IT Practitioners Research Articles

Maturity Models Architecture: A large systematic mapping

Maturity models are widespread in research and in particular, IT practitioner communities. However, theoretically sound, methodologically rigorous and empirically validated maturity models are quite rare. This systematic mapping paper focuses on the challenges faced during the development of maturity models. More specifically, it explores the literature on maturity models and standard guidelines to develop maturity models, the challenges identified and solutions proposed. Our systematic mapping revealed over six hundred articles on maturity models. Extant literature reveals that researchers have primarily focused on developing new maturity models pertaining to domain-specific problems and/or new enterprise technologies. We find rampant re-use of the design structure of widely adopted models such as Nolan’s Stage of Growth Model, Crosby’s Grid, and Capability Maturity Model (CMM). We also identify three dominant views of maturity models and provide guidelines for various approaches to constructing maturity models with a standard vocabulary. We finally propose using process theories and configurational approaches to address the main theoretical criticisms with regard to maturity models and conclude with some recommendations for maturity model developers.

Perancangan Media Pembelajaran Interaktif Berbasis Model Pembelajaran Problem Based Learning Mata Kuliah Fisika Dasar

This study aims to design a learning media based on the Problem Based Learning (PBL) learning model. This research is included in R&D (Research and Development) research, which is research that produces products that can be used to support the learning process of basic physics courses at Potensi Utama University. Making learning media using flash multimedia. The design of instructional media is made by IT practitioners, namely lecturers in the field of computers. Furthermore, to assess the suitability of the material of this study using a team of experts from several basic physics lecturers and physics teachers. The results of this study are the design of PBL-based learning media is quite feasible and in accordance with the physics material, especially HK. Newton. The assessment of the material suitability by the expert team is the feasibility of the content / depth of university level material with a percentage value of 82.85%. Contextual percentage of 81.20%. Presentation Feasibility 80.15%. Conformity to the model. PBL 86.25%. Suitability of evaluation with learning objectives 87.10%.

Computer-Based Checker for Technical Drafting Plates: Development and Evaluation

The Computer-based Checker for Technical Drafting plates (CCTDp) was developed to assist the faculty and the students in senior high school to an objective, reliable and timely assessment of technical drawings under the five CAD competencies of the Department of Education. The LAN-based computer system includes features such as submission of technical drafting plates and deployment of scores and feedbacks. There are two (2) accounts developed for the checking software: the faculty and the students’ account used to access CSTDp. The scoring and feedback are based upon a TESDA TEC NC II assessors’ validated scoring criteria which cover line technique, accuracy and completeness, annotations, plotting and speed. It was also evaluated using ISO 25010 by IT practitioners, TEC NC II assessors, teachers and SHS students. Grand mean score of 4.80 interpreted as “outstanding” was achieved by the system which denotes that CSTDp is an effective and efficient computer-based system. It also implies that the developed system facilitates the immediate provision of scores and feedback to the learners while employing 21st century teaching strategies inside the classroom. The developed software also addressed the accuracy, reliability and timeliness of assessment for the performance-based assessment in technical drafting.
 Keywords: computer-based, checker, technical drafting, technical drawing

A Qualitative Case Study Identifying Metrics for ITIL Request Fulfillment Process: Perspectives of an Information Technology Service Provider Group

Without metrics, the quality and effectiveness of the IT services cannot be measured or managed. This study examined the request fulfillment process of an IT service provider group, identified that group’s perceptions of the most important metrics of the process, and created dashboards to display those metrics. Results found 12 metrics perceived by the group as most important. Three dashboard pages were created using iDashboards. This study should be meaningful to a growing number of IT practitioners because it addressed metrics, measurements, and evaluation of IT processes on which very little previous empirical work has been conducted.

IT Backsourcing

With the growing importance of IT as competitive advantage, companies aim to increase their digital transformation activities. Consequently, companies are also revisiting their existing IT sourcing arrangements. In the article at hand, the authors explore the concept of IT backsourcing by presenting the results from a quantitative online survey with global IT practitioners. The authors confirm that backsourcing is frequently applied in practice, with key reasons being dissatisfaction with service or relationship quality and higher than expected costs. Further, the authors identify IT services with an increased likelihood of being backsourced, e.g., application development or data center, and discuss the effect of a CIO change on the backsourcing decision. In addition, the authors show that there are differences in the perceptions on the antecedents and the results of backsourcing decisions between management and operational level. The authors conclude with practical implications for IT managers based on their findings.

Success factors model for green computing implementations

Green computing is quickly rising to the top of the agenda of many organizations. Surveys of the green computing implementations practices in United Arab Emirates (UAE) reveal the awareness level with respect to green computing practices to be 41.23 per cent. This article presents a model that provides IT decision-makers with a set of recommended actions on the implementation of green computing practices. The model is validated empirically through interviews of IT staff from eleven organizations in UAE. The intervention suggests that to reduce the carbon footprint and to become energy efficient, organizations would need to apply policies on printing, procurement and recycling. Implementation of policies is driven by budget allocations for the better utilization of existing IT equipment and for investment in innovative technologies. In addition, this study recommends that organizations encourage a green computing attitude through increased awareness, certifications, penalties or reward systems. The findings of the study are expected to be of great interest to both researchers and IT practitioners.

Terminological discrepancies in the field of software testing: A case of mistake, error, bug, defect, fault, and failure in the specialist language of IT

Terminological discrepancies in the field of software testing: a case of mistake, error, bug, defect, fault, and failure in the specialist language of ITThe article seeks to arrive at a proper understanding of the most challenging words in the field of software testing, i.e., mistake, error, bug, defect, fault, and failure. The paper presents a semantic analysis of the words, for non-English practitioners of IT find it difficult to discriminate between them. The article is based on native English texts such as dictionaries, blog posts, software testing manuals and the like in order to ensure linguistic reliability and better understanding of the terms. The meaning of selected terms is compared by means of standard dictionaries and those dedicated to IT practitioners. Moreover, a theoretical overview of terminological issues in IT is conducted.

A Survey and a Case-Study Regarding Social Media Security and Privacy on Greek Future IT Professionals

Nowadays, social media and social networks are increasingly used in business as they have drastically changed the way the community works, communicates, collaborates, socialises, creates content and shares knowledge and ideas. However, in particular, IT professionals and practitioners need to be aware of online security and privacy issues and the potential negative impact that they may cause on different aspects of business, such as online breaches or information theft. The use of social media inevitably leads to disclosure of personal information, with the use of open-source intelligence (OSINT) and other similar techniques. Hence, the aim of this article is twofold, namely first to show results of a survey towards future Greek IT practitioners regarding awareness and viewpoints of social media users concerning security and privacy on social media. More specifically the study was based on responses and viewpoints of 178 Greek electrical engineering and IT students to an online questionnaire. Secondly, the aim is also to show how easily a potential malicious user can anonymously track and retrieve sensitive personal information in an automated and undetectable way from popular social media platforms by using publicly available information, resources, and tools. The results of the survey show that most of the respondents are aware of the privacy settings of the social media platforms they use. However, they consider that they should be more careful concerning personal data and whom they add as friends or followers and they do not feel comfortable with the fact that a stranger might be able to access their personal information through their publications on social media platforms.The case study indicates that it is possible for malicious users to acquire sensitive personal data (e.g. user's location via tweets and instas from smartphones). In addition, the ability to map activity could allow malicious users to track the activities of unsuspected users and predict their future locations.

Mitigating risks in managing cloud-based IT controls

Cloud computing (CC) represents a key tool in the race for innovation across industries. However, organisations are facing constraints in implementing and leveraging cloud technology for development purposes due to a lack of skills, knowledge and talent. To address this concern, this study focuses on the impact of CC on IT staff's roles and responsibilities, within cloud user organisations. Accordingly, this study suggests skills required to mitigate the risks in the accountability and responsibility of managing IT controls. The results were empirically verified by senior IT practitioners. The empirical intervention emphasised on people's business skills, in addition to domain knowledge and the mind-set to adapt to the changed environment. The findings of this study offers new insights for scholars and it will help IT decision makers to assess their staff's capabilities to meet their business needs and to plan appropriate selection, training and hiring policies.

Investigating Factors Affecting Knowledge Management Practices in Public Sectors

Knowledge Management (KM) is a systematic approach in creating, sharing, using and managing information effectively sustain knowledge regardless public or private organizations. It helps organizations to make better decision making in order to achieve the goals and increase the productivity. However, many public organizations are still facing challenges to adopt knowledge management practices compared to private organization due to lack of awareness. They are not aware of the influenced factors such as people, process, and technology. Therefore, this paper identifies influencing factors that contributed to the successful KM practices in public sectors. This study employs quantitative approaches by distributing a set of questionnaires to 83 IT practitioners in public organizations. 63 returned responses were analyzed using the Rasch Measurement Model. The findings indicated that there is a lack of participation amongst the staff in practicing efficient knowledge management due to they are still not ready to accept changes to the new system, lack of exposure and behavior. In addition, looking at critical success factor such as on the human resources (HR), there is a lack of encouragement such as rewards and recognition given to employees who practices KM in the organization. As a result, this paper highlights the most influential factors for effective knowledge management practices in terms of people, process and technology. We hope that the results can be used as a guideline to rectify the challenges in KM practices especially in the public organizations.

The Role of Process Innovation between Organizational Capability and Software Project Success in Malaysian Public Sector

This study used the partial least square (PLS) and structural equation modeling (SEM) tool to examine factors influencing the process innovation of the organization capability in public sectors. It also measures the impact of process innovation on the success of software project process. Statistical results confirm that coordination of expertise, communication plan and IT infrastructure reach impact on process innovation while process innovation in turn positively influences the success of software project success. The result, besides indicating the suitability of the PLS in statistical analysis, has also contributed to a better understanding of the success of the software project process. Findings are useful for IT Managers and practitioners to improve the success of software project in Malaysian public sectors. Limitation and suggestion for future research are also included.

Investigating the Impact of System Quality on Service-Oriented Business Intelligence Architecture

Despite the recognized value that Business Intelligence (BI) systems bring to organizations, our understanding of the system quality and its impact on service-oriented architecture is limited. This study seeks to examine the impact of system quality on service-oriented BI architecture. Following the theory in the Information System success model, this study assesses the factors that can create impact to the individual and the organization. A total of 60 sample data were collected and analyzed using the partial least squares method. Majority of the respondents are the IT practitioners who hold managerial positions in their respective companies. The results suggest there are two sets of system quality factors. This study contributes to the literature of BI architecture. The managerial findings will be useful for BI stakeholders in the planning, reviewing, and implementing of SOA-based BI architecture.

Development and Implementation of a Self-Study Roadmap for Part-Time Students

The “Open IT” research project is being carried out in the scope of the federal state “Aufstieg durch Bildung: offene Hochschulen” initiative (“Advancement through education: open universities”) in which credit transfer programmes are being designed for IT practitioners in Germany. In this process, research is being carried out into the development, implementation and use of methods to support self-study, which will be prepared for transfer to teaching. The use of a self-study roadmap for students and lecturers has been developed in the course of this research. This self-study roadmap supports students’ time management and the balance of study, work and family.Following the numerous evaluation steps involved in the creation of the self-study roadmap, the roadmap has been formally implemented and developed within the research project. The benefits, use and challenges of this learning tool are analysed and reflected upon in this paper in the context of education management. A strategic point of view has been chosen so that the tool can be examined on a meta level. The relevant perspective of the university, lecturers and students has been adopted so that an all-encompassing view can be guaranteed at strategic level.

Research on the Common problems of overwork death in China

中国当前正处于经济转型的关键时期, 与日本“过劳致死”频发所处阶段相类似, 这对劳动者保障制度的建设亮起了警示灯。2018年两会期间, 遏制“加班文化”, 避 免“过劳死”成为热点议题。从二十世纪九十年代的唐英才事件到近期被陆续爆出 的IT从业者以及高校教师、模特猝死等众多事件, “过劳致死”的受害者从体力劳动 者开始蔓延到脑力劳动者, 受害者工作行业范围的扩大化以及年轻化都不约而同 地折射出当前“过劳致死”现象的严重性。即便如此, “过劳致死”方面的立法仍处于 灰色模糊地段, 虽有与之相关的立法却不尽明确。这种模糊不清的立法状态往往 导致了用人单位肆无忌惮压榨劳动者致死而受害者的近亲属却维权困难的尴尬处 境, “过劳致死”形势愈发严峻。 为了尽量避免职工“过劳致死”悲剧的发生, 最大化地维护劳动者权益, 特撰写此 论文希望对职工“过劳致死”立法规制推进有所裨益。撰写论文时主要运用了文献 阅读法与计量统计法以及比较分析法。通过阅读大量文献, 综合各学者的理念,对职工“过劳致死”的概念及性质作出界定分析, 利用计量统计法对国内目前理论 研究进行分析探讨, 简要概述中国目前的研究现状, 最后利用比较分析法对域外 相关措施进行分析借鉴, 结合中国基本国情, 为职工“过劳致死”的法律制度构建提 出具有创新性以及可操作性的举措。China is currently in a critical period of economic transformation. It is similar to the phase in which Japan’s “KAROSHI” deaths frequently occurred. This is a warning light for the construction of the labor protection system in China. During the two sessions in 2018, curbing the “overtime culture” to avoid “KAROSHI” has become a hot topic. From the events of Tang Yingcai in the 1990s to the recent explosion of IT practitioners and the sudden death of college teachers and models, victims of “KAROSHI” began to spread from manual workers to mental workers. The expansion of the scope of the work of the victim’s work industry and the rejuvenation of youth all reflect the seriousness of the “KAROSHI” phenomenon in China. Even so, our country’s legislation on “KAROSHI” is still in a gray and fuzzy area, although the relevant legislation is not clear. This ambiguous state of legislation often leads to an unfair situation in which the employer unscrupulously squeezes the workers to death and the close relatives of the victims but they are difficult to defend their rights. The situation of “KAROSHI” has become increasingly severe. In order to avoid the tragedy of “overworked death” as far as possible, and to maximize the protection of workers’ rights and interests, this paper is intended to be beneficial to the legislative regulation of “overworked death” in China. Literature reading method, metrological statistics method and comparative analysis method are mainly used in the writing of this paper. By reading a large number of documents, synthesizing the ideas of various scholars, defining and analyzing the concept and nature of “overworked death” for workers, using the method of econometric statistics to analyze and discuss the current theoretical research in China, the present research situation in China is briefly summarized. In the end, the author uses comparative analysis method to analyze and draw lessons from the relevant measures outside China, and puts forward innovative and operable measures for the construction of legal system of “overworked death” for workers in combination with the basic conditions of China.

Model Structure on Self-Efficacy and Career Success of IT Engineers

Self-efficacy is an important factor, one which affects people’s career success. But how does it affect? Dose there exist any mediating variables between them? These questions have not received enough attention. So in this study, it built the work family conflict as intermediary variables, self-efficacy affect the theoretical model of career success through the questionnaire survey of 424 practitioners in IT industry. Empirical study results show that self-efficacy in IT industry has positive effect on career success, work-family conflict plays a part of the mediation relationship between self-efficacy and career success of IT practitioners.

Business-IT Alignment Literature Review

The purpose of this article is to portray the knowledge evolution paths of business-IT alignment (BITA) research and identify a set of important papers in the development of BITA, and elucidate the intellectual structure of this field. This study collected 309 papers published during the period 1983-2015 from the Web of Science (WOS) database. Using a variety of bibliometric and visualization analytic techniques such as citation analysis, co-citation analysis and main path analysis, this article (1) delineates the significant knowledge flows of BITA research and identifies 15 important papers in this field; (2) graphically maps the influential countries, institutions, and journals of BITA research; (3) identifies four major research themes: BITA model, measurement, antecedents, and dynamics, and visualizing the relationships among them. Based on these findings, recommendations for the future research directions have suggested. This article provides IT practitioners, executives, and scholars with a new perspective to get a better understanding of BITA.

An examination of the importance of big data analytics in supply chain agility development

PurposeThis paper aims to investigate the influence of big data analytics (BDA) personnel expertise capabilities in the development of supply chain (SC) agility. Based on extant literature, the study explores the role of BDA technical knowledge, BDA technology management knowledge, BDA business knowledge and BDA relational knowledge in SC agility development. Furthermore, the author also explores the inter-relationships among these four BDA personnel expertise capabilities.Design/methodology/approachAn expert team consisting of IT practitioners (with a minimum experience of five years) were chosen to comment and modify the established scale items of the constructs used in the study. Subsequently, the measures were further pre-tested with 61 students specializing in computer science and information technology. The final survey was mailed to 651 IT professionals with a minimum experience of five years or more in an allied field. Repeated follow-ups and reminders resulted in 176 completed responses. The responses were analysed using partial least squares in SmartPLS 2.0.M3.FindingsFindings suggested that BDA technology management knowledge, BDA business knowledge and BDA relational knowledge are prominent enablers of SC agility. Furthermore, BDA technology management knowledge is an essential precursor of BDA technical knowledge and BDA business knowledge.Originality/valueThe study is the foremost in addressing the importance of BDA personnel expertise capabilities in the development of SC agility. Furthermore, it is also the foremost in exploring the inter-relationships among the BDA personnel expertise capabilities.

Are we ready for cyberterrorist attacks?—Examining the role of individual resilience

This study measures individual resilience to cyberterrorist attacks on financial systems and explores the antecedents of resilience. The research model integrates the resilience literature with the fear appraisal literature to address individuals’ fears of cyberterrorist attacks on financial systems. The model is tested using data collected through an online survey. The results show that (1) community support and family financial management significantly increase resilience toward cyberterrorist attacks, and (2) resilience to and fear of cyberterrorist attacks significantly influence individuals’ behaviors in handling their finances. This research helps IT practitioners to develop strategies to build cyber resilience capacities among individuals and communities.

Implementation of Risk Mitigation Among IT Governance Practitioners in Malaysia

IT industry is facing risks that make IT projects not able reach the scheduled and quality. Therefore, there is an important for risk mitigation in IT Governance to support IT team. Risk mitigation provides expert assistance during IT project activities in supporting team members and decision makers to identify risks associated with in IT process by providing risk documentation of probability and impact of IT risks. Risk mitigation introduces risk advice and designing appropriate strategic alternatives to treat the risk by providing support for the reuse of knowledge. There are, numerous studies have been suggested for seeing the issues in risk mitigation. This paper is a contribution to study on implementation of risk mitigation people management, process management, technology management and quality management involved in IT Governance. The findings of this review indicate that there are some limitations experienced by IT practitioners in mitigating risk effectively.

Impact of Ransomware on Cybersecurity

This paper attempts to discover ransomware exposing the lack of cyber-security. It intends to elicit attention with regards to ransomware, a newly emerged cyber threat and to help organizations; IT practitioners understand the need for cyber security knowledge and awareness plus types of tools used. The paper also discusses methodologies trends and research recommendation on cyber-security threats and provides probative strategic strategy.