Rather than deciding whether or not to get involved in global sourcing, many companies are facing decisions about whether or not to apply agile methods in their distributed projects. These companies are often motivated by the opportunities to solve the coordination and communication difficulties associated with global software development. Yet while agile principles prescribe close interaction and co-location, the very nature of distributed software development does not support these prerequisites. Smite, Moe, and Agerfalk structured the book into five parts. In "Motivation" the editors introduce the fundamentals of agile distributed software development and explain the rationale behind the application of agile practices in globally distributed software projects. " Transition" describes implementation strategies, adoption of particular agile practices for distributed projects, and general concepts of agility. "Management" details practical implications for project planning, time management, and customer and subcontractor interaction. "Teams" discusses agile distributed team configuration, effective communication and knowledge transfer, and allocation of roles and responsibilities. Finally, in the "Epilogue" the editors summarize all contributions and present future trends for research and practice in agile distributed development. This book is primarily targeted at researchers, lecturers, and students in empirical software engineering, and at practitioners involved in globally distributed software projects. The contributions are based on sound empirical research and identify gaps and commonalities in both the existing state of the art and state of the practice. In addition, they also offer practical advice through many hints, checklists, and experience reports. Questions answered in this book include: What should companies expect from merging agile and distributed strategies? What are the stumbling blocks that prevent companies from realizing the benefits of the agile approach in distributed environments, and how can we recognize infeasible strategies and unfavorable circumstances? What helps managers cope with the challenges of implementing agile approaches in distributed software development projects? How can distributed teams survive the decisions taken by management and become efficient through the application of agile approaches?

The success of an enterprise today is dependent upon its information system, which comprises Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), Supply Chain Management (SCM), and Customer Relationship Management (CRM). Disruption of Enterprise Information Systems (EIS), even for a short period of time, can cause large problems for business operations. Enterprise Information Systems and Implementing IT Infrastructures: Challenges and Issues aims at identifying potential research problems and issues in EIS, allowing research scholars and practitioners to develop suitable strategies and operational policies for EIS, thus improving communication within organizations. The cutting-edge research discussed in this book intends to spark the discussion of new ideas and developments in the field of EIS amongst researchers and practitioners.

The value of an organization is given not just by its tangible assets but also by the knowledge embodied in its employees and in its internal and external structures. While explicit knowledge can be shared as information and is easy to handle, this tacit knowledge has been neglected by effectiveness-oriented management techniques but is crucial for both the operational efficiency and the core competencies of an organization. This book provides a survey of the use of information technology for knowledge management, and its chapters present specific research on how technologies such as computer-supported cooperative work (CSCW), workflow, and groupware can support the creation and sharing of knowledge in organizations.

In Search Of An Integrative Vision For Technology will stimulate its readers to consider the 'whole story that is information systems' within the context of an integrative vision of technology. It integrates disparate areas of debate and research while appreciating the contribution that philosophy can make to such thinking. It is deliberately broad in coverage, and designed to provide useful pointers so that researchers, students, practitioners, and developers can easily apply each point as needed. Human issues of technology and their normative aspects is a theme that runs throughout the entire book. The integrative vision is centered on an understanding of human practice - the twin notions of structure and direction, and the leading and the founding functions of such practice. While this understanding applies to all technologies, it is worked out in more detail for information technology. From this philosophical understanding, many interdisciplinary areas of interest are identified.

Advances in IT have transformed the way organizations interact with each other. To enable organizations to respond to this change, new management paradigms have evolved. This text looks at the value of knowledge management in supply chain management and how supply chain partners can use IT to improve organizational performance. Companion Website: http: //www.palgrave.com/business/waters/Home.aspx

This book investigates the powerful role of online intermediaries, which connect companies with their end customers, to facilitate joint product innovation. Especially in the healthcare context, such intermediaries deploy interactive online platforms to foster co-creation between engaged healthcare consumers and innovation-seeking healthcare companies. In three empirical studies, this book outlines the key characteristics of online intermediaries in healthcare, their distinct strategies, and the remaining challenges in the field. Readers will also be introduced to the stages companies go through in adopting such co-created solutions. As such, the work appeals for both its academic scope and practical reach.

This book provides the most complete formal specification of the semantics of the Business Process Model and Notation 2.0 standard (BPMN) available to date, in a style that is easily understandable for a wide range of readers - not only for experts in formal methods, but e.g. also for developers of modeling tools, software architects, or graduate students specializing in business process management. BPMN - issued by the Object Management Group - is a widely used standard for business process modeling. However, major drawbacks of BPMN include its limited support for organizational modeling, its only implicit expression of modalities, and its lack of integrated user interaction and data modeling. Further, in many cases the syntactical and, in particular, semantic definitions of BPMN are inaccurate, incomplete or inconsistent. The book addresses concrete issues concerning the execution semantics of business processes and provides a formal definition of BPMN process diagrams, which can serve as a sound basis for further extensions, i.e., in the form of horizontal refinements of the core language. To this end, the Abstract State Machine (ASMs) method is used to formalize the semantics of BPMN. ASMs have demonstrated their value in various domains, e.g. specifying the semantics of programming or modeling languages, verifying the specification of the Java Virtual Machine, or formalizing the ITIL change management process. This kind of improvement promotes more consistency in the interpretation of comprehensive models, as well as real exchangeability of models between different tools. In the outlook at the end of the book, the authors conclude with proposing extensions that address actor modeling (including an intuitive way to denote permissions and obligations), integration of user-centric views, a refined communication concept, and data integration.

This book presents and discusses the most recent innovations, trends, results, experiences and concerns with regard to information systems. Individual chapters focus on IT for facility management, process management and applications, corporate information systems, design and manufacturing automation. The book includes new findings on software engineering, industrial internet, engineering cloud and advance BPM methods. It presents the latest research on intelligent information systems, computational intelligence methods in Information Systems and new trends in Business Process Management, making it a valuable resource for both researchers and practitioners looking to expand their information systems expertise.

How could privacy play a key role in protecting digital identities? How could we merge privacy law, policies, regulations and technologies to protect our digital identities in the context of connected devices and distributed systems? In this book, the author addresses major issues of identity protection and proposes a service-oriented layered framework to achieve interoperability of privacy and secure distributed systems. The framework is intended to distill privacy-related digital identity requirements (business interoperability) into a set of services, which in turn can be implemented on the basis of open standards (technical interoperability). The adoption of the proposed framework in security projects and initiatives would decrease complexities and foster understanding and collaborations between business and technical stakeholders. This work is a step toward implementing the author's vision of delivering cyber security as a set of autonomous multi-platform hosted services that should be available upon user request and on a pay-per-use basis.

Organisational semiotics is a discipline that is concerned with the interrelationships between individuals and groups, and between humans and technology, functioning in organisations and society. Organisational semiotics opens up the prospect of theory-building and the development of new methods and techniques to gain insights into organised behaviour and enacted social practices, in the presence and absence of various technologies. It shares common interests with many other approaches to information and organisations, such as computer science, computational semiotics, organisational engineering, and language action perspective. The common vision shared by these approaches is to treat organisations and related information systems and technologies within a unified semiotic framework, with particular reference to the huge range of issues that elude many traditional disciplines. The analysis and design of information systems develops methods for solving the practical problems but offers no rigorous, theoretical foundation for them or how information functions within and between organisations. The semiotic perspective accommodates the individual and the social, the human and the technical, intra- and inter-organisational interactions, at a level of detail that is required in the study, modelling, design, and engineering of new and alternative organisational and technical systems. This perspective is outlined in the chapter presentations of Information, Organisation and Technology.

This book consists of an anthology of writings. The aim is to honour Marco to celebrate the 35th year of his academic career . The book consists of a collection of selected opinions in the field of IS. Some themes are: IT and Information Systems organizational impacts, Systems development, Business process management, Business organization, e-government, social impact of IT.

CONTEMPORARY BUSINESS MATH FOR COLLEGES, 16E, International Edition presents a basic, arithmetic-based approach to business math. It emphasizes practical skill-building to prepare users for careers in business through step-by-step development of concepts, numerous practice exercises, and real-world application of techniques. The text progresses from the most basic to more complex business math topics. Additional assets to help users gain confidence in mathematics such tutorials, video clips, and more are available on the companion website.

This book shows how business process management (BPM), as a management discipline at the intersection of IT and Business, can help organizations to master digital innovations and transformations. At the same time, it discusses how BPM needs to be further developed to successfully act as a driver for innovation in a digital world. In recent decades, BPM has proven extremely successful in managing both continuous and radical improvements in many sectors and business areas. While the digital age brings tremendous new opportunities, it also brings the specific challenge of correctly positioning and scoping BPM in organizations. This book shows how to leverage BPM to drive business innovation in the digital age. It brings together the views of the world's leading experts on BPM and also presents a number of practical cases. It addresses mangers as well as academics who share an interest in digital innovation and business process management. The book covers topics such as BPM and big data, BPM and the Internet of Things, and BPM and social media. While these technological and methodological aspects are key to BPM, process experts are also aware that further nontechnical organizational capabilities are required for successful innovation. The ideas presented in this book have helped us a lot while implementing process innovations in our global Logistics Service Center. Joachim Gantner, Director IT Services, Swarovski AG Managing Processes - everyone talks about it, very few really know how to make it work in today's agile and competitive world. It is good to see so many leading experts taking on the challenge in this book. Cornelius Clauser, Chief Process Officer, SAP SE This book provides worthwhile readings on new developments in advanced process analytics and process modelling including practical applications - food for thought how to succeed in the digital age. Ralf Diekmann, Head of Business Excellence, Hilti AG This book is as an important step towards process innovation systems. I very much like to congratulate the editors and authors for presenting such an impressive scope of ideas for how to address the challenging, but very rewarding marriage of BPM and innovation. Professor Michael Rosemann, Queensland University of Technology

Knowledge sharing within an organization is essential to its continued success and growth, though remaining aware of new communication technologies is a difficult task. Web Engineered Applications for Evolving Organizations: Emerging Knowledge explores integrated approaches to IT and Web engineering, offering solutions and best practices for knowledge exchange within organizations. This publication focuses on research in a number of related disciplines, including data knowledge storage and retrieval, intelligent information systems, IT education and training, and IT readiness.

Inter-organizational information systems play a major role in improving communication and integration between partnering firms to achieve an integrated global supply chain. Current research in enterprise resource planning and electronic commerce is crucial to maintaining efficient supply chain management and organizational competitiveness. Techniques and Tools for the Design & Implementation of Enterprise Information Systems enables libraries to provide an invaluable resource to academicians and practitioners in fields such as operations management, Web engineering, information technology, and management information systems, providing insight into the effective design and implementation of enterprise information systems to improve communication and integration between partnering firms to achieve an integrated global supply chain.

There is no single approach to modelling and model-based systems development that is best for all possible situations. Therefore, a high-level overview is needed in order to evaluate the options and identify the optimal approach.

This unique textbook/reference introduces and describes in detail the SEQUAL framework for understanding the quality of models and modelling languages, including the numerous specialisations of the generic framework, and the various ways in which this can be used for different applications. Examples are provided from the application of SEQUAL in industrial and governmental settings.

Topics and features: contains case studies, chapter summaries, review questions, problems and exercises throughout the text, in addition to Appendices on terminology and abbreviations; presents a thorough introduction to the most important concepts in conceptual modelling, including the underlying philosophical outlook on the quality of models; describes the basic tasks and model types in information systems development and evolution, and the main methodologies for mixing different phases of information system development; provides an overview of the general mechanisms and perspectives used in conceptual modelling; predicts future trends in technological development, and discusses how the role of modelling can be envisaged in this landscape.

This didactic guide is essential reading for postgraduate students of computer science, software engineering and information systems wishing to learn more about conceptual modelling in their preparation for professional practice. Developers of information systems will also find the book an ideal reference to support their professional activity.

Business modelling is a vast arena of research and practice, which is gaining increasing important in the rapid development of e-commerce, globalization, and in particular, the movement toward global e-business. The ability to utilize advanced computing technology to model, analyse and simulate various aspects of ever-changing businesses has made a significant impact on the way businesses are designed and run these days. With the current global e-business and e-commerce initiatives, it has become important that all businesses carefully validate their business objectives, requirements, and strategies through a careful process of formal business modelling. It is important for effective enterprise decision making to have clear, concise business models that allow the extraction of critical value from business processes and specify the rules to be globally enforced. Particularly in e-business specifications, the need to be unambiguous, accurate, and complete becomes even greater, because there may be no human mediator or agent to rely on in complex or unforeseen situations. Business Modelling: Multidisciplinary Approaches - Economics, Operational, and Information Systems Perspectives, arranged in three parts, brings scholarly perspectives from various disciplines to bear on some of the critical aspects of business modeling. The first part (chapters 1-8) focuses on business modelling fundamentals and starts with a series of economics and operations research perspectives. The second part (chapters 9-19) concentrates on modelling in electronic businesses and focuses on Management Information Systems and Decision Support Systems. The third part (chapters 20-22) centers on multidisciplinary business modelling progress, in particular on the seminal work of Professor Andrew B. Whinston.

This second volume in the series covers such topics as information systems practice and theory, information systems and the accounting/auditing environment, and differing perspectives on information systems research.

This book presents a close look at the main developments in IT, business processes and offshore outsourcing. The authors study these topics in both theory and practice, exploring the rising prominence of outsourcing with a multi-dimensional, contextual perspective.

The idea for this conference came from a meeting of the IFIP (International Federation for Information Processing) Technical Committee for Information Systems (TC8) in Guimares, Portugal in June 2005. Our goal is to build an IFIP forum among the different Information Systems Communities of TC8 dealing with the increasing important area of Enterprise Information Systems. In this particular meeting the committee members intensively discussed the innovative and unique characteristics of Enterprise Information Systems as scientific sub-discipline. Hence, in this meeting it was decided by the TC8 members that the IFIP TC8 First International Conference on Research and Practical Issues of Enterprise Information Systems (CONFENIS 2006) would be held in April 2006 in Vienna, Austria. Dr. Li Xu (USA) and Dr. A Min Tjoa (IFIP TC8) were assigned to propose a concept for this conference in order to establish an IFIP platform for EIS researchers and practitioners in the field to share experience, and discussing opportunities and challenges. We are very pleased therefore to have this conference organised by the help of the Austrian Computer Society (OCG). OCG supports the idea of this conference due to the urgent need of research and dissemination of new techniques in this key area. We received 180 papers from more than 30 countries for CONFENIS and the Program Committee eventually selected xx papers or extended abstracts, making an acceptance rate of xx% of submitted papers. Each paper was thoroughly reviewed by at least two qualified reviewers.

Just like the industrial society of the last century depended on natural resources, today s society depends on information and its exchange.

Semantic Web technologies address the problem of information complexity by providing advanced support for representing and processing distributed information, while peer-to-peer technologies address issues of system complexity by allowing flexible and decentralized information storage and processing. Systems that are based on Semantic Web and peer-to-peer technologies promise to combine the advantages of the two mechanisms. A peer-to-peer style architecture for the Semantic Web will avoid both physical and semantic bottlenecks that limit information and knowledge exchange.

Staab and Stuckenschmidt structured the selected contributions into four parts: Part I, "Data Storage and Access," prepares the semantic foundation, i.e. data modelling and querying in a flexible and yet scalable manner. These foundations allow for dealing with the organization of information at the individual peers. Part II, "Querying the Network," considers the routing of queries, as well as continuous queries and personalized queries under the conditions of the permanently changing topological structure of a peer-to-peer network. Part III, "Semantic Integration," deals with the mapping of heterogeneous data representations. Finally Part IV, "Methodology and Systems," reports experiences from case studies and sample applications.

The overall result is a state-of-the-art description of the potential of Semantic Web and peer-to-peer technologies for information sharing and knowledge management when applied jointly. It serves researchers in academia and industry as an excellent and lasting reference and source of inspiration.

This book contains the papers presented and discussed at the conference that was held in May/June 1997, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA, and that was sponsored by Working Group 8.2 of the International Federation for Information Processing. IFIP established 8.2 as a group concerned with the interaction of information systems and the organization. Information Systems and Qualitative Research is essential reading for professionals and students working in information systems in a business environment, such as systems analysts, developers and designers, data administrators, and senior executives in all business areas that use information technology, as well as consultants in the fields of information systems, management, and quality management.

Electronic business today is not only business transactions supported in information and communication technologies; it is a new way of communicating and integrating with customers, suppliers, employees and other stakeholders. In this scenario, electronic business is now part of a wider economic context that is causing radical transformations in business and organizations including the entire value chain from customer service to supply chain management. One of the areas affected is marketing. Given that the new technologies have enabled firms to reach out to global customers and has provided them with the opportunity to customize their strategies and offerings in an unprecedented way, the dynamics of marketing must be surveyed in order to study the impact of new trends like mobile customer relationship management or mass customization on marketing function.

This book provides an overview of the e-Business and Marketing areas by uniting various papers from these fields. "Electronic Business and Marketing" includes theory and practice on electronic business and marketing from an academic and professional viewpoint providing also a forum for the exchange of research ideas and industry practices in these knowledge areas among practitioners, researchers and students.

Since SAP is emphasizing recent developments in operations management in its SCM initiative, this book describes the methodological background from the viewpoint of a company using SAP systems. It describes order processing both in an intra- and interorganizational perspective, as well as describing future developments and system enhancements.

This book is a result of the Tenth International Conference on Information Systems Development (ISD2001) held at Royal Holloway, University of London, United Kingdom, during September 5-7, 2001. ISD 2001 carries on the fine tradition established by the first Polish-Scandinavian Seminar on Current Trends in Information Systems Development Methodologies, held in Gdansk, Poland in 1988. Through the years, this seminar evolved into an International Conference on Information Systems Development. The Conference gives participants an opportunity to express ideas on the current state of the art in information systems development, and to discuss and exchange views on new methods, tools, applications as well as theory. In all, 55 papers were presented at ISD2001 organised into twelve tracks covering the following themes: Systems Analysis and Development, Modelling, Methodology, Database Systems, Collaborative Systems, Theory, Knowledge Management, Project Management, IS Education, Management issues, E-Commerce. and Technical Issues. We would like to thank all the contributing authors for making this book possible and for their participation in ISD200 1. We are grateful to our panel of paper reviewers for their help and support. We would also like to express our sincere thanks to Ceri Bowyer and Steve Brown for their unfailing support with organising ISD2001.