Association for Information Systems Conference, August 7 - 9, 2014

Details

Track Chairs:

Lorraine Lee, University of North Carolina Wilmington,  This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Alanah Mitchell (primary contact),Appalachian State University, This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.%20" target="_blank">This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Stacie Petter, University of Nebraska at Omaha, This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Track Description:

Unfortunately, information technology (IT) projects have become notorious for high failure rates or having significant cost or budget overruns. Both research and anecdotal evidence suggests that many IT projects struggle to meet functionality and quality targets. Research has identified multiple reasons for these challenges in IT projects, such as: project escalation, poor risk management, failure to manage user expectations, poor software development or project management processes, or inability to learn from past mistakes and successes. As a research community, there is still much to be learned and discussed about improving success rates for IT projects. This track is sponsored by the AIS SIG ITProjectManagement.

Mini-Tracks:

General Topics in IT Project Management

Michael Chilton, Kansas State University, This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

This mini-track is for scholars whose work in IT project management may not be covered in other mini-tracks associated with IT Project Management. Some possible topics in this mini-track are:

• The effects of changing resource availability
• Resource conflict resolution
• Comparison of scheduling methods:
• Critical Path Method (CPM)
• Critical Chain
• Critical Sequence
• Scheduling algorithms and/or optimization routines
• Unpublished heuristics
• Using simulation to replicate the effects of scheduling and schedule changes
• Software tools & resource allocation/leveling
• Handling under- or over-allocated resources
• The effect of prioritizing on resource allocation
• Resource allocation in small & medium businesses
• Decisions regarding resource allocation when scheduling serial or parallel tasks
• Other topics as appropriate

 
Project Management Education

Michael Cuellar, Georgia Southern University, This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

This track covers issues dealing with project management in the curriculum. The purpose of this mini-track then is to provide a forum to exchange ideas and experience in teaching project management. Papers on teaching tips, curriculum, accreditation and research into PM education are welcomed here.

Topics for this mini-track might include, but are not limited to:

• What is the place of project management in the information systems curriculum? Should it be required or an elective?
• In what disciplinary area should project management be found? IS? Management? Engineering?
• What are the topics that should be covered in an IS Project management course? How should the technical PM topics be balanced against the human relations topics?
• How can project management best be taught? What are practical tools and techniques that can be used to inculcate best practices.
• What is the role of simulation tools such as SimProject or virtual reality environments such as SecondLife in project management instruction?
• What impact does delivering the course online have on project management instruction?
• What place does PMI certification play in academic project management education?
• Project management as a major. How should a project management major be structured? What is the curriculum?
• How should all of these concerns be addressed in an undergraduate or graduate program?

Management of Agile IT Sourcing Options

Matthew Swinarski, Penn State Erie, This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Jahyun Goo

We invite papers that provide insights into all aspects of IT sourcing and various IT sourcing models over the network such as cloud computing and SaaS. In particular, we are also interested in papers that tie the developments of these sourcing models to broader IT strategy issues in firms.

IT Project Success

Dirk Basten, University of Cologne, This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Bjoern Michalik, University of Cologne, This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

The challenge of successfully completing information technology (IT) projects is still prevailing. Dominant research streams focus on achieving success (i.e., through the identification of success factors) or avoiding failure (i.e., through the identification of failure factors). In addition, a central aspect of IT project success research deals with the measurement of success. Whereas the traditional and still most widely applied approach to measure success is adherence to planning (i.e., project conformance to budget, schedule, and specified requirements), criteria like stakeholder satisfaction or strategic benefits for the contracting organization have been proposed to be used additionally or alternatively to adherence to planning. Beside the phenomenon of differences between traditional success assessments and subjective perceptions of stakeholders, the measurability of success criteria is an issue yet to be solved.

This minitrack seeks high quality research papers that investigate various aspects of IT project success. In that light, we welcome both conceptual and empirical papers that employ a variety of quantitative and qualitative methodologies.

Possible topics include, but are not limited to:

• Success criteria
• Measurability of success criteria
• Coherence of process success and product success
• Success contingencies (e.g., point in time, stakeholder perspectives, project characteristics)
• Success factors
• Failure factors
• Success reports

Strategic Project Management in Public Projects for Growth & Sustainability

Corlane Barclay, University of Technology, Jamaica, This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Public projects are important to nation building however they have continued to receive relatively limited attention in the project management domain. Public projects are any temporary initiatives where the citizens of the country are the primary stakeholders and customers. These primarily include government and NGOs activities aimed at improving the economic and/or social conditions of the public. These public projects have varied characteristics in terms of source of funding and ownership, economic, political and social motives, size and complexity and occur across the spectrum of development of an economy, i.e. developing to developed countries. They however converge on their likelihood to have significant impact on the growth, competitiveness and development of the economy across socio-economic, political and legal dimensions. An analysis of the environment sees that these projects are fraught with their own challenges with far-reaching impact, for example the recent Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act in the USA, Philippine’s Anti-cybercrime Act or the Athens Olympic Games and subsequent financial crisis in Greece. They therefore require careful attention, customized strategies and solutions to manage their performance throughout the project life cycle. Insights into contemporary methodologies, strategies, techniques to enable successful performance, evaluation and management of these projects are therefore important.