Publications
Proceedings, refereed
A Survey on the Use and Effects of Goal Hierarchies in Digitalization Efforts
In Portland International Conference on Management of Engineering and Technology: Managing Technology, Engineering and Manufacturing for a Sustainable World (PICMET 2023), 2023.Status: Submitted
A Survey on the Use and Effects of Goal Hierarchies in Digitalization Efforts
Digitalization has become a primary goal for organizations. Successfully adopting the digital context both in daily operations and in business management and strategy entails great benefits at different levels (organizational, economic, social, environmental…). Thus, it is very important that practitioners have clear conceptions of the goals in this regard and that those goals are “alive” in organizations. For this reason, in this study we present a survey that we performed among practitioners related to the management of Information Technology (IT) from both the private and public sectors in Norway. Through this survey we have tried to find out how organizations understand and translate the current context of digitalization from different goal levels. For that, we asked respondents to relate to one of three goal hierarchies: A) a classical governance approach; B) an organizational tier approach; and C) an effects-based approach. Among the results obtained we found that the first two are the most used and the goal achievement is slightly higher for the classical governance approach than for the others. Likewise, we identified that while top level management has a good understanding of the goals, this understanding deteriorates as one moves down the organizational hierarchy.
Afilliation | Software Engineering |
Project(s) | Department of IT Management |
Publication Type | Proceedings, refereed |
Year of Publication | 2023 |
Conference Name | Portland International Conference on Management of Engineering and Technology: Managing Technology, Engineering and Manufacturing for a Sustainable World (PICMET 2023) |
Keywords | Digitalization, information technology, Management, strategy, sustainability |
Designing, Engineering, and Testing a Mobile App to Fight Child, Early, and Forced Marriage in Developing Countries
In 16th International Conference on Cooperative and Human Aspects of Software Engineering (CHASE 2023), 2023.Status: Submitted
Designing, Engineering, and Testing a Mobile App to Fight Child, Early, and Forced Marriage in Developing Countries
Context: Child, early, and forced marriage is still a severe issue in developing countries. Among the strategies that seem to work most to fight it is the empowerment of girls with information combined with the education of parents and community.
Objective: As smartphones are more accessible year after year in developing countries, we want to investigate how a mobile app could effectively fight child marriage and which characteristics such an app should have.
Methods: The research was organized into three main phases. The first phase was focused on expert semi-structured interviews to understand if an app could be a good solution to help in fighting child marriage and which screens and features it should have. While the second and third phases were based on a case study with young girls in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), divided into two parts: the second phase, with focus groups to test and improve the requisites of the app obtained from the first phase; and, the third phase, with a questionnaire that they had to fill after trying the app. This study interviewed 4 experts and respectively 26 and 14 girls to understand the app's requirements and evaluation.
Results: The research reports on a real-world problem (child marriage) and an innovative solution for designing learning apps for developing countries, in particular, to fight child, early, and forced marriage, and to the development of a mobile app that follows the Principles for Digital Development. The study shows promising results: girls in developing countries have access to smartphones, and most of them could use the developed app satisfactorily.
Conclusion: Our research on the developed mobile app shows that it is worth continuing to study the problem of child marriage and that an app could be a new instrument to use alongside traditional tools.
Afilliation | Software Engineering |
Project(s) | Department of IT Management |
Publication Type | Proceedings, refereed |
Year of Publication | 2023 |
Conference Name | 16th International Conference on Cooperative and Human Aspects of Software Engineering (CHASE 2023) |
Keywords | Child Marriage, Developing Countries, Digital Illiterate Users, ICT4D, Low- Literate Users, Mobile App |
Gender Equality in Information Technology Processes: A Systematic Mapping Study
In Future of Information and Communication Conference (FICC 2023), 2023.Status: Accepted
Gender Equality in Information Technology Processes: A Systematic Mapping Study
Information Technology (IT) plays a key role in the world we live in. As such, its relation to the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) stated by the United Nations to improve lives and health of the people and the planet is inexorable. In particular, the SDG 5 aims to enforce gender equality and states 9 Targets that drive the actions to achieve such goal. The lack of women within IT has been a concern for several years. In this context, the objective of this study is to get an overview of the state of the art on gender equality in IT processes. To do so, we conducted a Systematic Mapping Study to investigate the addressed Targets, challenges, and potential best practices that have been put forward so far. The results we have obtained demonstrate the novelty of this field, as well as a set of opportunities and challenges that currently exist in this regard, such as the lack of best practices to address gender equality in IT processes and the need to develop proposals that solve this problem. All of this can be used as a starting point to identify open issues that help to promote research on this field and promote and enhance best practices towards a more socially sustainable basis for gender equality in and by IT.
Afilliation | Software Engineering |
Project(s) | Department of IT Management |
Publication Type | Proceedings, refereed |
Year of Publication | 2023 |
Conference Name | Future of Information and Communication Conference (FICC 2023) |
Keywords | Gender Equality, information technology, Processes, sustainability, Systematic Mapping Study |
Book Chapter
Dev-Balance: Improving Gender Balance in Software Development Processes
In Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion in Software Engineering: Best Practices and Insights. Apress, 2023.Status: Submitted
Dev-Balance: Improving Gender Balance in Software Development Processes
The lack of women in the different fields of Engineering and, in this case, in Information Technology (IT), as well as the challenges, inequality of opportunities, and discrimination that they face, has for several decades been a pending issue on agendas worldwide. When the United Nations (UN) presented the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in 2015, they introduced the SDG 5 with the aim to achieve gender equality across all areas of our society.
In recent years, different efforts have been made through the different fields of knowledge to achieve the targets identified in the SDG 5. However, although significant progress has been made and good foundations have been established in this regard, progress is very slow and scant, needing more proposals that address the problems identified through the analyzes performed.
In this sense, the main objective of this study is to present a proposal to help achieve gender balance and address the challenges faced by women in the specific field of software development. The presence and representation of women in the IT industry is very scarce and not only affects the motivation and aspirations of women to develop professionally in this field, but also the quality, mainly, of the products developed in this regard. There are many examples of software products that are not inclusive and that discriminate against various sectors of society, due to the lack of diversity and inclusion of all types of people (including women) during their development.
For this reason, it is important to address the problem from the foundations and develop proposals that help improve, in this case, the existing software development processes, achieving greater equality and diversity that positively impacts the final products.
Afilliation | Software Engineering |
Project(s) | Department of IT Management |
Publication Type | Book Chapter |
Year of Publication | 2023 |
Book Title | Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion in Software Engineering: Best Practices and Insights |
Publisher | Apress |
Keywords | Gender, Processes, Social Sustainability, Software Engineering |
Journal Article
Gender Balance in Software Engineering Processes: An Empirical Study
Empirical Software Engineering (2023).Status: Submitted
Gender Balance in Software Engineering Processes: An Empirical Study
The challenges that women face in the Information Technology (IT) industry are prominent and complex, and it is essential to review whether the current processes address these issues or represent a barrier to the participation of women in software development. It has been found that teams that champion diversity and the inclusion of women achieve better results. Thus, as long as women remain a minority in software development processes, the resulting repercussions on the software products should be reviewed. This study tries to analyze and understand what actions can be established to improve software development processes, and consequently their resulting products and outputs, in which there is gender inequality or discrimination. For this purpose, we have performed 12 semi-structured interviews to gather data from experienced representatives, including both developers and project leaders, from the IT industry in Norway, with the aim to identify recurring themes and improvement opportunities in this regard. The results show a diversity of opinions on what actions to implement to limit drop-out among women in IT. Some of the ideas or practices identified through these results involve conducting training courses on diversity and equality, providing regular positive feedback, establishing coding and code review standards, or creating more inclusive and diverse development teams, among others. We believe that the input on previously discovered barriers for women together with the findings from our interviews give us the foundations for continuing working and developing new ideas that can be implemented into software development processes, with the aim of making them more inclusive and increasing the diversity of the resulting solutions in this regard.
Afilliation | Software Engineering |
Project(s) | Department of IT Management |
Publication Type | Journal Article |
Year of Publication | 2023 |
Journal | Empirical Software Engineering |
Publisher | Springer |
Keywords | Empirical Study, Gender, Processes, Social Sustainability, Software Engineering |
Journal Article
State of Gender Equality in and by Artificial Intelligence
IADIS International Journal on Computer Science & Information Systems 17 (2022): 31-48.Status: Published
State of Gender Equality in and by Artificial Intelligence
When talking about sustainability, we usually think that it is only about safeguarding the environment; nothing is further from reality. Of course, the environment is a crucial component of sustainability and our survival, but it is important to recall that the society and the economy play important roles in this regard, and without the interconnection and development of these three perspectives it will not be possible to achieve sustainable progress. The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) established by the United Nations (UN) defend this idea and address the main challenges that humanity faces. One of these challenges is gender equality, which is identified in the perspective of social sustainability through SDG 5. Gender equality is a very complex and difficult challenge to address due to the great cultural diversity of our society. Thus, achieving this goal will require laying a solid foundation and working together by combining very different fields of knowledge. In this sense, Artificial Intelligence (AI) is one of the fields that is currently having the greatest impact and relevance for the development of new technologies and for the advancement of numerous areas. This growing evolution of AI demonstrates that its repercussions at the social level must be analyzed and addressed in such a way that AI becomes a positive asset for sustainability and, in this particular case, for gender equality.
For all these reasons, this study aims to analyze the current state of the art and collect the existing knowledge in the fields of AI and gender equality, by conducting a Systematic Mapping Study (SMS). The obtained results and findings have allowed us to identify the most relevant advances in this regard, as well as the gaps and drawbacks that currently exist and on which we must urgently focus to address gender equality both in and by AI. In the same way, these findings demonstrate the limited joint development of both fields, but also indicate an increase in the relevance and the number of proposals that these fields are receiving in recent years.
Afilliation | Software Engineering |
Project(s) | Department of IT Management |
Publication Type | Journal Article |
Year of Publication | 2022 |
Journal | IADIS International Journal on Computer Science & Information Systems |
Volume | 17 |
Number | 2 |
Pagination | 31-48 |
Date Published | 12/2022 |
Publisher | IADIS |
ISSN | 1646-3692 |
Keywords | artificial intelligence, Gender Equality, Literature Analysis, Literature Review, Social Sustainability |
URL | https://www.iadisportal.org/ijcsis/papers/2022170203.pdf |