigate largescale group-to-group collaboration. They examine how interactions differ between collocated and distributed settings in a design team. Results indicate that subgroup interactions occurred differently within sites compared to across sites. DeLuca and Valacich examine communication media choice in virtual groups in two organizations. Results support Media Synchronicity Theory. Bhappu and Crews explore effects of communication media and conflict on team identification in diverse teams and suggest ways diverse teams can manage intra-group conflict. Chidambaram and Carte also examine virtual teams with diverse membership. They propose a model that describes how collaborative technologies can help leverage positive aspects of diversity and limit negative aspects; they then test the model in a longitudinal field study.

While the number of substantive investments in IS projects continues to grow, the number of failing projects also continues to increase at an alarming rate. Both the academic and industry literature suggests that inadequate attention to risk and its management continues to be a key factor in project failure. The typical approach taken is to identify and map potential risks, to act as a planning and diagnostic tool, and to prepare a contingency plan has been a factor-based approach. While it remains a valuable tool for mapping anticipated risks the factor-based approach is less effective when viewing project risks as emergent phenomena that un-fold during the course of the project, and require ongoing attention and risk management. In-formed by a case study of a failing university IS development project, this paper focuses on the phenomenon of risk escalation. The case findings suggest that rather than being defined ahead of the project, some project risks may emerge during the project as a consequence of escalation factors that were both antecedent to and a consequence of actual risk management decisions. The article concludes with suggestions as to how project managers can better man-age the emergent rather than static nature of risk phenomena.

Would the outcome of a Global multinational organization's decision be the same if the same decision were to be made in different countries throughout the world? Within the same organization, we propose that national cultural differences can influence decision making in different countries and cultural clusters. While much work has been done on organizational cultural influences, this study examines the influence that national culture has on organizational decision making in respect to the evolution/redevelopment decision that organizations may face at a point in time. Building on findings from the GLOBE research program, we show by empirical testing of a theoretical model that national cultural dimensions are significantly associated with a) the outcome of the decision to enhance or re-develop a system, and b) the organizational level at which such decisions are made. This research is significant as a means to improve management decision making, particularly with regard to the enhancement versus redevelopment decision. The research suggests that a relatively uniform sub-culture exists across the global IS project level but that national cultural dimensions play a more important role in determining the organizational management level at which decisions are made. Our analysis also suggests that technical factors (Upper case tools and platform) carry more influence in the outcome of the decision at the project level (i.e., development or enhancement). However, human factors (national cultural dimensions) were seen to be more important at the management level (i.e., where the decision was made).

The software development life cycle (SDLC) is a framework for planning, analyzing, designing, developing, testing, and deploying software. There are many different SDLC methodologies available, each with its advantages and disadvantages. The best methodology for a particular project will depend on factors such as the size and complexity of the project, the availability of resources, and the preferences of the project team. This paper provides an in-depth overview of the different SDLC methodologies used in the industry for IS project management. The paper discusses five significant SDLC methodologies: Waterfall, V-Model, Iterative, Agile, and Hybrid. It also compares and contrasts the traditional SDLC and Agile methodology and discusses using decision support matrices for selecting SDLC methodologies. By providing this comprehensive overview, the paper will help IS practitioners and project managers make informed decisions about the best approach for their specific projects.

Information system project failure is described as a common phenomenon. Escalation occurs when there are continued commitments for a troubled project and has been observed as one pattern of failure. The main purpose of this research was to investigate whether software development risks were the factors to discriminate between escalated projects and non-escalated projects. Thirty critical risks were selected and classified into nine risk categories under three dimensions such as product, people, and process. Probability and loss in each nine risk category were measured on the basis of 247 survey cases from IS professionals. The results show that the risk probability in the people dimension and the process dimension with management aspects was more important to predict escalation than the risk loss in those dimensions and the risk impact in the product dimension with technical aspects. The results imply that managerial factors are more critical than technical factors in predicting IS development project escalation. Additionally, it was noticed that the CMM level of an organisation was very significant to predict successful projects.

The effects of project uncertainty and risk management on IS development project performance: A vendor perspective

Information modeling methods are key to the success of IS development projects. The problem in the software engineering field is not the lack of modeling methods but the proliferation of modeling methods with little theoretical foundation and empirical evidence to support their usefulness. Evaluation techniques are therefore necessary to compare and contrast these modeling methods. In this chapter, we suggest an evaluation approach based on the human information processing paradigm and the theory of equivalence of representations. This evaluation approach proposes that modeling methods can be evaluated and compared using two criteria: informational and computational equivalence.

This study investigates the job satisfaction of information technology (IT) professionals in an environment where computer aided software engineering (CASE) tools are used. Although the recent downturn in the economy might have temporarily eased the IT labor shortage, issues of recruitment and retention of qualified personnel are key to the success of IS development projects. This study presents a model of the combination of CASE tool usage and job satisfaction as related to internal career orientation. Two hypotheses based on this model were tested using empirical evidence collected through a survey method. The first examines whether the career orientation of IS personnel influences their job satisfaction. The second incorporates the impact of CASE tool usage on this relationship. The results indicate that in a CASE tool environment, personnel with a predominant technical career orientation have more job satisfaction than those with a predominant managerial tation. However, there is a significant and positive synergy between the sophistication of the CASE tool used and managerial competence orientation leading to higher job satisfaction. These findings indicate that combating the IT personnel shortage through task automation may also increase worker satisfaction, thereby decreasing turnover. Careful selection of the CASE tool for use may result in this win-win situation.

The organizational citizenship behavior of IS personnel: Does organizational justice matter?

User commitment and collaboration: Motivational antecedents and project performance

In this paper we show that interviews between IT consultants and clients are considered best practice in terms of methods for eliciting IS requirements as part of IS development projects. The process of conducting successful conversations with clients as part of requirements elicitation interviews is not well understood. The paper reports a literature survey which established current understanding. To date this understanding has been achieved through research which: considered conversations as black boxes; proposed and implemented treatments to be applied by consultants; and then measured the quality and quantity of the requirements elicited. The treatments have not been successful as poor requirements elicitation continues to be a major problem in IS development. Our analysis of current understanding indicated that consultants’ experiences of the nature of conversations with clients and approach to conducting conversations have not been studied. It would seem imperative to look inside the black box of consultants’ experiences of conducting conversations with clients if improvements to the outcomes of requirements elicitation are to be made. A study is proposed which aims to examine variation in how consultants experience requirements elicitation conversations. Through analyzing the variation in the light of current best practice it is aimed to identify the critical aspects of successfully conceived and conducted conversations. These critical aspects can then be used in IS education and practitioner training programs.

The authors have taught a course called 'Global Project Management' for four years, engaging students in three international locations in hands-on distance projects. The distance projects are intended to provide students with enriching, realistic global project experience. With experience, improved planning and better coordination, each iteration of the distance projects has improved. In this paper, the authors present lessons learned and a mind map demonstrating key aspects of design of global hands-on projects.

Global software development becomes one of the most significant trends in the information technology market expansion. This research paper deals with the difficulties and risks examined in global projects in one of the software development companies in Latvia. The research uncovers areas of concern and aims to develop a standardized framework for global project management overcoming the problems brought by distance between the parties involved. The author emphasizes the necessity of unified process framework in global project management and provides her research approach on the way to a deep understanding of global software development.

Knowledge transfer and organizational learning in IS offshore sourcing