John Stouby Persson

Managing Risks in Distributed Software Projects: An Integrative Framework

Software projects are increasingly geographically distributed with limited face-to-face interaction between participants. These projects face particular challenges that need careful managerial attention. While risk management has been adopted with success to address other challenges within software development, there are currently no frameworks available for managing risks related to geographical distribution. On this background, we systematically review the literature on geographically distributed software projects. Based on the review, we synthesize what we know about risks and risk resolution techniques into an integrative framework for managing risks in distributed contexts. Subsequent implementation of a Web-based tool helped us refine the framework based on empirical evaluation of its practical usefulness. We conclude by discussing implications for both research and practice.

How e-government managers prioritise rival value positions: The efficiency imperative

E-Government strategies, investments, project selection, and implementations are influenced by value positionsdeeply enshrined in the traditions of public administration, which are in turn reflected in the everyday discourse of publicmanagers. We analyse value traditions in the public administration literature and their adaptation for e-Government and synthesise three prominent positions. Administrative efficiency focuses on cost-effectiveness logics highlighted by New Public Management thinking. Service improvement, derived from the tradition of public service, emphasises the provision of better services for citizens. Citizen engagement, with its roots in liberal democracy arguments, promotes responsiveness, consultation, collaboration and participation. A set of foundational values grounded in the deeply rooted bureaucratic tradition is also distinguished. A qualitative survey of Danish local authority managers’ value positions shows a heavy bias towards administrative efficiency and an absence of concern for citizen engagement. The implications of this efficiency imperative are discussed.

A Process for Managing Risks in Distributed Teams

Today, many software projects are geographically distributed, so software managers must know how to manage distributed teams. For example, they need to know how to build teams across sites, how to break down and distribute tasks, how to share knowledge across time, space, and cultural differences, and how to coordinate work to produce coherent outcomes.

The Cross-Cultural Knowledge Sharing Challenge: An Investigation of the Co-location Strategy in Software Development Offshoring

Cross-cultural offshoring in software development challenges effective knowledge sharing. While research has suggested temporarily co-locating participants to address this challenge, few studies are available on what knowledge sharing practices emerge over time when co-locating cross-cultural software developers. This paper presents a longitudinal case study of an offshoring project with co-location of Indian and Danish software developers for 10½ months. A community-of-practice (CoP) analysis is offered of what knowledge sharing practices emerge over time and how these where facilitated. The study supports previous studies’ suggestion of co-location in offshoring for helping cross-cultural knowledge sharing. However, the short initial period of co-location suggested in these studies, was insufficient for achieving knowledge sharing practices indicating a CoP. In conjunction with a longer period of co-location four facilitators of cross-cultural knowledge sharing were shared office, shared responsibility for tasks and problems, shared prioritization of team spirit, and a champion of social integration.

IT Business Cases in Local Government: An Action Research Study

Effective management of value creation with information technology (IT) is increasingly important for local governments (e.g., municipalities). The business case is a tool that has increased popularity in both the public and private sector to support the management of value creation with IT. However, experiences from local government reveal difficulties in developing effective IT business cases beyond simple cost savings. Based on collaborative action research with Danish municipalities we present insights on contemporary IT business case practices. Based on these insights we formulate lessons for business case practices in local government that we have incorporated into a business case method, that has subsequently been evaluated by IT managers in local government. These lessons have been synthesized into the four principles: minimal contents, benefits ownership, dynamic utility, and social commitment. We argue that these principles improve the content, development, and use of IT business cases in local government.

Engaged Problem Formulation in IS Research

“Is this the problem?”: the question that haunts many information systems (IS) researchers when they pursue work relevant to both practice and research. Nevertheless, a deliberate answer to this question requires more than simply asking the involved IS practitioners. Deliberately formulating problems requires a more substantial engagement with the different stakeholders, especially when their problems are ill structured and situated in complex organizational settings. On this basis, we present an engaged approach to formulating IS problems with, not for, IS practitioners. We have come to understand engaged problem formulation as joint researching and as the defining of contemporary and complex problems by researchers and those practitioners who experience and know these problems. We used this approach in investigating IS management in Danish municipalities. In this paper, we present the approach to formulating problems in an engaged way. We discuss it in relation to ideas and assumptions that underpin engaged scholarship, and we discuss the implications for IS action research, design science research, and mixed approaches.

Useful business cases: value creation in IS projects

Business cases have become popular as part of managing value creation in IS projects. Nevertheless, business cases are often poorly linked to value creation activities and organizations struggle to develop business cases that are useful and express more than simple cost savings. This action research study seeks to improve the usefulness of business cases in IS projects. We used collaborative action research with Danish municipalities to improve their practices when developing and using business cases and to change their perceptions of what constitutes a good business case that is useful during implementation and value creation. This article presents lessons learned from our action research, lessons that we incorporated into a business case method and subsequently evaluated with IS managers. There are three lessons on (1) improving the content of business cases, (2) how to develop business cases, and (3) the use of business cases in subsequent value creation. These lessons summarize our findings and the contributions are that we in the business case method propose to (1) include minimal contents, (2) develop social commitment, and (3) structure for dynamic use during value creation. We discuss the lessons and contributions related to research on IS business cases and value creation.

UX in Agile before and during development.

Agile project management processes (Agile) such as Scrum, DSDM, XP and Kanban, have become a de facto standard for software development practice. The context of Agile strongly affects the possibilities of IT professionals to conduct UX activities in their software development. In this workshop we aim to address successes, challenges and best practices from integrating UX activities in Agile. Particularly, we want to focus on two periods for the integration: Before the actual agile project management starts and during the agile projects. The overall objective of this workshop is to provide a venue for researchers and practitioners, from within and outside of HCI, to discuss and suggest good ways of integrating UX in Agile. The workshop has two goals: (1) Identifying best practices, case studies and work-in-progress relevant to successes and challenges of integrating UX activities in Agile. (2) Identify and discuss suggestions for good ways of integrating UX activities in Agile.

The role of UX professionals in agile development: a case study from industry.

A highly debated topic within recent literature in HCI is the integration of UX activities into agile development. While we acknowledge the question of integration to be one of the main challenges for UX professionals, this seems to have received traction and is heading closer towards a resolution. We believe the time is right for gaining an in-depth understanding of the UX roles responsibilities in an agile case company that has moved beyond the question of UX integration. Through interviews with UX professionals, developers and managers we found that the UX professionals have a very broad set of responsibilities, of which some are unseen in relation to previous studies and not classically considered part of the UX role. Interestingly, these newly identified responsibilities are some of the most critical to the success of integrating UX into agile development.

The Roles of Conference Papers in IS: An Analysis of the Scandinavian Conference on Information Systems

Information Systems (IS) research has both a journal-oriented publication culture and a rich plethora of conferences. It is unclear why IS researchers even bother with conference publishing given the high focus on journals. Against this backdrop, the purpose of this paper is to increase our understanding of conference papers in IS and the role they play for the authoring researchers. We present the first analysis of the papers published during the first six years (2010–2015) in the Scandinavian Conference on Information Systems (SCIS). We conducted interviews with ten SCIS authors. Following a framework adopted from Akerlind [1], we identified how SCIS papers have the roles of fulfilling requirements, establishing oneself, developing personally, enabling change, and other roles. This article contributes to the reflection literature on the IS field by applying a practice lens to understand the role of conference papers in research.