Purpose
This study aims to understand how practitioners use their insights in software development models to share experiences within and between organizations.
Design/methodology/approach
This is a ...qualitative study of practitioners in software development projects, in large-, medium- or small-size businesses. It analyzes interview material in three-step iterations to understand reflexive practice when using software development models.
Findings
The study shows how work processes are based on team members’ experiences and common views. This study highlights the challenges of organizational learning in system development projects. Current practice is unreflective, habitual and lacks systematic ways to address recurring problems and share information within and between organizations. Learning is episodic and sporadic. Knowledge from previous experience is individual not organizational.
Originality/value
Software development teams and organizations tend to learn about, and adopt, software development models episodically. This research expands understanding of how organizational learning takes place within and between organizations with practitioners who participate in teams. Learnings show the potential for further research to determine how new curriculums might be formed for teaching software development model improvements.
While living longer at home is the preferred option for the elderly, disease, accidents or general health decline might make this hard. Fall accidents, which are among the chief causes of unforced ...injury leading to hospitalization, must be viewed as a strong factor working against the possibilities for the elderly of living longer at home. Although many fall prevention programs have been developed and applied, and checklists and advice abound, most of these originate in the professional care area or depend on care professionals. In this paper, we present a fall prevention concept directed towards elderly people living at home, with the intention of providing a safer environment ensuring more years of doing this in a healthy manner. There are several obstacles for a successful implementation of fall prevention, many pending on the attitudes and thought systems of the elderly user community, including low risk awareness, technological stigmata, refusal to be associated with health problems and a general “not for me” world view. The paper presents an AI/IoT-driven learning environment for fall prevention which facilitates living independently and improved self-understanding to provide for easier everyday living. The central design idea is to lead the user through a learning process including acquiring knowledge of fall prevention, personal characteristics, taking fall prevention action and understanding the outcomes of changed behaviors. The concluding outcome is a discussion of a set of design variables for the effective implementation of fall prevention systems, including a holistic view of fall prevention and aging, open platform technologies, a flexible and adaptable module approach, feedback-based learning, IoT/sensor-driven learning, personalization and goal orientation and the dual use of technology avoiding technology stigmas.
IT solutions for rehab are seen as an opportunity to provide effective support for patients’ recovery process in their in-home environment, based on instructions from health care professionals. ...However, what factors in the context affect the usefulness of such systems lie beyond the training process as such. In this research, we followed a co-design process, where the design of a support packaged for home rehab is based on standard products. Through group interviews with teams of home rehab staff, a broader view of the subject was sought. Group discussions involving the initial demonstration and testing of technology provided a wide spectrum of factors that the staff considered important for success, related to issues on both the organizational and the patient levels. These findings were analyzed for success factors in an attempt to reach an understanding of the rehab process context which will have an effect on the usefulness of the support system. As a result, a checklist of aspects on the process that need to be taken into account in the design of a rehab support system is presented and discussed. The results could be used both in the design of solutions and in the selection and implementation of support systems regarding how to improve the actual use of the systems.
This paper presents a literature review of motivating factors for taking part in fall prevention activities among the elderly. The research aim is to improve the design and development of IT-based ...fall prevention programs for a deeper understanding of what motivates users to take part in such programs. Making fall prevention IT-based might improve the situation but might also become an obstacle in itself. To better ground this design process, a review is made of current efforts of fall prevention and of understanding motives for participation in fall prevention programs. As a result, we present a set of driving forces for the elderly to participate in fall prevention and discuss these in the context of technology acceptance theory, giving outlines for a model of motivating factors for them to use IT-based fall preventions systems. The results show a general direction of motivational efforts used in fall prevention to consist of some form of personalization strategy where, e.g., personal goals and conditions are used to adapt prevention measures to the individual.
The purpose of this article is to provide a better understanding of an information systems development process from a learning theory perspective. The authors wish to investigate how learning ...concepts can improve the practice of developing such systems. They look closer at the activities and outcomes of a development project with the focus on the user side and how these can be understood using different theories from the field of learning. The purpose of the case project was to ensure that the intended users of the systems (in this case, heart failure patients) should be able to influence the choices made during the project so that the implemented system would benefit the whole group of patients. During this process, it became apparent that the users themselves developed and changed a great deal. In this research, the authors therefore wish to investigate the learning and change mechanism that came into play through the designed participative ISD process. As a result, they suggest that a learning mechanism should be planned for in any ISD process, regardless of what methodology is applied.
The current paper addresses one of the core yet complex issues in the study of technology in organizations: the relationship between the social and the material. Many scholars in the field of ...Information Systems have used the notion of affordance as a lens to investigate and theorize this relationship. However, knowledge contributions in this area are often nd impractical, or at least compel further conceptual development. This paper uses a relational view of affordances to study organizational social media affordances based on empirical data collected about the use of the Wiki technology at two large multinational organizations—CCC and IBM. It theorizes four key mechanisms—referring to other affordances (referential), collectively enacting significant affordances (communal), situation-dependent exploitation of affordances (situatedness), and exploiting other opportunities for action (multiplicity), that embody the interaction between the social and the material. These mechanisms make up what is labelled in this paper as ‘the affordances apparatus’. The apparatus provides a conceptual structure for the interaction between social and material features that shows operational dynamics and processes underpinning the perception, enactment and exploitation of affordances. This apparatus is the main contribution of the paper in that it gives researchers a conceptual tool for investigating affordances as relational constructs between the social and the material. It also helps in understanding how people navigate the use of technology features relative to their intentions and goals.
Development of support systems in the area of e-health have different set of conditions that makes it more difficult than in other context of IS/IT use. In this research we explore a development case ...and look at the development process and the outcomes in terms of solutions. The research concerns the area of heart failure and how patients could be more successful with self-care. The outcome from the project was the creation of a portfolio of solutions, which was a combination of technical and process solutions. The outcome draws the attention to the need of flexible solutions and cater to the diversity of the patients and their personal situations. In the concluding discussion a set of design dimensions are presenting, representing difficult trade-offs that needs to be handled during the design process.
In this paper the nature of user involvement in a co-design process will be explored. The outlines of a research project aiming at developing support systems for self-care inpatients suffering from ...chronic heart failure will be presented. The project is planned to perform a co-design effort where users (patients and healthcare professionals) will be given the opportunity to influence the development of support systems. We will discuss a number of possibilities and challenges that lie in the design of this kind of project and also some findings from its early stages. This report presents the experiences of users’ input, which are discussed in the context of previous research on benefits of user contributions in systems development.
Ehealth solutions are in great need in the community of elderly in general, as patients or home carers, however a design approach that delivers this is illusive. In this research we present the ...experiences from a set of design processes targeting elderly’s needs of support or home care, based on a co-design approach. The purpose is to present guiding principles for how to work with elderly in a co-design process, to be used as basis for future set up of co-design processes.
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