Information Technology Domain Research Articles

The impact of Use Cases in real-world software development projects: A systematic mapping study

ContextThere is abundant literature on the application of UML Use Cases. However, the impact that these applications have had on real projects (in industry) is not well known. It is necessary to know what the impact of the Use Cases really is, so that both, researchers and professionals can make the most pertinent decisions. ObjectiveTo identify and classify the positive and negative impacts of using Use Cases in real-world settings. MethodWe conducted a systematic mapping study. The search strategies retrieved a set of 4431 papers out of which 47 were selected as primary studies. We defined four facets to classify these studies: 1) the positive impact (advantages), 2) the negative impact (disadvantages), 3) the industry's domain and 4) the type of research reported. ResultsOur study identified eight categories of advantages related to the application of Use Cases. The most mentioned were estimation, analysis and automation. These advantages had a heterogeneous distribution along the years. On the other hand, the granularity of the scenarios described in the Use Cases, the lack of a standardized format for specifying requirements, and the lack of appropriate guidelines for analysing them were the most mentioned disadvantages. We identified a variety of industry domains, grouped into seven categories. As we can expect most of the papers report experiences in the Information Technology domain, followed by financials applications. Almost half the papers applied evaluation research, including an empirical validation. Only one third of the analysed papers reported threats to validity, the most mentioned being generalizability (38%). ConclusionsUse Cases have proven to be a useful tool in software development, particularly during the early stages. The positive effects far outweigh the few negative effects reported, although this may be due to the researchers' tendency of not reporting negative results.

Business process management in the port sector: a literature review

Purpose This paper aims to review the application of business process management (BPM) in the port sector. Its objective is to understand whether BPM principles are applied in the port sector, the role of the procedural factor in port performance evaluation and whether electronic data interchange systems have been used for process management purposes. Design/methodology/approach The objective of this research is to conduct a critical review of existing academic literature in the domain of BPM and its application in the ports sector. This paper assessed more than a hundred recent publications, from key journals in the domains of port economics, BPM and information technology. The two principle platforms used are the online databases of the World Bank Group and the University of Antwerp. Findings Academic literature reviewed reveals a partial application of BPM in the port and maritime sector. BPM related research is conducted via the utilization of modeling algorithms or optimization and simulation tools. There exists evidence that electronic data interchange (EDI) data extracted from EDI platforms can be used to model inter-organizational business processes in several industries. Yet, to the best of the author’s knowledge, no research investigates Port Community System (PCS) or single window (SW) data utilization for BPM purposes, although PCS and SW benefits are well documented. Port performance is largely assessed based on the production theory, and limited number of studies use elements of procedural efficiency as variables for their analysis. Originality/value The holistic application of BPM has been researched in numerous industries but in the port sector. This paper constitutes the first section of an original research study to define key components, assumptions and constraints for developing a comprehensive BPM framework in the port sector.

A practical guide to IT OT convergence – getting value from your business analytics

A lot of time, effort and money has been and is being spent by operating companies and service companies in collecting data from many different sources, agglomerating that data, carrying out analytics on that data with the intention of turning that data into actionable insights that positively impact safety, environment, operations and profitability. This has been done with varying levels of success by approaching the problem from either an information technology (IT) or an operational technology (OT) point of view. What we are finding is that the best outcomes are achieved by having IT and OT domain experience with operational industry expertise within the same team. This has proven to be the case in other industries. There is also a need to understand edge and cloud actionable insights delivery in order to determine the optimal balance of edge and cloud delivery in a hybrid solution model. There is a continuum of analytics from high speed analytics at the edge, for such things as assisting regulatory control and real-time safety system diagnostics, to data lake analysis in the cloud, for planning, supply chain and business prioritisation and optimisation. Some analytics are best done at the edge; some are better done in the cloud. It’s a ‘horses for courses’ approach. The nature of the desired outcome, the required actionable insight and the nature of the data gathering are critical in determining the most effective approach. This paper discusses several examples of how this integrated IT OT approach took a desired outcome and turned it into an analytics platform that delivered significant value to the business. This paper cites examples of edge and cloud analytics that are enabled by integrating clever and sufficient industrial internet of things (IIoT) connectivity, which lead to actionable insights. These, in turn, ensured the correct action was effectively applied to the correct part(s) of the business operation, resulting in effective achievement of the desired outcome.

Implementation of Hybrid Approach for Intrusion Detection in Cloud Computing Environment

Cloud computing is a very fast growing technology that offer novel service to the Information Technology domain. With the help of cloud computing will reduce the infrastructure maintenance cost. The probability of having numerous types of vulnerabilities beginning attacks is high. In this paper we study and analysis dissimilar approach of an intrusion detection system that has been utilize to counter malicious attacks in Cloud computing environment. In this paper we implementation of hybrid approach for intrusion detection in cloud computing environment. The proposed approach based on ANN with fuzzy logic based Hybrid IDS, to which is additional proficient than the traditional IDS (Intrusion Detection System).

The relationship between developmental HRM practices and voluntary intention to leave among IT professionals in India: the mediating role of affective commitment

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to advance the research on the relationship between developmental human resource management (HRM) practices and voluntary intention to leave among information technology (IT) professionals from the Indian IT sector by investigating the mediating role of affective commitment.Design/methodology/approachThis study adopted a cross-sectional design at the individual-level of analysis. Data on the study constructs (i.e. developmental HRM practices, affective commitment, and voluntary intention to leave) were collected from 752 IT professionals from 17 Indian IT organizations from the city of Bengaluru through a web-based survey between February 2016 and March 2017. Further, this study used the confirmatory factor analysis technique to establish reliability and construct validity for the study constructs. Furthermore, this study tested the research hypotheses empirically through mediated multiple-regression analysis using the bootstrap procedure.FindingsEmpirical results of the present study suggest that espousal of robust developmental HRM interventions enhances affective commitment and significantly attenuates the voluntary intention to leave among employees. Further, the results of this study have indicated that the relationship between developmental HRM practices and voluntary intention to leave was partially mediated by affective commitment.Originality/valuePast empirical studies on HRM – turnover discourse, in the IT sector, have predominantly examined the direct influence of HRM systems and/or internal labor market strategies on turnover intentions and actual turnover behavior. Rarely have the past studies in the IT domain attempted to examine the intervening role of employee attitudes in the relationship between HRM practices and employee-level outcomes. Addressing this gap, the present study enunciates the critical role of affective commitment and situates it as an important variable that mediates the relationship between developmental HRM practices and voluntary intention to leave among IT professionals in India.

Factor based prediction model for customer behavior analysis

Information Technology is nearing ubiquity stage in modern workplaces. The domain and applications of information technology is expanded abundantly. Any organization that wishes to improve their prospect in the market would definitely keep track their buyers’ perspective and emerging trends. In order to understand their aspirants, the companies are applying enormous technical ideas, tools and methodologies. Analysing more data and facts lead to better decision making. This is a strong perception of business intelligence experts. This work deals with a gradual transformation from instinct-driven approach to progressively data-driven approach. Understanding the expectations of the customers and improving their sales in particular to online trading. Therefore any business firm today have to access to unlimited amount of data. This include sales demographics, economic trends, competitive data and consumer behaviour, efficiency measures and financial calculations and more. Business Intelligence has a leading contribution in this venture. The empirical data are systematically gathered in order to analyse or test hypotheses and consequently make new observations and experiments that leads to gain new insights. The factor based principle component analysis method is used to select the important customer buying factors to analyze their behavior.

Analysis of Conversation Competencies in Strategic Alignment between Business Areas (External Control) and Information Technology Areas in a Control Body

The process of governance in the domain of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) has been the subject of many studies in recent years, especially as regards the strategic alignment between the business and ICT areas. However, only a handful of those studies focused on studying the relationships that exist between these areas, specifically the conversation competencies that so strongly influence their alignment. This study sought to investigate and analyze the gaps that exist in such conversation competencies, as found in a Brazilian Control Body, according to the perceptions of the officers in the business and ICT areas. The survey tool used here was a questionnaire, sent to all the officers of the Body’s areas, the construction of which was based on the conversation competencies. It was found that there were 28 gaps in the conversation competencies of the Brazilian Control Body that may be developed to improve the alignment of the business and ICT areas. As regards the paths for future work, a recommendation is made for the creation of a research tool that allows the verification of the percentage of alignment that exists between ICT services and the business requirements, as its application.

A Novel Instrument to Measure the Multidimensional Structure of Professional Agency

This study aimed to construct and validate a quantitative measurement instrument to determine the structure of professional agency in working life. Empirical data (N = 589) were collected via a web-based, theoretically informed questionnaire, within the professional domains of education, healthcare, rescue services, and information technology. The questionnaire items incorporated theoretically based dimensions of professional agency. The structure of professional agency was initially analysed via exploratory factor analysis. Thereafter, using exploratory structural equation modelling, the structure of professional agency was investigated with a view to confirmation and validation. The results indicated that the structure of professional agency included three dimensions: Influencing at Work, Developing Work Practices, and Negotiating Professional Identity. These dimensions appeared to be separate from but closely linked to other work-related constructs, notably Learning at Work and Emotionally Meaningful Work. The study enriches current theory on professional agency by shedding light on its multidimensional structure. In presenting an instrument for measuring professional agency, the study can benefit scholars and work organisations with an interest in researching and fostering professional agency in various work and educational contexts.

A Quasi-Experimental Design to Evaluate the Use of PythonTutor on Programming Laboratory Session

Abstract—Educational tool is one of the prominent solutions for aiding students to learn course material in Information Technology (IT) domain. However, most of them are not used in practice since they do not properly fit student necessity. This paper evaluates the impact of an educational tool, namely PythonTutor, for completing programming laboratory task regarding data structure materials. Such evaluation will be conducted in one semester by implementing a quasi-experimental design. As a result, six findings can be deducted which are: 1) PythonTutor might positively affect student performance when the students have used such tool before; 2) Sometimes, student perspective regarding the impact of educational tool is not always in-sync with actual laboratory result; 3) the impact of PythonTutor might be improved when similar data representation is used consequently for several weeks; 4) the correlation between the use of PythonTutor and student performance might not be significant when the control and intervened group share completely different characteristics; 5) the students might experience some difficulties when they are asked to handle a big task for the first time; and 6) the students might be able to complete a particular weekly task with a promising result if the students have understood the material well.

Secure cloud data storage approach in e-learning systems

This is the period of worldwide communication which is a very interesting and inspiring time in the domain of information technology. The modern daily lives may enrich based on Technical advancement in the internet sector. The gaining attractiveness of sophistication on the internet field, the creation of improved web oriented learning environment is become the interesting and latest area on researching remote education. The cloud computing based e-learning is plays a crucial and most powerful role in the area of education and learning. This paper proposes to encrypt the message using data encryption standard and to encode the message using erasure code before storing the message in the e-learning storage system. At the end of encoding, the encoded messages are saved in cloud data center. So, reconstruction is easy with low bandwidth and low traffic if any data center failure and Storing time is convincingly good in Reed Solomon code. It is mainly focused on distributed data storage security for e-learning system, which has always been an important aspect of quality service.

Experiences of building a medical data acquisition system based on two-level modeling

Background and purposeCompared to traditional software development strategies, the two-level modeling approach is more flexible and applicable to build an information system in the medical domain. However, the standards of two-level modeling such as openEHR appear complex to medical professionals. This study aims to investigate, implement, and improve the two-level modeling approach, and discusses the experience of building a unified data acquisition system for four affiliated university hospitals based on this approach. MethodAfter the investigation, we simplified the approach of archetype modeling and developed a medical data acquisition system where medical experts can define the metadata for their own specialties by using a visual easy-to-use tool. ResultThe medical data acquisition system for multiple centers, clinical specialties, and diseases has been developed, and integrates the functions of metadata modeling, form design, and data acquisition. To date, 93,353 data items and 6,017 categories for 285 specific diseases have been created by medical experts, and over 25,000 patients’ information has been collected. Discussion and conclusionOpenEHR is an advanced two-level modeling method for medical data, but its idea to separate domain knowledge and technical concern is not easy to realize. Moreover, it is difficult to reach an agreement on archetype definition. Therefore, we adopted simpler metadata modeling, and employed What-You-See-Is-What-You-Get (WYSIWYG) tools to further improve the usability of the system. Compared with the archetype definition, our approach lowers the difficulty. Nevertheless, to build such a system, every participant should have some knowledge in both medicine and information technology domains, as these interdisciplinary talents are necessary.

RENEWABLE ENERGY BASED HOME AUTOMATION USING IOT

The advancement in earlier years in communication and electronics, computer science and information technology domain has resulted, thatwe can generate the energy by using renewable energy sources. By using this energy we can manage the home equipments. However in the past systems don’t allow a user to get a practicability to actively reduce the energy consumption of home equipment. In the past, the electric home equipments can be controlled and monitored with the help of domestic power lines by using power line communication technology. But now days a Wi-Ficommunication technology is used for controlling and monitoring of electric home equipment for more probable than before. This paper describes the methodology of renewable energy based home automation. In our project two things are consider. One is energy consumption and another is energy generation. In this, for monitoring power consumption of home equipment Wi-Fiis used. Hence the system gives more efficient energy saving and home energy cost will reduce.

Preventing business and information technology misalignment when introducing technology changes

Organisations introduce changes in order to adapt themselves to the extremely changing context. These changes often impact information technology (IT) and business domains. In most of the cases, the scope of the organisational elements in these domains requiring adaptation is not well defined, leaving out elements, which can lead to misalignment. Thus, it is important to know the impact scope with the purpose of performing a full adaptation. When reviewing the literature in the business-IT alignment research field, we found that there are no works dealing with this aspect. However, several works in adjacent areas have studied change management. In this paper, we report a systematic review of related work in these areas and extract a set of clues applicable to the business-IT alignment domain which results in a change analysis framework and a set of rules to estimate impact scope and potential adaptation. Framework elements and rules are illustrated by means of an industrial case study.

Towards Large-Scale, Heterogeneous Anomaly Detection Systems in Industrial Networks: A Survey of Current Trends

Industrial Networks (INs) are widespread environments where heterogeneous devices collaborate to control and monitor physical processes. Some of the controlled processes belong to Critical Infrastructures (CIs), and, as such, IN protection is an active research field. Among different types of security solutions, IN Anomaly Detection Systems (ADSs) have received wide attention from the scientific community. While INs have grown in size and in complexity, requiring the development of novel, Big Data solutions for data processing, IN ADSs have not evolved at the same pace. In parallel, the development of Big Data frameworks such as Hadoop or Spark has led the way for applying Big Data Analytics to the field of cyber-security, mainly focusing on the Information Technology (IT) domain. However, due to the particularities of INs, it is not feasible to directly apply IT security mechanisms in INs, as IN ADSs face unique characteristics. In this work we introduce three main contributions. First, we survey the area of Big Data ADSs that could be applicable to INs and compare the surveyed works. Second, we develop a novel taxonomy to classify existing IN-based ADSs. And, finally, we present a discussion of open problems in the field of Big Data ADSs for INs that can lead to further development.

Acceptance and use of lecture capture system (LCS) in executive business studies

PurposeAdoption of latest technological advancements (e.g. lecture capture system) is a hallmark of market-driven private universities. Among many other distinguishing features, lecture capture system (LCS) is the one which is being offered to enhance the flexibility of learning environment for attracting executive business students. Majority of foreign universities are offering the facility of LCS to their students in offshore campuses established in Malaysia. Yet, very little is known about perception and behaviour of executive business students towards acceptance and use of this facility. Therefore, to bridge the identified gap in academic literature, this study is an effort to explore the causal relationship between existing constructs of extended unified theory of acceptance and use of technology (UTAUT2), personal innovativeness (PI), intention and use behaviour (UB) towards LCS. Moreover, this study is aimed to extend the UTAUT2 by introducing a new variable, namely, PI in the domain of information technology (IT) (PIIT).Design/methodology/approachSmartPLS-3.2.6 was used for data analysis and all PLS-related calculations. For this purpose, a self-administered questionnaire was designed to collect data regarding acceptance and UB towards LCS. A sample size of 481 responses from executive business students, who were enrolled in offshore campuses of five selected foreign universities in Malaysia, was used for testing the proposed theoretical model.FindingsThe results of structural equation modelling (SEM) revealed that, performance expectancy, effort expectancy, social influence, facilitating conditions, price value, hedonic motivation, habit and PIIT have a significant and positive influence on acceptance and use of LCS among executive business students. Unique to this study is that, findings of this study have highlighted PIIT as an important factor that affects intention and UB towards LCS among executive business students.Practical implicationsBy validating and extending the UTAUT2, the findings of this study provide a number of practical implications along with a comprehensive, robust and useful framework for universities to successfully implement technological advancements, such as LCS, to enhance overall learning outcomes.Originality/valueBy investigating the factors determining acceptance and use of LCS among executive business students, using a partial least square (PLS)-based SEM approach, this study makes a sizeable theoretical, methodological and contextual contribution to the overall body of knowledge.

A statistical approach to virtual server resource management

SummaryResource management is of key importance in a wide array of computer and network environments. Failure to effectively allocate resources necessary for smooth infrastructure operation may result in impediments in successful service provisioning. This is especially prominent in environments whose workloads present fluctuating resource demand, such as in Cloud‐based infrastructures. The mathematical science of statistics offers an extensive theoretical and practical toolbox that can be of potential use in tackling such problems in the information technology domain. We propose a novel approach to resource management of virtualized data center components. We have worked toward creating a mechanism that allows for dynamic resource allocation, adapting to the changing demand patterns. Our system incorporates a resource controller, based on Statistical Process Control, which permits the online management of a virtual machine's processor and memory capacity through real‐time analysis of its observed performance. We successfully demonstrate our approach, with real data, on an architecture running the core banking environment of a financial institution. The controller successfully manages the resource allocation of the virtual machine and stabilizes its performance while business workloads are being processed. Our approach can be extended to realize different workload models and to manage other types of hypervisor provisioned resources.

An Approach Towards Amelioration of an Efficient VM Allocation Policy in Cloud Computing Domain

Cloud computing is on the horizon of the domain of information technology over the recent few years, giving different remotely accessible services to the cloud users. The quality-of-service (QoS) maintaining of a cloud service provider is the most dominating research issue today. The QoS embraces with different issues like virtual machine (VM) allocation, optimization of response time and throughput, utilizing processing capability, load balancing etc. VM allocation policy deals with the allocation of VMs to the hosts in different datacenters. This paper highlights a new VM allocation policy that distributes the load of VMs among hosts which improves the utilization of hosts’ processing capability as well as makespan and throughput of cloud system. The experimental results are obtained by utilizing trace based simulation in CloudSim 3.0.3 and compared with existing VM allocation policies.

Effect of personal factors to use ICTs on e-learning adoption: comparison between learner and instructor in developing countries

ABSTRACTThis research investigated some key factors influencing an individual’s behavior to use e-learning in developing countries through social cognitive theory for examining the adoption of e-learning by instructors and learners, who are the key e-learning users. This paper focused on the personal capacity of Information and Communications Technologies and also investigated the mediating effects of computer self-efficacy (CSE) and performance expectation on intention to use e-learning. The results indicate that performance expectation and CSE were crucial factors influencing behavior intention to use e-learning systems for both instructors and learners. This study also found that computer experience and personal innovativeness in the domain of information technology were prominent factors for instructors. In addition, some differences and similarities were identified in the results for instructors and learners. This study used structure equation model, partial least squares, for data analysis, and data were collected from universities in Indonesia.

Job Satisfaction Scale: Adaptation and Validation Among Indian IT (Information Technology) Employees

Job satisfaction (JS) of employees has been studied in the past by various researchers beginning in the 1930s till date. Each of these research works went on to add a perspective to JS and its measurement. The measures of JS captured various dimensions from Minnesota satisfaction questionnaire to JS survey. Further, these measures have been standardized on working professionals in various domains except the emerging field of information technology (IT). The purpose of this study was to develop and adapt a scale measuring JS of IT employees in India. The facets of JS were identified through literature and verified through experts in IT domain. The initial scale consisting of 23 items identified from the existing scales was administered on 410 employees of three IT companies in India. The scale was standardized through exploratory factor analysis (EFA) and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA). It was used to determine the factor structure and convergent and discriminant validity. Exploratory factor analysis yielded six factors: pay, training, promotion, recognition, supervision and job security. A final standardized questionnaire consists of 23 items on JS. The reliability estimates were 0.92, and convergent and discriminant validity also met all the criteria respectively. The resultant scale can be used on IT professionals in India.

Information Literacy and Use of Information Technology by Students in Shahrekord University of Medical Sciences

Introduction: Nowadays, students of medical universities need to be familiar with computer and information technology (IT) to become successful. The aim of this study was to investigate the information literacy and the use of IT by students in Shahrekord University of Medical Sciences. Methods: This survey is a descriptive-correlational study. The study population consisted of all students of the Shahrekord University of Medical Sciences and the sample size included 235 students. The instrument was a researcher-developed questionnaire with a validity confirmed by faculty members and a 0.83 reliability according to Cronbach’s alpha. For data analysis, Pearson’s correlation coefficient and Chi-square in SPSS 16 were used. Results: The results revealed the frequency use of IT domains; Internet obtained the most frequently used domain (67.2%) followed by Windows (54.1%), word processing software (43.8%), search engines (41.1%), and e-mail (30.5%). The highest mastery was obtained over Internet use (58.6%) followed by Windows and word processing software (48.3%), search engines (34.4%), and software installation (31.4%). The use of IT was significantly associated with previous research activities such as having PC, the skill to use computers and Internet, the mean duration of computer use per week, and English language competency (P < 0.05). Conclusions: The students’ mastery over the use of IT is weak in the Shahrekord University of Medical Sciences, and certain plans are needed to educate these students by holding workshops, empowering them to do research, and revisiting the curricula to increase the credits of IT course.