This paper examines the adoption and development of intranets in large business organizations. The authors demonstrate that intranet technology introduces a host of new managerial and technical challenges and requires new approaches to IS development. Evidence from two European corporations indicates that the traditional division of labor and definition of work roles in IS development breaks down. The distinction between developers and users becomes increasingly blurred and new organizational roles and structures associated with intranets are emerging. However, ready-made organizational models for implementing and managing intranets do not exist and the two organizations in this study have followed two different approaches. One organization favors a “planned change” approach, emphasizing management control and careful planning. The other organization prefers an “improvisational” approach, emphasizing experimentation, innovation and local initiative.

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Corporate Intranet Implementation: Managing Emergent Technologies and Organizational Practices

A nomadic information environment is a heterogeneous assemblage of interconnected technological, and social, and organizational elements that enable the physical and social mobility of computing and communication services between organizational actors both within and across organizational borders. We analyze such environments based on their prevalent features of mobility, digital convergence, and mass scale, along with their mutual interdependencies. By using a framework that organizes research topics in nomadic information environments at the individual, team, organizational, and inter organizational levels and is comprised of both service and infrastructure development, we assess the opportunities and challenges for IS research. These deal with the design, use, adoption, and impacts of nomadic information environments. We conclude by discussing research challenges posed by nomadic information environments for information systems research skills and methods. These deal with the need to invent novel research methods and shift our research focus, the necessity to question the divide between the technical and the social, and the need to better integrate developmental and behavioral (empirical) research modes.

Research Commentary: The Next Wave of Nomadic Computing

Information technology (IT) innovation can be defined as the creation and new organizational application of digital computer and communication technologies. The paper suggests that IT innovation theory needs to be expanded to analyze IT innovations in kind that exhibit atypical discontinuities in IT innovation behaviors by studying two questions. First, can a model of disruptive IT innovations be created to understand qualitative changes in IT development processes and their outcomes so that they can be related to architectural discontinuities in computing capability? Second, to what extent can the observed turmoil among systems development organizations that has been spawned by Internet computing be understood as a disruptive IT innovation?

To address the first question, a model of disruptive IT innovation is developed. The model defines a disruptive IT innovation as an architectural innovation originating in the information technology base that has subsequent pervasive and radical impacts on development processes and their outcomes. These base innovations establish necessary but not sufficient conditions for subsequent innovation behaviors. To address the second question, the impact of Internet computing on eight leading-edge systems development organizations in the United States and Finland is investigated. The study shows that the adoption of Internet computing in these firms has radically impacted their IT innovation both in development processes and services.

The disruptive nature of information technology innovations: the case of internet computing in systems development organizations

Tailoring of methods is commonplace in the vast majority of software development projects and organisations. However, there is not much known about the tailoring and engineering of agile methods, or about how these methods can be used to complement each other. This study investigated tailoring of the agile methods, eXtreme programming (XP) and Scrum, at Intel Shannon, and involved experienced software engineers who continuously monitored and reflected on these methods over a 3-year period. The study shows that agile methods may individually be incomplete in supporting the overall development process, but XP and Scrum complement each other well, with XP providing support for technical aspects and Scrum providing support for project planning and tracking. The principles of XP and Scrum were carefully selected (only six of the 12 XP key practices were implemented, for example) and tailored to suit the needs of the development environment at Intel Shannon. Thus, the study refutes the suggestion that agile methods are not divisible or individually selectable but achieve their benefits through the synergistic combination of individual agile practices; rather, this study shows that an a la carte selection and tailoring of practices can work very well. In the case of Scrum, some local tailoring has led to a very committed usage by developers, in contrast to many development methods whose usage is limited despite being decreed mandatory by management. The agile practices that were applied did lead to significant benefits, including reductions in code defect density by a factor of 7. Projects of 6-month and 1-year duration have been delivered ahead of schedule, which bodes well for future ability to accurately plan development projects.

https://www.brian-fitzgerald.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/Agile-at-Intel-EJIS1.pdf

Customising agile methods to software practices at Intel Shannon

The work presented in this paper is related to the area of Situational Method Engineering (SME) which focuses on project-specific method construction. We propose a generic process model supporting the integration of different existing SME approaches. This model shall help the method engineer either selecting one SME approach or combining several approaches that best fit the situation of the method engineering project at hand. The generic model presented in this paper already contains three SME techniques: (1) to assemble method chunks (2) to extend an existing method and (3) to generate a method by abstraction/instantiation of a model/meta-model. The paper presents and illustrates these three techniques and show how other SME techniques could be integrated in the model.

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Towards a generic model for situational method engineering

Keynote paper: a primer to method engineering. Structural artifacts in method engineering: the security imperative. Characterizing IS development projects. Towards an integrated environment for method engineering. A functional framework for evaluating method engineering environments: the case of Maestro II/Decamerone and MetaEdit+ Method rationale in method engineering and use.- How to compose an object-orientated business process model? Human work as context for development of object-orientated modeling techniques. Translating OMT* to SDL, coupling object-orientated analysis and design with formal description techniques. Lazy functional Meta-CASE programming. A practical strategy for the evaluation of software tools. Core objects required for a generic CASE repository. A proposal for context-specific method. Four method engineering languages Method. Simulation-based method engineering. Information systems development. Classification of methodological framework. Method engineering. Reengineering method engineering? Method engineering: experiences in practice. Index of contributors. Keyword index.

Method engineering : principles of method construction and tool support : proceedings of the IFIP TC8, WG8.1/8.2 Working Conference on Method Engineering, 26-28 August 1996, Atlanta, USA

This essay is a speculation of the impact of the next generation technological platform — the internetwork computing architecture (InterNCA) — on systems development. The impact will be deep and pervasive and more substantial than when computing migrated from closed computer rooms to ubiquitous personal computers and flexible client-server solutions. Initially, by drawing upon the notion of a technological frame, the InterNCA, and how it differs from earlier technological frames, is examined. Thereafter, a number of hypotheses are postulated with regard to how the architecture will affect systems development content, scope, organization and processes. Finally, some suggestions for where the information systems research community should focus its efforts (if the call for relevance is not to be taken lightly) are proposed.

The Brave New World of development in the internetwork computing architecture (InterNCA): or how distributed computing platforms will change systems development

Richard J. Welke

Papers

Method engineering : principles of method construction and tool support : proceedings of the IFIP TC8, WG8.1/8.2 Working Conference on Method Engineering, 26-28 August 1996, Atlanta, USA

The Brave New World of development in the internetwork computing architecture (InterNCA): or how distributed computing platforms will change systems development