Factors impacting the perceived organizational support of IT employees

Organizations today face shortages of IT personnel. We investigated workplace factors in one state government in hope of identifying factors that influence perceived organizational support (POS) within an IT work environment. A combination of job characteristics (challenging job and perceived workload), job stressors (work exhaustion, role conflict, and role ambiguity), and the organization’s discretionary actions (pay-for-performance and mentoring opportunities) were measured and hierarchical regression was used to determine the relationships. Four control variables were also included (age, gender, organizational tenure, and professional versus administrator status). Role ambiguity, role conflict, work exhaustion, career mentoring, and pay-for-performance together explained 62% of the variance in the IT employees’ POS. Career mentoring and role ambiguity explained most of the variance.     

Corporate management's role in system development

Assimilation of computer technology by organizations is an organizational learning process that has unique characteristics. Organizations are in different stages of development. These stages provide the foundation for developing adequate situation management emphasis.This paper is based on experience gained in the author auditing and consultancy practice. It discusses some underlying factors that nowadays in typical organizations seem to drive the assimilation process. The consequences that arise with regard to appropriate management emphasis are highlighted.     

敏捷测试管理探讨

信息技术的发展日新月异,市场的快速变化对软件产品的开发过程要求既能快速发布又要能够迅速适应市场变化以便赢得市场,由此敏捷开发孕育而生。软件测试作为产品质量保证的一个重要环节,敏捷过程中的测试改进逐渐得到更多的关注。本文针对敏捷过程中由于快速应对变化导致的测试覆盖充分性与测试时间压力的矛盾冲突,从测试管理的角度,重点分析敏捷测试中的组织、策略和过程管理流程,以确保缩短测试时间,提高测试中对过程和状态的监控能力,保证测试覆盖率、测试有效性和产品质量。     

Managers,spreadsheets and computing growth: contagion or control?

Abstract. It is widely accepted that managers do not make the most of the opportunities offered by information technology (IT). This study set out to investigate why by establishing what computing facilities managers actually use, and how they use them. The original hypothesis was that adoption of technology was limited by poor training and lack of interest in IT. We set out to establish empirical findings by interviewing managers face to face at their place of work. An exploratory investigation of this nature must adopt a non-directive approach which is not amenable to questionnaire-type survey techniques, and which produces 'soft' rather than quantitative data. As the 'soft' nature of the data ruled out strict statistical methods we used a 'search and refine' technique, to build a structure from all the information we received during the interviews until a clear body of results emerged and could be clarified and confirmed. The research broadly supports the lack of training hypothesis but finds that far from being uninterested, managers are very interested in using IT, but only where it is directly relevant to their own work. The study suggests that training is not enough and must be supplemented by control. The findings support but also refute aspects of Nolan's stage theoy of computing growth. Further research to confirm these findings would be useful, as would comparative studies in organizations where controls on spreadsheets are in place.     

软件互联网行业对敏捷开发及管理模式的应用及分析

对目前国际上流行有效的敏捷项目管理方法之一的Scrum 进行了研究,简要介绍敏捷开发定义、适用场景、管理工具,以及相应的管理模式。详细介绍Scrum 冲刺流程和定义,以Scrum 为例结合敏捷开发管理模式在互联网及软件行业实际应用情况,讨论了其存在的优势和可以继续优化的方向。     

一种基于角色Agent的层次网格任务调度处理模型

文章讨论了一种新型的网格任务调度模型。该模型将角色层次资源组织、角色工作流、角色协作思想与网格计算相结合,将复杂的计算任务分解成小块并分交给多个节点协同完成,从而使原先只能单节点运行的战术计算功能,现在能由多节点同时处理,有效地解决了传统网格系统中由于任务量太大和处理复杂而产生的诸如：资源使用效率低下,要求服务器配置高,任务调度产生停顿等问题。     

Communities of practice in a large distributed agile software development organization – Case Ericsson

ContextCommunities of practice—groups of experts who share a common interest or topic and collectively want to deepen their knowledge—can be an important part of a successful lean and agile adoption in particular in large organizations.ObjectiveIn this paper, we present a study on how a large organization within Ericsson with 400 persons in 40 Scrum teams at three sites adopted the use of Communities of Practice (CoP) as part of their transformation from a traditional plan-driven organization to lean and agile.MethodsWe collected data by 52 semi-structured interviews on two sites, and longitudinal non-participant observation of the transformation during over 20 site visits over a period of two years.ResultsThe organization had over 20 CoPs, gathering weekly, bi-weekly or on a need basis. CoPs had several purposes including knowledge sharing and learning, coordination, technical work, and organizational development. Examples of CoPs include Feature Coordination CoPs to coordinate between teams working on the same feature, a Coaching CoP to discuss agile implementation challenges and successes and to help lead the organizational continuous improvement, an end-to-end CoP to remove bottlenecks from the flow, and Developers CoPs to share good development practices. Success factors of well-functioning CoPs include having a good topic, passionate leader, proper agenda, decision making authority, open community, supporting tools, suitable rhythm, and cross-site participation when needed. Organizational support include creating a supportive atmosphere and providing a suitable infrastructure for CoPs.ConclusionsIn the case organization, CoPs were initially used to support the agile transformation, and as part of the distributed Scrum implementation. As the transformation progressed, the CoPs also took on the role of supporting continuous organizational improvements. CoPs became a central mechanism behind the success of the large-scale agile implementation in the case organization that helped mitigate some of the most pressing problems of the agile transformation.     

基于角色和时序式的虚拟协同设计冲突解决机制研究*

针对虚拟协同设计中的设计冲突问题,提出了基于角色和时序式的协同设计冲突解决机制。在分析虚拟协同设计环境特点的基础上,根据冲突产生的原因将其划分为不同的种类。对协同设计中的冲突行为进行建模,引入模糊数学中隶属度的概念来表示不同角色的优先级,并通过矩阵运算来确定角色对模型的操作权。介绍了角色的管理及变更机制,在虚拟协同设计环境中得到了应用验证。