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This paper reports on the design and validation of a capability measurement instrument for software delivery teams that make use of the DevOps approach. The instrument is based on the results of a systematic literature review and was developed and validated by involving a total of five domain experts and conducting a field study among six DevOps team members. To this end, we used qualitative and survey-based data collection methods from participatory action research as well as design science. The resulting instrument encompasses five dimensions, covering seventeen capabilities and thirty-eight associated practices. The practices are evaluated on five capability levels. The results of the validation process indicate clear agreement of the domain experts and team members with all aspects of the instrument. As a contribution to practice, this research offers a pragmatic tool for IS practitioners which provides insight into the status of their DevOps transformation and offers directions for improving DevOps team performance. Furthermore, this research contributes to the ongoing research stream on DevOps by providing novel insights into the nature of DevOps capabilities and their potential configurations.

While global sourcing arrangements are highly complex and usually represent large value to the partners, little is known of the use of e-contracts or smart contracts and contract management systems to enhance the contract management process. In this paper we assess the potential of emerging technologies for global sourcing. We review current sourcing contract issues and evaluate three technologies that have been applied to enhance contracting processes. These are (1) semantic standardisation, (2) cognitive technologies and (3) smart contracts and blockchain. We discuss that each of these seem to have their merit for contract management and potentially can contribute to contract management in more complex and dynamic sourcing arrangements. The combination and configuration in which these three technologies will provide value to sourcing should be on the agenda for future research in sourcing contract management.

In today's competitive market, the need to continuously improve quality and lead time of IT services becomes more important. Over the last decades, too much complexity has been added to IT organizations after they had introduced IT frameworks like COBIT for IT Governance or ITIL for IT service management. As a result, many organizations face process inefficiencies and an increase in IT operational costs. Even though COBIT and ITIL, that we use as a reference in our research, contain continuous improvement (CI) processes and guidelines, their approach and effectiveness has been criticized. In this paper, we propose to apply Lean and Six Sigma, CI-approaches that gained popularity in other areas in industry, to CI of IT services. We use metamodeling to integrate Lean and Six Sigma to develop an integrated approach of Lean Six Sigma for CI of IT Services. Our Metamodels provide a visual representation to capture and integrate the main elements of Lean, Six Sigma, and Lean Six Sigma and model their interface with the IT Services framework. We apply metamodeling as part of a Design Science Research Methodology (DSRM) and use the Framework for Evaluation in Design Research (FEDS) to evaluate our results using practitioners in the evaluation. The objective of our research is to present a standard method for IT-Services CI. The resulting framework should support the design and implementation, in a standard way, of CI organizations to improve IT Service delivery.

Automation of Knowledge-Based services is the natural evolution of Robotic Process Automation (RPA), fueled by new technologies, often categorized as Cognitive Automation (CA). The purposes of this research are to (1) explore the Expertise Shared Services and Centers of Expertise functions where automation of knowledge-based processes is most suitable and (2) understand the value drivers and primary tactical challenges in adopting a strategy for automating Knowledge-Based expertise services. In addition to a literature review conducted, we conducted in-depth interviews with selected executives and experts. We developed case studies to better understand how Software Bots can be deployed for automating Knowledge-Based Expertise Services in organizations when they transition to automation of knowledge-driven processes. Results of our research indicate that the majority of executives and experts are aware of the need for automating Knowledge-Based Expertise Services but most remain unclear regarding its value or how to invest in adoption of this new trend.

This paper investigates the suitability of the ArchiMate modelling language for the purposes of modelling value and related concepts and approaches. Based on this we propose several improvement which can help enterprise architects come one step closer to being able to model all aspects of an organisation, from its strategy, to the value it should create and deliver, to the abilities which are needed to realise this value, and to the architecture which supports this value creation and delivery. This can aid with motivating the value of a project, making changes directly aimed at improving customer value, and visualising the value exchanges within the value network of the organisation.

Part 2: Social Media and E-Participation; International audience; Social media such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube are often seen as political game changers. Yet little is known of the effects of social media on local politics. In this paper the Social Media Participation Model (SMPM) is introduced for studying the effects of social media on local political communities. The SMPM aims to explore the relationship between Social Media Participation and Community Participation. The model comprises four constructs: Social Media Choice, Social Media Use, Sense of Community and Community Engagement. The design of the case study was based on the SMPM and took place among the members and parties of the Enschede council, from a large municipality in the Netherlands. Social media participation levels were measured and compared with the Social Media Indicator (SMI). A negative correlation between Social Media Use and Sense of Community has been discovered. However, we could not find a causal effect that explains this correlation. To analyze the effects in more detail, we show directions for further improvement of the model.

This paper surveys the current organizational requirements of agile business networks and then studies how emerging ICT are addressing the needs. The paper concludes that while several requirements are covered by novel cloud and Saas offerings, several requirements related to service coordination, collaboration, risk management and relation management are not properly addressed by ICT offerings yet. The paper proposes coordination as a service (CAAS) to fill this gap and outlines the key characteristics of CAAS.

Today's dynamic and iterative development environment brings significant challenges for software project management. In distributed project settings, "management by walking around" is no longer an option and project managers may miss out on key project insights. The TESNA (TEchnical Social Network Analysis) method and tool aims to provide project managers both a method and a tool for gaining insights and taking corrective action. TESNA achieves this by analysing a project's evolving social and technical network structures using data from multiple sources, including CVS, email and chat repositories. Using pattern theory, TESNA helps to identify areas where the current state of the project's social and technical networks conflicts with what patterns suggest. We refer to such a conflict as a Socio-Technical Structure Clash (STSC). In this paper we report on our experience of using TESNA to identify STSCs in a corporate environment through the mining of software repositories. We find multiple instances of three STSCs (Conway's Law, Code Ownership and Project Coordination) in many of the on-going development projects, thereby validating the method and tool that we have developed.

Little specific research has been conducted to date on the adaptation of agile information systems development (ISD) methods. This chapter presents the work practice in dealing with the adaptation of such a method in the ISD department of one of the leading financial institutes in Europe. The chapter introduces the idea of method adaptation as an underlying phenomenon concerning how an agile method has been adapted to a project situation or vice versa in the case organization. In this respect, method adaptation is conceptualized as a process or capability in which agents holding intentions through responsive changes in, and dynamic interplays between, contexts and method fragments determine an appropriate method for a specific project situation. Two forms of method adaptation, static adaptation and dynamic adaptation, are introduced and discussed in detail. We provide some insights plus an instrument that the ISD department studied uses to deal with the dynamic method adaptation. To enhance our understanding of the observed practice, we take into account two complementary perspectives: the engineering perspective and the socio-organizational perspective. Practical and theoretical implications of this study are discussed.

In this paper we study the application of simulation as a method to support information system and process design in complex organizational transitions. We apply a combined use of a collaborative workshop approach with the use of a detailed and accurate graphical simulation model in a hospital that is in a major transition. The simulation represents the future situation of the hospital and enables the healthcare professionals to analyze and reflect on processes, planning, staffing and collaboration, and the new organizational processes and systems. We follow an action research setup in which, conducting iterative workshops, our simulation model is enhanced and fine-tuned. The data collected from the workshops reveal that the benefits of using simulations in complex organizational transitions include a substantial increase of awareness, insights and acceptance by the medical and administrative staff.

Although recently several studies have addressed the required skills of effective CIOs, little is known of the actual behavior successful CIOs. In this study, we explore the behavior of highly effective CIOs by video-recording CIOs at work. The two CIOs videotaped were nominated as CIO of the year. We analyze the data in an innovative and systematic way by developing and using a behavioral leadership coding scheme. The analysis indicates that highly effective CIOs are good listeners. They also often verify previously made agreements; structure the conversation; and provide subordinates with factual information. We also compare the behavior of the highly effective CIOs to a sample of 25 highly effective middle managers. Whereas the CIOs spend little time defending themselves against their subordinates and are mostly involved in steering, middle-managers spend much more time defending themselves and show more support for their subordinates. We conclude that our new video observation-and-coding method is viable to analyze and better understand the behavior of CIOs.

This paper presents the results of a detailed literature review on enterprise resource planning (ERP) benefits, carried out according to the guidelines by Webster et al. (2002). The identified benefits are mapped onto previously identified benefit categories. Based on this mapping a list of literature gaps is identified and a three-dimensional conceptual benefit framework is developed. It is build upon several benefit dimensions and the balanced scorecard approach. The framework is supposed to help in the identification, realization and assessment of ERP benefits. Special focus is put on benefits management in cross-organizational ERP implementations.

Dit artikel is een weergave van presentaties en rondetafelgesprekken op een bijeenkomst over informatiemanagement in het onderwijs op 8 oktober 2008. Allereerst schetst Erik Rutkens een aantal organisatorische en IT-ontwikkelingen in het onderwijs. Informatiemanagement kan instellingen helpen om adequaat op deze ontwikkelingen in te spelen. Aan de orde komen: de definitie van informatiemanagement, enkele theoretische modellen, en knelpunten bij informatiemanagement in het onderwijs. Tot slot wordt aan de hand van een praktijkvoorbeeld getoond hoe onderwijsinstellingen informatiemanagement effectief kunnen organiseren. Jos van Hillegersberg gaat vervolgens in op een aantal trends die het gevolg zijn van de ‘service-economie’, de gevolgen en/of mogelijkheden voor het onderwijs en de rol van informatiemanagement.

The advent of global distribution of software development has made managing collaboration and coordination among developers more difficult due to various reasons including physical distance, differences in time, cultural differences etc. A nearly total absence of informal communication among developers makes coordinating work in a globally distributed setting more critical. The goal of this workshop is to provide an opportunity for researchers and industry practitioners to explore both the state-of-the art in tools and methodologies for managing global software development (GSD).

Adoption rates of traditional Operations Research (OR) based decision support systems (DSS) suffer from perceived complexity of the underlying model and its detrimental effect on user-friendliness. The mental effort required to understand abstract models can hinder adoption. This barrier may seem even greater to people with low analytic capabilities. Unfortunately it is often this user group that could benefit the most from using OR based DSS. Agent based approaches on the other hand typically model negotiations between real-world counterparts. Extending cognitive fit theory we argue that presenting DSS in an agent based fashion allows for a closer match between the model presented on screen and the mental model of the user. We tested the impact of DSS presentation on perceived usefulness in a lab experiment (n=118). Our data suggests that an agent presentation outperforms an OR based DSS for perceived usefulness for low analytic users.

This paper presents the past, present, and our view on future user requirements and tool functionalities supporting Globally Distributed Software Teams and highlights the changing emphasis in these user requirements.

Het vakgebied van informatiekunde richt zich het afstemmen van informatie communicatietechnologie ICT organisatie Dit afstemmen wederzijds Ook een organisatie kan zich aanpassen aan mogelijkheden die ICT biedt Academische informatiekunde bevindt zich een overangsgebied tussen informatica onderzoek bedrijfskunde onderzoek Informatica onderzoek richt zich het ontwerpen van nieuwe technieken maar vergeet daarbij nog wel eens die technieken valideren Het resultaat dat het verschil tussen oplossingen hypes niet altijd even duidelijk Bedrijfskunde daarentegen onderzoekt problemen bedrijven maar houdt zich verre van het oplossen daarvan omdat wetenschappers bestudeerde verschijnselen niet mogen nvloeden Kortom enigszins kort door bocht informatica onderzoek levert ongevalideerde methoden technieken terwijl bedrijfskunde onderzoek nutteloze empirische generalisaties oplevert Geen van beide vakgebieden stimuleert dus tot navolging Wat een goede manier informatiekunde onderzoek doen Voor het antwoord kijken naar ingenieurswetenschappen wetenschappen die kennis voor ingenieurs genereren bestaat een hardnekking misverstand dat ingenieurs resultaten van zuiver wetenschappelijk onderzoek toepassen Niets minder waar een grondige studie van manier waarop eerste helft van twintigste eeuw kennis vliegtuigbouw

This study reports on a cross-industry analysis of the current drivers for agility and agility gaps, which companies are facing in four industry sectors in the Netherlands. A framework was constructed to measure the gaps between the current level of business agility and the required level of business agility. The questionnaire and in-depth interviews reveal that today’s businesses lack the agility required to quickly respond to largely unanticipated changes. The paper presents rankings of generic and sector-specific agility gaps. These show that although some generic drivers exist, key drivers are very different across industry sectors.

Component Based Software Development (CBD) holds high promises, but develops its full potential only when software components are traded in a component market. The Internet seems ideal for this purpose and various sources have predicted a bright future for the Internet Software Component Market (SCM). However, very little is known about the current status, structure and trends within the SCM. This study develops a model of the SCM and a classification of components traded in the SCM. Using these, a number of propositions are developed and tested using a longitudinal dataset. The results show that the SCM is still in its early stage although there are some trends towards a mature market. The research method deployed in this study provides insights into how the SCM develops and can also be deployed to study other e-markets.

The current practice of data dissemination via data portals exhibits scalability limitations. Technically, the use of keywords and themes for the description of data semantics cannot keep up with the growing number and topical diversity of published datasets. At the same time, the publish-find-bind model of data dissemination decouples data discovery from data access which makes it increasingly difficult to find data that can be (re)used in combination with other data for the construction of tailored data products. However, data application developers increasingly need to see all the data not only from one provider but also from several providers as a whole in runtime. In this context, Linked Data (LD) as a technique for publishing structured semantically rich data on the Web is able to open up the data silos of the traditional data portals. Being based on well-known Web technologies (such as HTTP), interoperable semantic standards and graph data model, LD makes it possible to perform data discovery, access and integration in one step. Apart from that, LD creates a Web-scale semantic infrastructure that enables interoperability not only between separate databases but also between organisations. However, converting existing datasets into LD as is does not allow the realisation of these properties. In fact, original data sources were created with the closed world assumption in mind and, therefore, lacked connections between each other and the existing semantic infrastructure. For this reason, the realisation ofLDadvantages requires data to be semantically enriched, which is a knowledge and labour-demanding task. Additionally, data providers meet an organizational challenge. Investment in semantic enrichment (SE) of provider data to leverage LD requires evaluation of benefits that are difficult to quantify. A common and well-understood approach of use-case-driven development is too narrow to cover all business requirements and, therefore, is not adequate to demonstrate the added value of LD. Instead, this thesis proposes enabling exploratory search (ES) of data as an integrated approach towards developing LD in an organisation. This proposition is supported by two major research contributions presented in this work, namely (1) a business rationale for LD implementation and (2) technical requirements of SE instantiated by a number of developed data and software artefacts. Technical requirements of SE are framed as four data enrichment levels: (1) ontological, (2) conceptual, (3) instantial and (4) literal. Semantic enrichment design principles for each of these levels are created based on the analysis of the data-related requirements and functional limitations of existing ES systems. The analysed systems are grouped into nine categories according to the exploratory techniques they facilitate. This makes it possible to abstract from particular implementations and formulate requirements for each of the categories. The business rationale for LD implementation is based on the analysis of the roles that LD plays in the realisation of a business vision of a large public data provider. Deriving from the experience of the development of a data platform at the Netherlands’ Cadastre Land Registry and Mapping Agency (Kadaster), it is concluded that LD directly contributes to the operationalisation of three out of four business ambitions, namely, (1) enabling a use-case oriented vision, (2) increasing the data value, and (3) ensuring the certainty of the data and legitimacy of the organization. The remaining ambition of being a spatial data provider can be fulfilled by conventional technologies, however, LD indirectly contributes to reaching users outside of the GIS community. These findings are used to prioritise the previously identified technical requirements of SE to achieve alignment with the business vision. As a result of this prioritisation, two semantic enrichment scenarios that combine design principles into two groups according to their advancement level are formulated, implemented, and evaluated. The driving reason for the division of scenarios is to differentiate design principles that are easy to implement but that lead to high gains in terms of ES (the first scenario) from those that require greater efforts but at the same time lead to maximum possible results (the second scenario). The first scenario focuses on ES-enabling semantic enrichment of datasets that have thematically similar content but are curated by several independent data providers. The design principles covered in the first scenario allow to create and disseminate LD representation of existing data on top of existing spatial data infrastructures (SDIs) without altering already implemented data pipelines and structures. They are put to test during the development of the Open European Location Services (OpenELS) project, a collaborative effort aimed at the construction of European-level SDI for the provision of geospatial data within the Spatial Information in the Europe Community (INSPIRE) initiative. The second scenario, in contrast, covers the creation of explorable Knowledge Graphs, voluminous data sources that combine datasets with a wide range of topics from a multitude of knowledge domains. Apart from the topical diversity, the design principles of this scenario also cater for a large volume of spatio-temporal data by utilising topological relations for the creation of hierarchical spatial partitioning. Construction of the Kadaster Knowledge Graph (KKG) by combining 12 datasets curated by 8 organisations represented the evaluation of the second scenario design principles. The usability of the graph was assessed during the creation of three applications, namely data browsing, urban planning, and the development of a chatbot. There are several important characteristics of the research that influence the applicability of research contributions. The first limitation stems from the fact that a major part of the research is conducted in a governmental institution, namely Kadaster. Therefore, for for-profit organisations, the business rationale for LD implementation has relevance in parts related to revenue-focused business ambitions such as use case orientedness and data value increase. Another limitation is that the rationale is based on qualitative reasoning which implies that it does not provide an understanding of how much resources implementation of LD can take. For the data and software artefacts created as a part of this research, it is important to emphasise that their evaluation is based on providing semantic enrichment and exploratory search capabilities and does not include usability testing. However, in this respect, the design principles of both scenarios were discussed within a large group of specialists involved in their implementation, then taken into use within their organisations, and considered applicable and useful. The approach presented in this thesis is thought to be beneficial for the following application domains and target groups. First of all, the research contributes to the topics of data dissemination and data- and semantic- infrastructure development. Therefore, it is of interest to data owners, data custodians and data providers including but not limited to National Mapping and Cartographic Agencies (NMCAs), since the research is greatly concerned with the utilisation of spatial and temporal data components for linking and consolidating data assets into one virtual data source. This can be particularly appealing for data scientists and engineers who are confronted with tailored data product development as well as application developers who work with heterogeneous cross-domain data to create novel applications. From the viewpoint of software development companies, this work can be considered as a blueprint for semantic enrichment scenarios to be supported by data management tools, and as such, it can help in foreseeing market demands in terms of functional requirements. Apart from that, the research findings add to the business rationalisation of semantic enrichment in organisations. Therefore, managers who are responsible for data desilofication strategies and business developers who are concerned with the development and operationalisation of the business vision are among the target groups of this work. Exploratory search over big and distributed data is another application domain of the thesis, therefore the analysis of ES system requirements towards data quality is of particular interest to the community of ES researchers and software developers. Finally, elaboration on the topics of Knowledge Graphs development presented in this work contributes to the ongoing discussion in the Semantic Web and Linked Data communities and therefore, is of interest to them.

The transition from hierarchical control structures to heterarchical control structures enables assets to become intelligent. Intelligent assets could include raw materials, components or products, as well as transit equipment (e.g., pallets, packages) and transportation systems (e.g., conveyers, trucks and cars). By delegating control to assets, we enable autonomous behaviour, i.e., decision-making without external or central control. Through cooperation with the environment and other assets, the system may be able to organise itself. That is, without external or central control or maybe even without a reference to the global objectives of the system. In other words, a self-organizing system consists of autonomous assets, each with their own goal. Through mutual cooperation they are able to achieve a common goal. In this thesis, we view self-organizing logistics as a way to cope with the complex, dynamic and stochastic nature of the logistics sector and the abovementioned challenges.

Whereas real-time data nowadays is widely available and advanced data-driven approaches are emerging, organizations in the Dutch logistics industry, in particular Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs), lack the expertise to effectively identify which data-driven logistics applications are suitable and which tools to use to subsequently adopt these approaches in their daily operations. Based on the design science research methodology, this PDEng thesis presents the results and findings related to the research, design, development, demonstration, and implementation of an industry platform for data-driven logistics based on the Open Trip Model (OTM), to create re-usable data-driven applications for SMEs in the Dutch logistics industry. The core contribution of this PDEng thesis is the architecture for an industry platform for data-driven logistics that is tailored to the need of SMEs. The industry platform architecture consists of the following components and interfaces: 1) a graphical user interface for SMEs to access platform services, 2) APIs for data exchange based on the OTM, 3) an OTM compliant database for unified storage of logistics data, 4) an agent repository for re-usable data-driven applications and development tool for testing various algorithms, and 5) a scalable infrastructure for provisioning computing resources to deploy, run, and monitor agents. The industry platform architecture is complemented with a design canvas, workshop materials, implementation guidelines, and adoption framework to transfer the industry platform functionality to SMEs as part of a learning community. The industry platform concept is verified by means of an expert panel consultation, deployed for testing, and its use is demonstrated and validated using case-based research at a Dutch logistics services provider. The results and findings are disseminated to the scientific community via peer-reviewed publications and presentations during international conferences and workshops. Additionally, the results and findings are communicated to the logistics community via professional reports, presentations and workshops at industry events, and articles in the media. The instantiated industry platform and case study support awareness building of potential data-driven logistics applications in the logistics industry and lowering the barriers for SMEs to start adopting data-driven approaches in their daily practice. The industry platform provides a foundation for further empirical research and a rich testbed for experimental development of data-driven logistics approaches in logistics. Future research will focus on comparing modern, traditional and hybrid data-driven approaches, experimenting with federated learning among SMEs, and incorporating data sharing concepts as part of the federated data sharing infrastructure that is currently being developed for the Dutch logistics industry.

‘A comparative study of corporate sustainability, strategic corporate social responsibility and market value creation among companies operating in India’ is an original research carried out in India. The study consists of two parts-qualitative and quantitative. The qualitative part includes practice-oriented study on corporate sustainability (CS) and corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives undertaken by multinational companies, Indian private companies and public sector enterprises operating in India. The quantitative part includes study on five dimensions of strategic CSR (Burke & Logsdon 1996); the pyramid of CSR (Carroll 1991); three components of CSR, namely principles of charity, stewardship (Lawrence, Weber & Post 2005), and environmental friendliness for market value creation among enterprises operating in India. The research design is a mixed sequential exploratory model (Tashakkori & Teddlie 2003) wherein qualitative research followed by quantitative research for theory development and testing. The qualitative research involves information gathered through author’s own two decades of industry experience; gathering information and interacting with senior management professionals practicing CS and/or CSR in 43 companies (multinationals, Indian private and public sector enterprises) operating in India. The validity of data gathered through qualitative research is determined through triangulation, pattern matching and member checking. The analysis of qualitative data was undertaken using thematic analysis- coding, data reduction, categorization, and theme development. The themes derived from clusters of companies analyzed, compared in terms of CS and CSR initiatives. The qualitative study reflects relative performance of CS and CSR per company in descending order as: PSE (2.70), Indian private (2.18) and MNC (1.00).

The adoption of urban smartness concept for the rural area is recently gaining attention, especially as a vehicle to improve the citizens' economic welfare. In this context, this paper presents ongoing research exploring the adoption effort through the development of e-government service platform that facilitates the entrepreneurial discovery as the key for rural area's economic growth. This research follows the design science research methodology (DSRM) as the guidance in defining, designing, and implementing the research artefacts. There are two main research artefacts will be delivered from this research that expected to fill in the gaps from the previous works. First, the theoretical model that describes the key features of urban smartness concept for the realisation of economic benefit for the citizens in a rural area. Second, the design of the e-government service platform customised to the rural context. These research artefacts will be demonstrated and validated using a case study in West Java province, Indonesia, as the region has a strong vision to improve the economic welfare of the people in their rural area through digital initiatives. As the preliminary result, this research proposes a conceptual framework that suggests the urban smartness technology, combined with the organisational and environmental capabilities, can lead to the improvement of the economic welfare of the citizens in rural area through a process that encourages innovation in the local communities.

Without doubt the renewable energy (RE) sector in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) is currently booming exponentially. More often than not, these projects are designed as just “projects” thus leading to their failure in the shortest possible time. This can be easily seen from numerous already failed projects. Given that energy is the backbone of the economy in the region, the continuous use of unsustainable methods of energy generation coupled with the epileptic power supply and infrastructure, such circumstances cannot continue to prevail. The long-term sustainability characteristics of these so-called projects are rarely considered during their planning and implementation. Despite the existence and buzz created by the annotation of sustainable development, in the region of SSA, it does seem like these definitions are nonexistent. This thesis develops and presents integrated sustainability mechanisms that should be considered by stakeholders participating in the development and implementation of RE projects in SSA. A bottom-up approach is utilized that investigates the failures of existing projects while presenting the current state of affairs. Multiple sustainability characteristics – that include location analysis, sustainable management, protection of infrastructure and societal benefits – are presented and their application in the region is further executed. For any RE project implemented in the region of SSA to be successful, the integrated sustainability mechanisms presented in this thesis “must” be adopted.

The environment of organisations is changing more rapidly in the recent years, which makes it increasingly more difficult to stay competitive. Organisations need to ensure that when they make transformations, they focus on maintaining or improving their strategic alignment. However, the current research is not sufficient for addressing these needs, mainly due to a lack of cross-disciplinary knowledge. The Enterprise Strategic Alignment Method (ESAM) is designed to help organisations improve their strategic alignment by combining information from four different disciplines, namely Strategic Management, Capability-based planning, Enterprise Architecture, and Portfolio Management. The focus of the ESAM is on the collaboration between different stakeholders within an organisation, with an emphasis on improving communication, facilitating better partnerships, supporting improved governance, promoting an integrated architecture, and ensuring an alignment between the different types of organisational measurements. The ESAM has been validated and evaluated with the help of three very distinct case studies, in terms of organisation type and scope of the case study. The results indicate that the method has had a positive influence on aspects relating to communication, which are identified by literature as enablers of strategic alignment, while other aspects have proven to be situational. The ESAM is also supported by a software tool (a management dashboard template, several canvases, and a strategy design tool) and by two serious games (one board game and one computer game).

Current architectures for online retail do not provide the right level of flexibility in adopting new services to achieve continuous customer satisfaction and to optimize e-commerce performance. Retailers who rely on pre-packaged or custom-built software are struggling to keep the pace with new trends like cross-border or omni-channel commerce. A promising approach to overcome many software adoption obstacles and to improve pluggability in service-oriented architectures are cloud services. This thesis introduced a novel quality model that allows to assess the pluggability of those services in common platform architectures for e-commerce. Following a design science methodology, a state of the art architectural model is instantiated by means of a platform prototype to which the quality model is applied in order to measure the prototype’s service pluggability and gradually enhance the architectural model. A number of pluggable services for cross-selling, sales forecasting, and trade compliance are presented that reflect the recent trends in online retail. The covered services permit to demonstrate the functionality of the platform prototype and to evaluate the architecture’s capability to improve service pluggability.

Little scientific literature addresses the issue of quality of semantic standards, albeit a problem with high economic and social impact. Our problem survey, including 34 semantic Standard Setting Organizations (SSOs), gives evidence that quality of standards can be improved, but for improvement a quality measurement instrument is needed. 81% of the survey respondents is interested in using such instrument. It can be expected that improved quality of semantic standards will lead to improved interoperability and improved economic welfare and social life. Our main research question is: What are the characteristics of an instrument to measure quality of semantic standards that will aid standard developers in improving their standards? Based on design science methodology this research developed such an instrument, called iQMSS (instrument for Quality Model of Semantic Standards). The iQMSS involves three types of artifacts: artifacts related to the Quality Model of Semantic Standards (QMSS), the Semantic Standard Model (SSM), and the instrumentalization. On the highest abstraction level SMO (Software Measurement Ontology) from the software engineering domain was selected and used for the creation of both QMSS and SSM with consistent concepts and definitions. The extensive research process included coverage of both scientific studies and practical experiences, and led to the highly customizable final version of the iQMSS, in line with the gathered requirements. The main artifact QMSS consists of in total 100 quality aspects structured within three hierarchical trees; product quality (intrinsic), process quality (the organization of the standard), and quality in practice (application of the standard). The SSM is applied upfront to gather knowledge about the standard, create overview and understanding about what we are able to measure in practice for a specific standard. The main concepts within the model are the standards’ context, its content, its development and maintenance processes, and its application. On the lowest level it contains 33 aspects of a semantic standard. The glue between the artifacts is the usage model, which describes how the iQMSS should be applied including four roles. !e end result after each application is the analysis report which provides the basis for a standards’ improvement project. But does the iQMSS aid standard developers in improving their standards? Our validation cases, in the temporary staffing and education domains, suggest that the iQMSS identifies improvement suggestions. Based on the validation workshops we held in both the United States and the Netherlands, we believe that the iQMSS will be used in practice as aid for standards developers.

Today’s dynamic and distributed development environment brings significant challenges for software project management. In distributed project settings, “management by walking around” is no longer an option, and project managers may miss out on key project insights. At the same time, the high coordination requirements caused by the dynamic distributed environment can cause many coordination difficulties and can even lead to coordination breakdowns. In response to some of these problems, researchers have developed detailed patterns for describing the preferred relationships between the team communication structure (the social network) and the technical software architecture. We call such patterns Socio-Technical Patterns. As they capture a wide variety of knowledge and experience Socio, Technical and Socio-Technical Patterns (or Socio/Technical Patterns in short) are potentially very useful for the project manager in planning and monitoring complex development projects. However, these patterns are hard to implement and monitor in practice. The reason behind this is that it is difficult to find coordination problems in order to apply the solutions provided by the Socio/Technical Patterns, as purely manual techniques are labour intensive. Especially within dynamic and iterative distributed environments, the use of Socio/Technical Patterns is challenging. But, even in small companies, employing between 20 and 50 developers (ref Chapter 5 and 6), the social network and the relation to the software tasks can get quite complicated for the software manager to track. As part of the TESNA (TEchnical Social Network Analysis) project, we have developed a method and a tool that a project manager can use in order to identify specific coordination problems that we call Socio/Technical Structure Clashes (STSCs). We have evaluated the TESNA method and tool in two commercial case studies (Chapters 5 and 6) and multiple case studies in the Open Source development environment (Chapter 7).