Department of IT Management
The department conducts research on software development methods, human judgment and decision making in software development contexts, benefits management, cost estimation, risk and uncertainty management, use of contracts and models for user involvements. The main research approach is empirical, including controlled experiments, observational studies, case studies and surveys.
The department’s main goal is to discover important relationships and connections related to the management of software development work, and use this to contribute to substantial improvement in software development processes and products. For this purpose, we work in close collaboration with industry partners in most of our research. We emphasize the transfer of new and useful knowledge to the industry by publishing and presenting not only in academic venues, but also at industry venues.
The IT Management Department also runs Hovedstadsområdets nettverk for IT-styring og ledelse (HIT-Nettverket), which is a network with the goal of increasing competance through sharing experiences in IT management. The network consist of research institutes, IT companies, consultant companies, public stakeholders and clients with an interest in IT management. The themes includes focuses both in the client and the supplier perspective, in addition to strategic, administrative and project related challenges. Read more about HIT here.
In addition, the department is in charge of the EDOS center (Effective Organization of Public Sector). This center is funded by the Ministry of Local Government and Modernization and was created in 2020. EDOS conducts surveys and analyzes information on digitalization in the public sector. The research aims to provide knowledge about what leads to successful digitalization in the public sector and to disseminate knowledge that leads to higher efficiency and more value creation. Read more about EDOS here.
People at Department of IT Management
Who we are?
Simula Metropolitan employees are researchers, postdoctoral fellows, PhD students, engineers and administrative people. We are from all over the world, ranging from newly educated to experienced researchers, all working on making research in digital engineering at the highest international level possible.
Publications at Department of IT Management
Book
Benefit/Cost-Driven Software Development -- with Benefit Points and Size Points
Cambridge, UK: Springer, 2021.Status: Published
Benefit/Cost-Driven Software Development -- with Benefit Points and Size Points
This open access book presents a set of basic techniques for estimating the benefit of IT development projects and portfolios. It also offers methods for monitoring how much of that estimated benefit is being achieved during projects.
Readers can then use these benefit estimates together with cost estimates to create a benefit/cost index to help them decide which functionalities to send into construction and in what order. This allows them to focus on constructing the functionality that offers the best value for money at an early stage.
Although benefits management involves a wide range of activities in addition to estimation and monitoring, the techniques in this book provides a clear guide to achieving what has always been the goal of project and portfolio stakeholders: developing systems that produce as much usefulness and value as possible for the money invested. The techniques can also help deal with vicarious motives and obstacles that prevent this happening. The book equips readers to recognize when a project budget should not be spent in full and resources be allocated elsewhere in a portfolio instead. It also provides development managers and upper management with common ground as a basis for making informed decisions.
| Afilliation | Software Engineering |
| Project(s) | Department of IT Management |
| Publication Type | Book |
| Year of Publication | 2021 |
| Publisher | Springer |
| Place Published | Cambridge, UK |
| ISBN Number | 978-3-030-74217-1 |
| Keywords | benefit points, benefit/costs index, benefits management, earned business value management, periodization, uncertainty assessment |
| URL | https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-030-74218-8#toc |
| DOI | 10.1007/978-3-030-74218-8 |
Journal Article
Backsourcing of Information Technology - A Systematic Literature Review
Information Systems Research (2021).Status: Submitted
Backsourcing of Information Technology - A Systematic Literature Review
Context: Backsourcing is the process of insourcing previously outsourced activities. When companies experience environmental or strategic changes, or challenges with outsourcing, backsourcing can be a viable alternative. While outsourcing and related processes have been extensively studied in information technology, few studies report experiences with backsourcing.
Objectives: We intend to summarize the results of the research literature on the backsourcing of IT, with a focus on software development. By identifying practical relevance experience, we aim to present findings that may help companies considering backsourcing. In addition, we aim to identify gaps in the current research literature and point out areas for future work.
Method: Our systematic literature review (SLR) started with a search for empirical studies on the backsourcing of IT. From each study we identified the contexts in which backsourcing occurs, the factors leading to the decision to backsource, the backsourcing process itself, and the outcomes of backsourcing. We employed inductive coding to extract textual data from the papers identified and qualitative cross-case analysis to synthesize the evidence from backsourcing experiences.
Results: We identified 17 papers that reported 26 cases of backsourcing, six of which were related to software development. The cases came from a variety of contexts. The most common reasons for backsourcing were improving quality, reducing costs, and regaining control of outsourced activities. The backsourcing process can be described as containing five sub-processes: change management, vendor relationship management, competence building, organizational build-up, and transfer of ownership. Furthermore, we identified 14 positive outcomes and nine negative outcomes of backsourcing. Finally, we aggregated the evidence and detailed three relationships of potential use to companies considering backsourcing.
Conclusion: The backsourcing of IT is a complex process; its implementation depends on the prior outsourcing relationship and other contextual factors. Our systematic literature review may contribute to a better understanding of this process by identifying its components and their relationships based on the peer-reviewed literature. Our results may also serve as a motivation and baseline for further research on backsourcing and may provide guidelines and process fragments from which practitioners can benefit when they engage in backsourcing.
| Afilliation | Software Engineering |
| Project(s) | EDOS: Effective Digitalization of Public Sector, Department of IT Management |
| Publication Type | Journal Article |
| Year of Publication | 2021 |
| Journal | Information Systems Research |
| Publisher | Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences |
| Keywords | backshoring, Backsourcing, information technology, software development, Software Engineering, systematic literature review |
Leveraging Network-Centric Strategic Goals in Capabilities
J. Miltary Studies (2021).Status: Published
Leveraging Network-Centric Strategic Goals in Capabilities
The vision of network-centric operations is to increase operational capabilities through networked collaboration. NATO and its member nations state this vision in strategic documents at a very high level of abstraction. While suitable for giving an overall feel, current documentation renders the steps toward implementing those visions largely unsupported. We outline a method, based on agile requirements engineering, for converting high-level strategic visions into capabilities, whose form lend themselves to incremental implementation. We illustrate the use of this method in two cases that concern both operational capabilities and technical capabilities. We also show how the method enables one to prioritize which capabilities to develop first. We conclude that some form of explicit methodology to span the gap between strategic visions and implementing those visions is necessary.
| Afilliation | Software Engineering |
| Project(s) | EDOS: Effective Digitalization of Public Sector, Department of IT Management |
| Publication Type | Journal Article |
| Year of Publication | 2021 |
| Journal | J. Miltary Studies |
| Publisher | De Gruyter |
Experiential Learning Approach for Software Engineering Courses at Higher Education Level
Journal of Computing in Higher Education (2021).Status: Submitted
Experiential Learning Approach for Software Engineering Courses at Higher Education Level
Background: Software project management activities help to introducing software process models in Software Engineering courses. However, these activities should be adequately aligned with the learning outcomes and support student's progression.
Objective: Present and evaluate an approach to help students acquire theoretical and practical knowledge and experience real-world software projects' challenges. The approach combines a serious game and a design-implement task in which students develop a controlled-scale software system.
Methods: To evaluate our approach, we analyzed the students' perceptions collected through an online survey, their project plans, and their final reports using thematic analysis.
Results: Results suggest that the approach promotes knowledge acquisition, enables students' progression, reinforces theoretical concepts, and is properly aligned with the course's learning outcomes.
Conclusion: The approach seems to help introducing software process models in Software Engineering courses. Our experience can also be inspiring for educators willing to apply our approach in similar courses.
| Afilliation | Software Engineering |
| Project(s) | Department of IT Management |
| Publication Type | Journal Article |
| Year of Publication | 2021 |
| Journal | Journal of Computing in Higher Education |
| Publisher | Springer |
Determining a Core View of Research Quality in Empirical Software Engineering
Empirical Software Engineering (2021).Status: Submitted
Determining a Core View of Research Quality in Empirical Software Engineering
Context: Research quality is intended to appraise the design and reporting of studies. It comprises a set of concepts such as methodological rigor, practical relevance, and conformance to ethical standards. Depending on the perspective, different views of importance are given to the conceptual dimensions of research quality.
Objective: We intend to assess the level of alignment between researchers with regard to a conceptual model of research quality. This includes aligning the definition of research quality and reasoning on the relative importance of quality characteristics.
Method: We conducted a mixed-methods approach with two distinct group perspectives: (i) a research group; and (ii) the empirical software engineering research community. Our data collection approach comprised a questionnaire survey and a complementary focus group. We carried out a hierarchical voting prioritization to collect relative values for importance.
Results: In the context of this research, ‘internally valid’, ‘relevant research idea’, and ‘applicable results’ are perceived as the core dimensions of quality. The alignment at the research group level was higher compared to that at the community level.
Conclusion: The interdisciplinary model of research quality was seen to express fairly the quality of research in the software engineering context. It presented limitations regarding its structure and components' description, which resulted in an updated model.
| Afilliation | Software Engineering |
| Project(s) | Department of IT Management |
| Publication Type | Journal Article |
| Year of Publication | 2021 |
| Journal | Empirical Software Engineering |
| Publisher | Springer |
Risks and risk mitigation in global software development: an update
Journal of Software: Evolution and Process e2370 (2021).Status: Published
Risks and risk mitigation in global software development: an update
Context: Interest in global software development (GSD) has led to the publication of numerous studies. Over time, these studies should be updated to verify if their findings and conclusions remain valid.
Objective: To update a tertiary study, published in 2014, focused on investigating risks and risk mitigation advice in the context of GSD.
Method: We conducted a systematic literature study based on forward snowballing, out of which we identified and selected 25 unique studies.
Results: We extracted: a) 122 risks (75 of which already identified in the original work), and b) 123 mitigation advice (44 of which were identified in the original work). The evidence supporting these risks and mitigation were extracted from 619 and 389 primary sources, respectively. Given the amount of evidence found, we have reported only those with higher empirical support. The raw data, including all the values obtained, are available online as complementary material.
Conclusions: Interest in GSD, its potential risks, and possible mitigation strategies, remains high. This update has allowed increasing the level of empirical support provided by the findings of the original work.
| Afilliation | Software Engineering |
| Project(s) | Department of IT Management, EDOS: Effective Digitalization of Public Sector |
| Publication Type | Journal Article |
| Year of Publication | 2021 |
| Journal | Journal of Software: Evolution and Process |
| Volume | e2370 |
| Date Published | 09/2021 |
| Publisher | John Wiley & Sons Ltd |
| URL | https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/smr.2370 |
| DOI | 10.1002/smr.2370 |
Archetypes of delay: An analysis of online developer conversations on delayed work items in IBM Jazz
Information and Software Technology 129 (2021): 106435.Status: Published
Archetypes of delay: An analysis of online developer conversations on delayed work items in IBM Jazz
| Project(s) | Department of IT Management |
| Publication Type | Journal Article |
| Year of Publication | 2021 |
| Journal | Information and Software Technology |
| Volume | 129 |
| Pagination | 106435 |
| Publisher | {Elsevier |
Evaluation of Probabilistic Project Cost Estimates
IEEE Transactions on Engineering Management (2021).Status: Accepted
Evaluation of Probabilistic Project Cost Estimates
Evaluation of cost estimates should be fair and give incentives for accuracy. These goals, we argue, are challenged by a lack of precision in what is meant by a cost estimate and the use of evaluation measures that do not reward the most accurate cost estimates. To improve the situation, we suggest the use of probabilistic cost estimates and propose guidelines on how to evaluate such estimates. The guidelines emphasize the importance of a match between the type of cost estimate provided by the estimators and the chosen cost evaluation measure, and the need for an evaluation of both the calibration and the informativeness of probabilistic cost estimates. The feasibility of the guidelines is exemplified in an analysis of a set of 69 large Norwegian governmental projects. The evaluation indicated that the projects had quite accurate and unbiased P50 estimates and that the prediction intervals were reasonably well calibrated. It also showed that the cost prediction intervals were non-informative with respect to differences in cost uncertainty and, consequently, not useful to identify projects with higher cost uncertainty. The results demonstrate the usefulness of applying the proposed cost estimation evaluation guidelines.
| Afilliation | Software Engineering |
| Project(s) | Department of IT Management |
| Publication Type | Journal Article |
| Year of Publication | 2021 |
| Journal | IEEE Transactions on Engineering Management |
| Publisher | IEEE |
A field experiment on trialsourcing and the effect of contract types on outsourced software development
Information and Software Technology (2021).Status: Accepted
A field experiment on trialsourcing and the effect of contract types on outsourced software development
Context: To ensure the success of software projects, it is essential to select skilled developers and to use suitable work contracts. Objective: This study tests two hypotheses: (i) the use of work-sample testing (trialsourcing) improves the selection of skilled software developers; and (ii) the use of contracts based on hourly payment leads to better software project outcomes than fixed-price contracts. Method: Fifty-seven software freelancers with relevant experience and good evaluation scores from previous clients were invited to complete a two-hour long trialsourcing task to qualify for a software development project. Thirty-six developers completed the trialsourcing task with acceptable performance, and, based on a stratified allocation process, were asked to give a proposal based on an hourly payment or a fixed-price contract. Eight hourly payment-based and eight fixed-priced proposals were accepted. The process and product characteristics of the completion of these 16 projects were collected and analysed. Results and Conclusion: Only partial support for our hypotheses was observed. While the use of trialsourcing may have prevented the selection of developers with insufficient skills, the performance on the trialsourcing task of the selected developers did not predict performance on the project. The use of hourly payments led to lower costs than fixed-price contracts, but not to improved processes or products. We plan to follow up these, to us unexpected, results with research on how to design more skill-predictive trialsourcing tasks, and when and why different project contexts give different contract consequences.
| Afilliation | Software Engineering |
| Project(s) | Department of IT Management |
| Publication Type | Journal Article |
| Year of Publication | 2021 |
| Journal | Information and Software Technology |
| Publisher | Elsevier |
Proceedings, refereed
Preliminary Evaluation of a Survey Checklist in the Context of Evidence-based Software Engineering Education.
In ENASE. SciTePress - SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY PUBLICATIONS, 2021.Status: Published
Preliminary Evaluation of a Survey Checklist in the Context of Evidence-based Software Engineering Education.
Background: In order to judge evidence it is important to be able to assess study quality. Checklists are means to objectify the assessment. In an earlier study we proposed and evaluated a checklist for surveys, which was assessed by experts.
Objective: (1) To assess whether the use of the checklist enables students with limited experience in research to consistently and accurately assess the quality of a research paper. (2) To elicit qualitative feedback to identify improvements to the checklist.
Method: The students reviewed a survey in a one-group posttest-only quasi-experiment using the checklist. In total 13 students participated in the context of the course Evidence-based software engineering as part of the study program Information Systems at Flensburg University of Applied Sciences.
Results: In total the students achieved 74% percent of agreement among each other. However, the Kappa values indicated mostly a poor level of agreement considering the classification by Fleiss. In addition, the students were quite inaccurate assessing the questions. Though, they performed well on questions for research objectives and the identification of population.
Conclusion: Findings indicate that students do not assess reliably. However, further investigations are needed to substantiate the findings.
| Afilliation | Software Engineering |
| Project(s) | Department of IT Management |
| Publication Type | Proceedings, refereed |
| Year of Publication | 2021 |
| Conference Name | ENASE |
| Pagination | 437–444 |
| Date Published | 04/2021 |
| Publisher | SciTePress - SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY PUBLICATIONS |
| Keywords | Checklist, One-group Quasi-experiment, Students, survey |