Information Technology Performance Research Articles

Gaining an Understanding of DevOps from its Enablers to Its Impact on Performance

Despite these efforts' merit, academics have had trouble keeping up with the radical shifts in how software is created and supplied to clients. DevOps has revolutionized the way IT businesses are intended to operate as the result of years of hard effort and improvement to software delivery methods, techniques, and philosophies. Despite its widespread use and the positive effects, it has had on IT businesses' bottom lines, few people outside of the industry really understand what it is, how it operates, or if it can genuinely lead to better IT performance. This study provides a methodology that bridges the gap between these macro-level elements and the actual results of IT departments by focusing on the enabling components of DevOps, such as technological and management skills, and IT culture. Moreover, this study suggests the values of a perfect DevOps organization, which have a profound impact on IT Outcomes when they are in harmony with the firm's Delivery Approach. Information technology (IT) experts with prior DevOps experience were used to compile the survey results. In all, 176 American respondents provided their information. This alignment, in turn, has a substantial impact on IT Outcomes. This study adds not only to the growing body of literature on DevOps and software delivery, which is essential to the success of any IT firm, but also to the development of important underlying theory in these areas.

The impact of IT governance and data governance on financial and non-financial performance

This paper aims to examine the impact of both information technology governance (ITG) and data governance on information technology (IT) performance in the telecommunication industry. A questionnaire of 308 managers was collected from all telecommunication companies that are working in Egypt. Data were analyzed using smart partial least squares (PLS). The results showed that all the hypotheses of the study had been accepted. IT and data governance have a significant impact on both financial and non-financial performance. However, each of them has a different effect on the IT performance dimensions. The financial performance of IT department had been affected by IT governance more than data governance. Also, innovation and flexibility were the most affected by IT governance. On the other hand, data governance affected business processes and ethical compliance more than IT governance. The current study filled the gap on the literature in two ways. First, studying both IT governance and data governance as a critical factors affects financial and non-financial performance. Second, studying IT governance and data governance has become more important, especially in the telecommunication industry as it is a big challenge now to secure the data of the companies.

Penyelarasan Tujuan dan Sasaran Bisnis Teknologi Informasi Menggunakan Kerangka Kerja COBIT 4.1

In carrying out its business strategy the company is now using information technology (IT) as a support to get certainty effective and efficient that the business strategy is working as expected. Thus IT is now becoming an integral part and integrated with an organization's business objectives so that the evaluation and monitoring of the effectiveness of the company's information technology governance are urgently required in order to know the extent of the application of IT in the company will affect the achievement of the vision, mission or strategic objectives. One very important process, aligning with business objectives and IT objectives. In this paper the alignment is done by reference to the standard IT governance good that standardization Framework COBIT 4.1 and in this paper also presents examples and techniques based on research that has been done, how to align business goals and objectives of IT, to find the appropriate evaluation in preparing IT governance based on best practices in accordance standardization COBIT. By knowing this alignment will allow companies to rearrange and implementing IT governance within the enterprise so that internal controls will be the utilization of IT can be applied to evaluate the shortcomings, weaknesses, and can improve the performance of IT in line and in accordance with its business strategy.

A mixed method study of DevOps challenges

DevOps practices combine software development and IT (Information Technology) operations. The continuous needs for rapid but quality software development requires the adoption of high-quality DevOps tools. There is a growing number of DevOps related posts in popular online developer forum Stack Overflow (SO). While previous research analyzed SO posts related to build/release engineering, we are aware of no research that specifically focused on DevOps related discussions. This paper aims to learn the challenges developers face while using the currently available DevOps tools and techniques along with the organizational challenges in DevOps practices. We conduct an empirical study by applying topic modeling on 174K SO posts that contain DevOps discussions. We then validate and extend the empirical study findings with a survey of 21 professional DevOps practitioners. We find that: (1) There are 23 DevOps topics grouped into four categories: Cloud & CI/CD Tools, Infrastructure as Code, Container & Orchestration, and Quality Assurance. (2) The topic category ‘Cloud & CI/CD Tools’ contains the highest number of topics (10) which cover 48.6% of all questions in our dataset, followed by the category Infrastructure as Code (28.9%). (3) The file management is the most popular topic followed by Jenkins Pipeline, while infrastructural Exception Handling and Jenkins Distributed Architecture are the most difficult topics (with least accepted answers). (4) In the survey, developers mention that it requires hands-on experience before current DevOps tools can be considered easy. They raised the needs for better documentation and learning resources to learn the rapidly changing DevOps tools and techniques. Practitioners also emphasized on the formal training approach by the organizations for DevOps skill development. Architects and managers can use the findings of this research to adopt appropriate DevOps technologies, and organizations can design tool or process specific DevOps training programs.

A multi‐industry and cross‐country comparison of technology contribution to formal and informal knowledge sharing processes for innovativeness

AbstractThe study explores the impact of organizational information technology (IT) competency on knowledge sharing, both explicit and tacit, in the context of innovativeness of products and processes. Knowledge sharing is then assessed in terms of tacit‐to‐explicit conversion and the impact of both types of knowledge on organizational innovation. Both process (internal) and product/service (external) innovation are included. As an extension, this IT competency to innovation framework is evaluated in context, both by nation (Poland and the United States) and by industry (IT, construction, and healthcare). The results obtained through the structural equation modeling method (sample size 2168 cases in total) exposed that IT competency dimensions matter for formal and informal knowledge‐sharing processes and vary across countries and industries. For instance, in the US IT industry, IT‐infrastructure, IT‐knowledge, and IT‐operations dimensions equally support explicit (formal) and tacit (informal) knowledge sharing. On the contrary, for the same industry in Poland, all dimensions support explicit knowledge sharing but regarding tacit knowledge sharing, only IT‐knowledge supports it. Summing up the general findings, this study exposes that for tacit knowledge sharing, the critical IT‐competency dimension is IT‐knowledge, whereas for explicit‐ IT operations. Next, it clarifies that tacit knowledge sharing supports the explicit, and both are needed to introduce external innovations thanks to their significant impact on internal processes improvement.

Information technology investment and digital transformation: the roles of digital transformation strategy and top management

PurposeIn the context of the digital economy, information technology (IT) investment has become a necessary way for enterprises to transform digitally. However, why and how IT investment can enhance digital transformation is lacking in the literature. Based on the resource-based view (RBV), this study explored the impact mechanism of IT infrastructure on the digital transformation of enterprises from the perspective of the digital transformation strategy. Further, this study examined the moderating role of top management on the relationships between IT infrastructure and digital transformation strategy and between digital transformation strategy and enterprise's digital transformation.Design/methodology/approachThrough a questionnaire survey of Chinese enterprises, 180 sample data were collected, and the partial least squares-structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) method was used to test the hypothesis.FindingsDigital transformation strategy fully mediates the relationship between IT infrastructure and enterprise digital transformation. Furthermore, top management has a significant positive moderating effect on the relationship between IT infrastructure and digital transformation strategy, as well as the relationship between digital transformation strategy and digital transformation.Originality/valueThis study explores the moderating role of top management in the relationship between IT and enterprise performance, as well as the mediating role of digital transformation strategy in the relationship between IT infrastructure investment and digital transformation performance. As a result, the study adds significantly to the body of knowledge on IT business value, digital transformation and strategic management. The authors' findings can help update managers' perceptions of IT value and provide theoretical guidance on deriving digital transformation performance from IT infrastructure investments.

MANAGING GREEN IT: A REVOLUTION FOR CRAFTING THE IDEA OF SMART CITY IN A DIFFERENT WAY

Green Information Technology (IT) denotes the policies and practices that firms should follow to manage IT operations to comply with green norms. Typically for a firm that mainly uses IT for its business, for mankind products or providing services, Green IT practices involve using IT in such a manner as to reduce carbon emissions or to use IT to monitor and manage carbon or other polluting emissions. There are mainly two aspects of Green IT practices: (i) Use IT efficiently to comply with green norms. (ii) Use IT to ensure other firm activities conform to green norms. Firms involved in making IT products or those who provide IT Services have to consider additional aspects of Green IT. The design of IT products follows Green Practices that includes designing both hardware and software. The IT artefacts produced in this manner are thus compliant with green norms, and the firms can assure their customers about the usage of environmentally sound processes. Usage of computers and networking technology requires energy both for making the device and running them. In recent years, as the usage of computer technology has grown in business, government and society, the consumption of energy has also increased. The government has recognized the threat of unrestrained and uncontrolled carbon emissions and has formed various guidelines to control emissions and pollution. Many firms have taken steps to understand their energy consumption patterns with regard to their IT usage and have implemented measures to ‘Go Green’. There are economic advantages of going green, in addition to those of acting responsibly. In this paper, the authors have explained how in the realm of IT, going green means using technology in an environment-friendly manner and using IT to control carbon emissions. The aim is to conduct a detailed study on managing Green IT and how smart cities can be crafted in a different way with the help of IT. An overall comprehensive insight is provided to deliver assistance for the development of advanced smart cities in the future.

IT GOVERNANCE AUDIT AT THE KAMPAR REGENCY LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES DEPARTMENT USING COBIT 2019 AND ITIL 4

Information Technology (IT) is a tool that plays an important role in helping improve the effectiveness and efficiency of a company's or organization's business processes. The Kampar Regency Library and Archives Service uses the Integrated Library System (INLIS) Lite to support operational, management, and decision-making functions in the library. However, the use of INLIS Lite has not been fully utilized properly, for this reason it is necessary to carry out an IT governance audit. The audit process aims to determine the extent of IT performance, human resources, and the level of IT maturity in the library. This study uses Control Objective for Information and Related Technology (COBIT) 2019 and Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) 4 to conduct audits. With the findings of the audit results obtained eight process domains, namely APO02 and APO012 domains are at level 1 (Performed) in the Largely Achieved category, APO09 and BAI08 domains are at level 2 (Managed) in the Largely Achieved category, domains APO013, BAI05 and MEA01 are in the Largely Achieved, and the APO07 domain is at level 4 (Predictable) and in the Fully Achieved category. In addition to the audit, an assessment of the capability level was also carried out using the Servqual Model and Importance Performance Analysis with the results of obtaining 2 criteria in quadrant A, 1 criterion in quadrant B, 2 criteria in quadrant C and 3 criteria in quadrant D. This study also provides recommendations for improvement using SWOT model approach refers to ITIL 4.

Analysis of Garlic Farmers' Welfare in Buleleng Regency, Bali, Indonesia

High production costs, a lack of institutional roles for farmers, a lack of farmer competence, and limited use of agricultural support technologies, such as information technology (IT), all contribute to low garlic production. The high level of garlic imports into Indonesia makes it difficult for farmers to sell their produce because their prices are higher than that of imported garlic. This impacts the money farmers can earn from growing garlic. This study investigated the roles of the government, farmer institutions, and farmer competencies in garlic farmers' ability to adopt IT, their farming performance, and overall welfare in Buleleng Regency. The study's research design was quantitative and employed structural equation modeling (SEM). It included 196 garlic farmers from Buleleng Regency as participants. The findings revealed that the government, farmer institutions, and farmer competencies all had a direct and significant impact on garlic farmers' adoption of IT, as well as on their performance and welfare in Buleleng Regency. Also, the adoption of IT and farming performance have the potential to mediate the roles of government, farmer institutions, and farmer competencies in determining welfare. The study also discovered that farming performance was capable of mediating the effects of government involvement, farmer institutions, farmer competencies, and the capacity to embrace IT on the well-being of garlic farmers in Buleleng Regency.

The State of IT Governance in Uganda's Higher Institutions of Learning

Information technology (IT) has become an integral part of development in any organization. Dependence on IT brings concerns in organizations to handle its increasing complexity which necessitates the implementation of IT governance. However, IT governance is lacking in the public sector organizations of developing countries, leading to failure to realize the full potential value of IT. For Uganda's higher institutions of learning (HILs), implementation of IT governance is unexplored. Therefore, in this paper, the authors investigate the state of IT governance among the eight HILs in Uganda. Interviews were used to collect data which was categorized into structures, processes, and relational mechanisms. The results showed that the relational mechanisms like training were fairly implemented, while structures and processes like the IT steering committee and IT performance measurement respectively were poorly implemented.

Streamlining Information Technology (IT) Functions and Operating Model Across Group Case Study: PT Telekomunikasi Indonesia, Tbk

Business entities are expanding their business portfolio by creating child business entities and finally building a large entity known as a Corporate Group, which is a collection of parent and subsidiary corporations that function as a single economic entity through a common source of control. The correlated business issue derives from the existence of Information Technology (IT) units in each company under the group, in which the IT functions are still conducted and maintained solely. This may lead to un-optimized resource of the assets (People, Application, Platform, and Infrastructure) and redundant IT Processes. Consequently, this phenomenon raises questions on how the most suitable IT operating model should be designed and adopted in the group among the entities. This paper is intended to design a new IT operating model, define the organizational structure and possible integration between entities, to obtain a more effective IT shared service operation model and asset optimization across the group. The research infers that the basic IT service management functions with an agile cyclic new way of working can be considered as the new IT operating model alternative, with IT service development and operation would be the most suitable process to be outsourced, rather than IT planning, design, change management, and evaluation. In addition, an IT shared service approach using a specialized federated organization structure is suggested, with an emphasis on promoting the current IT units as the single provider of specific services based on their strongest capability. As for group company, empowering the subsidiary IT units that already possess the expected capabilities and core competencies will be more beneficial and preferred than appointing a new single shared service unit for IT service.

Does IT Capability Facilitate Technology Agility?

The prime objective of this study is to investigate how a firm's information technology (IT) capabilities facilitate its technological agility and competitive advantages. Drawing from the resource-based view and dynamic capability framework, we propose that information technology capability—IT infrastructure, IT operations, IT personnel, and IT investment—play an essential role in a firm's ability to sense and adopt new technologies to exploit subsequent opportunities. Then, the study conceptualizes enterprises' ability to sense and respond to new technologies with technological agility and tests the hypotheses of a sample of 731 South Korean businesses. The results indicate that IT infrastructure, IT operations, and IT personnel all have a significant positive effect on technological agility and that technological agility can promote firm performance. Furthermore, the empirical result shows that IT investment contributes to improvements in technology sensing but does not affect technology adoption.

A review of the latest IT service management solutions

In today's fast-paced business environment, efficient Information Technology (IT) service management is crucial for maintaining a competitive edge. The latest Information Technology Service Management (ITSM) solutions offer a wide range of features and capabilities, including automation, self-service portals, and analytics, to help organizations streamline their IT operations and improve their overall performance. This review will take a closer look at some of the latest IT Service Management (ITSM) solutions on the market and explore their key features and benefits. It will also discuss how these solutions can help organizations improve their IT service delivery and support their digital transformation efforts.

The Influence of Demographic Variables on Empirical Studies Concerning Cio Gender

Companies are more and more dependent on information technology (IT) and the buzzword digitization is present everywhere. Some companies are inventing new business models based on disruptive innovation supported by information technology. Others adapt these business models as followers. All these new business processes and underlying information technology need to be managed, serviced, and supported by IT organizations to ensure business continuity. Traditionally heads of the IT department have been fully responsible for all aspects of IT usage in the company – including IT cost, IT governance, IT & process planning and implementation and IT operation. This results in the fact that there is a need of more intensive business-IT alignment to ensure the adequacy of the overall IT architecture in a company and ensure the economic value contribution of IT as a whole. In the last two decades researchers have investigated the area of CIO effectiveness by doing empirical research looking at IT roles/tasks, interaction and strategic importance of IT, personal background of CIOs. As a side effect some researchers have constructed and used demographic variables both as control and causal variables. This article looks on the comparability and the source of such demographic data especially on the case of Gender information and highest academic title. It also discusses the question if survey results could be compared with representative datasets to evaluate validity of the sample and responses of empirical studies.

Modelling interrelationships of quality management, information technology and entrepreneurial culture and their impact on performance from Indian IT enabled service SMEs

PurposeThis paper attempts to empirically model and analyse interrelationships of quality management (QM), information technology (IT) and entrepreneurial culture (EC) with its impact on performance of Indian IT enabled service small and medium size enterprises (SMEs). More specifically, this paper aims to investigate the proposed model which is validated by analysing both direct and indirect paths by deploying higher order structural modelling.Design/methodology/approachA quantitative approach has been followed by deploying cross-sectional research design. Structured questionnaires were distributed personally and by e-mail to around 1,380 service SMEs. The approach follows empirical testing and analyses of hypothesized paths of the proposed research model which is validated with confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) using maximum likelihood estimation. This study also identifies and tests the mediation effect of higher order constructs.FindingsThe findings demonstrate poor manifestation of entrepreneurial and market-oriented activities and confirm the mediation effect of IT and QM in the relationships of QM→EC along with IT→performance paths, respectively. Results indicate that IT and QM are complementary resource factors which signifies symbiotic relationships between them. Analyses highlights the significance of QM as a mediator in enhancing performance outcome through IT benefits and the effect of inculcation of EC by enterprises on their performance in today's vibrant and uncertain environment.Practical implicationsThis study highlights major key areas of the decision-making process for SMEs’ owner and operations manager to overcome identified challenges like instituting collaboration with external business firms for learning, sharing risks and diversifying innovation capacity for managing capabilities of firms to earn sustainable profit margins. The outcome of this study would help operations manager, decision makers and entrepreneurs to redesign their business processes and entrepreneurial strategies by deploying operational intelligence in order to ensure agility and smooth flow within the firms. This would facilitate and help SMEs to cut down costs and redundancies in the process which would improve productivity and performance excellence.Originality/valueThe novelty of this study is based on development and empirical validation of the proposed research model which depicts how service SMEs could generate value with influence/effect of contextual factors on the QM–performance relationship. Findings of this study make significant contribution to the body of knowledge with new insights by highlighting the niche area in terms of interlinkages pertaining to quality management, IT and EC explicitly in Indian SMEs’ context.

Megaproject complexity attributes and competences: lessons from IT and construction projects

Megaprojects have been associated with persistent underperformance technically, financially, socially and environmentally. This underperformance has been attributed to the inherent complexity attributes and the gaps in the form of the mismatch in the project management competences and processes used by the project management teams to deal with the complexity attributes. This study seeks to investigate the performance implications of these complexity attributes to recommend suitable management competences for the successful delivery of megaprojects. This conceptual study used an integrative literature review to analyze and synthesize findings from existing scientific articles related to the complexity constructs based on a comparative assessment of Information Technology (IT) and construction megaprojects. The Complex Adaptive Systems (CAS) Theory was also used to highlight some of the factors that influence megaproject performance towards identifying suitable management processes and competences, which are required to deal with megaprojects complexity. The key findings include a nomenclature of the main complexity attributes, their implications on the performance of IT and construction megaprojects, and, lastly, the managementcompetences and processes that are required to deal with the complexity attributes for improved megaproject performance.

The impact of outsourcing information technology services on business operations

Background: Organisations outsource Information Technology (IT) services in order to keep up with the IT evolution and to remain competitive. Although the IT operations department is responsible to manage service provider service quality, they are not in a position to evaluate IT services performance because of the loss of control and capability in the IT environment.Objectives: This article investigated the impact of outsourcing in-house IT services on the performance of IT operations and how it affects the performance of the organisation.Methods: The qualitative approach was used in this research. Data was collected using structured interviews and were analysed using thematic analysis.Results: Outsourcing of IT services was found to have negative and positive impact on the organisation. Knowledge of the operating environment proved to be significant in the provision of relevant services that add value to the organisation. The results of the analysis revealed that in-house IT and the quality of IT services provided have a direct impact on the performance of the organisation.Conclusion: The study demonstrated that outsourcing IT services impacts the quality and the performance of the organisation positively and negatively. The study recommended that in-house IT and outsource service providers need to collaborate to ensure smooth service delivery, process alignment and also to equip in-house IT with skills to handle first-line support.

Information technologies and seaport operational efficiency

PurposeThe introduction of information technology (IT) in port operations has been a tremendous contributor to transformation in world trade. This study was carried out to examine the influence of IT on the efficiency of seaport operations.Design/methodology/approachThe study is quantitative in nature, and it relied on a closed-ended self-administered questionnaire to collect primary data. Structural equation modeling (SEM) was used to test the theoretical model and hypothesis.FindingsThe results indicate that IT has a positive direct effect on port operational efficiency (OE) and an indirect effect on port OE through organizational culture (OC). The mediating role of OC is statistically insignificant.Originality/valueThis is among the first few attempts in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) that provides researchers with a contemporary view of IT and seaport operations.

Firing on all cylinders: Configuring information technology around the constituents of corporate entrepreneurship to outperform in SME sector.

This study has examined how small and medium enterprises (SMEs) may enhance their performance under different settings of information technology (IT) capabilities and corporate entrepreneurship (CE). Established on the dynamic capability view, the researchers have analyzed the connections between IT capabilities and CE, in addition to the performance results of SMEs. The research has explored these novel relationships by utilizing partial least square-structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) with a data sample of 447 SMEs of the manufacturing sector in Pakistan. The findings present that IT capabilities positively influence the market and financial performance of SMEs through the mediating role of CE dimensions. The study uniquely determines the mediating role of dimensional effects of corporate entrepreneurship between IT capabilities and performance outcomes of firms. Thus, the study would enable the management of SMEs to realize the potential of IT-related CE dimensions and their use to improve firms’ performance.

AI based decision making: combining strategies to improve operational performance

This study investigates the strategic alignment between marketing and information technology (IT) strategies and provides production and operations decision makers a model for improving operational performance. Based on a comprehensive literature review, the combined strategies were used to develop a novel decision-making framework. The hypothesised relationships of an SEM model are validated with data collected from 242 managers from various industries. An artificial intelligence (AI)–based method is developed using artificial neural networks (ANN) feeding into a decision-making framework which explores the optimality of the combined strategies. The results indicate that (a) IT strategy is positively mediated by marketing strategy on performance and (b) the organisational structure moderates the mediation of marketing strategy on performance. The analysis confirms that the extracted strategies based on the proposed framework have superior performance compared to existing strategies. This paper contributes to the literature by conceptualising and empirically testing the mediation role of marketing strategy on IT strategy, performance and operational decision-making. The use of a novel three-phase decision-making framework which uses AI processes improves operational efficiency, increases insights and enhances the decision accuracy of complex problems at the strategic level in industries such as manufacturing. It could help operations executives to apply effective decisions.