Question: A revised timeboxing process model for efficient resource utilization.

The Evolution of Iterative and Incremental Development: A Historical Perspective

Contrary to the perception that iterative and incremental development (IID) is a contemporary concept, its origins can be traced back to the mid-20th century. Throughout the decades, influential figures in the software engineering community have consistently advocated for IID methodologies, highlighting their effectiveness in numerous large-scale projects. Despite the variations in implementation, the underlying principle remained consistent: to steer clear of a monolithic, documentation-heavy, and strictly sequential approach.

The essence of IID lies in its adaptive nature, enabling teams to respond to changing requirements and feedback more efficiently. By breaking down the development process into manageable iterations, teams can focus on delivering functional increments of software, allowing for continuous evaluation and refinement. This approach not only promotes a higher level of collaboration and communication among stakeholders but also ensures a more efficient utilization of resources, as adjustments can be made promptly based on real-time feedback and evolving project needs.

Historically, IID has been instrumental in overcoming the challenges associated with traditional project management models, particularly in terms of resource allocation and risk management. By emphasizing incremental progress and flexibility, IID ensures that resources are allocated based on the evolving priorities of the project, rather than being rigidly bound to a predetermined plan. This dynamic allocation of resources fosters a more agile and responsive development environment, enhancing the overall efficiency and success of software projects.

Moreover, the historical success of IID in various projects underscores its versatility and adaptability across different industries and project scales. The iterative and incremental approach has proven to be effective not only in software development but also in other complex projects requiring phased development and continuous improvement.

In summary, the historical evolution of iterative and incremental development practices highlights their enduring relevance and effectiveness in software engineering. By embracing the principles of IID, teams can achieve more efficient resource utilization, improved project outcomes, and enhanced stakeholder satisfaction, demonstrating the continued importance of this approach in modern project management practices.

This paper provides an overview of the latest version of the Capability Maturity Model for Software, CMM v1.1. Based on over six years of experience with software process improvement and the contributions of hundreds of reviewers, CMM v1.1 describes the software engineering and management practices that characterize organizations as they mature their processes for developing and maintaining software. This paper stresses the need for a process maturity framework to prioritize improvement actions, describes the process maturity framework of five maturity levels and the associated structural components, and discusses future directions for the CMM.

Most current designs of information technology are based on the notion of supporting distinct tasks such as document production, email usage, and voice communication. In this paper we present empirical results that suggest that people organize their work in terms of much larger and thematically connected units of work. We present results of fieldwork observation of information workers in three different roles: analysts, software developers, and managers. We discovered that all of these types of workers experience a high level of discontinuity in the execution of their activities. People average about three minutes on a task and somewhat more than two minutes using any electronic tool or paper document before switching tasks. We introduce the concept of working spheres to explain the inherent way in which individuals conceptualize and organize their basic units of work. People worked in an average of ten different working spheres. Working spheres are also fragmented; people spend about 12 minutes in a working sphere before they switch to another. We argue that design of information technology needs to support people's continual switching between working spheres.

Cloud computing, a distributed computing paradigm, enables delivery of IT resources over the Internet and follows the pay-as-you-go billing model. Workflow scheduling is one of the most challenging problems in cloud computing. Although, workflow scheduling on distributed systems like grids and clusters have been extensively studied, however, these solutions are not viable for a cloud environment. It is because, a cloud environment differs from other distributed environment in two major ways: on-demand resource provisioning and pay-as-you-go pricing model. Thus, to achieve the true benefits of workflow orchestration onto cloud resources novel approaches that can capitalize the advantages and address the challenges specific to a cloud environment needs to be developed. This work proposes a dynamic cost-effective deadline-constrained heuristic algorithm for scheduling a scientific workflow in a public cloud. The proposed technique aims to exploit the advantages offered by cloud computing while taking into account the virtual machine (VM) performance variability and instance acquisition delay to identify a just-in-time schedule of a deadline constrained scientific workflow at lesser costs. Performance evaluation on some well-known scientific workflows exhibit that the proposed algorithm delivers better performance in comparison to the current state-of-the-art heuristics.

Over the past years, the capability maturity model (CMM) and capability maturity model integration (CMMI) have been broadly used for assessing organizational maturity and process capability throughout the world. However, the rapid pace of change in information technology has caused increasing frustration to the heavyweight plans, specifications, and other documentation imposed by contractual inertia and maturity model compliance criteria. In light of that, agile methodologies have been adopted to tackle this challenge. The aim of our paper is to present mapping between CMMI and one of these methodologies, Scrum. It shows how Scrum addresses the Project Management Process Areas of CMMI. This is useful for organizations that have their plan-driven process based on the CMMI model and are planning to improve its processes toward agility or to help organizations to define a new project management framework based on both CMMI and Scrum practices.

Two important questions concerning the coordination of development effort are which bugs to fix first and how long it takes to fix them. In this paper we investigate empirically the relationships between bug report attributes and the time to fix. The objective is to compute prediction models that can be used to recommend whether a new bug should and will be fixed fast or will take more time for resolution. We examine in detail if attributes of a bug report can be used to build such a recommender system. We use decision tree analysis to compute and 10-fold cross validation to test prediction models. We explore prediction models in a series of empirical studies with bug report data of six systems of the three open source projects Eclipse, Mozilla, and Gnome. Results show that our models perform significantly better than random classification. For example, fast fixed Eclipse Platform bugs were classified correctly with a precision of 0.654 and a recall of 0.692. We also show that the inclusion of postsubmission bug report data of up to one month can further improve prediction models.

The idea of Continuous Requirements Engineering in relation to a Human-Centered Agile Development Process is discussed. First, it is argued that Continuous Requirements Engineering has to cover design-time and runtime aspects. In this way maintenance is covered as well. Second, arguments are provided for integrating aspects of usability and user experience into requirements specifications. This has to be done continuously. Therefore, the term Continuous Human-Centered Development is introduced and discussed. Based on a process model for SCRUM some aspects of integrating HCD into the development process are discussed.

The vehicle routing problem with multiple use of vehicles is a variant of the classical vehicle routing problem. It arises when each vehicle performs several routes during the workday due to strict time limits on route duration (e.g., when perishable goods are transported). The routes are defined over customers with a revenue, a demand and a time window. Given a fixed-size fleet of vehicles, it might not be possible to serve all customers. Thus, the customers must be chosen based on their associated revenue minus the traveling cost to reach them. We introduce a branch-and-price approach to address this problem where lower bounds are computed by solving the linear programming relaxation of a set packing formulation, using column generation. The pricing subproblems are elementary shortest path problems with resource constraints. Computational results are reported on euclidean problems derived from well-known benchmark instances for the vehicle routing problem with time windows. 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Resource scheduling based on SLA(Service Level Agreement) in cloud computing is NP-hard problem. There is no efficient method to solve it. This paper proposes an optimal model for the problem and give an algorithm by applying stochastic integer programming technique. Applying Gröbner bases theory for solving the stochastic integer programming problem and the experimental results of the implementation are also presented.

Software Product Lines (SPL) and Agile practices have emerged as new paradigms for developing software. Both approaches share common goals; such as improving productivity, reducing time to market, decreasing development costs and increasing customer satisfaction. These common goals provide the motivation for this research. We believe that integrating Agile practices into SPL can bring a balance between agility and formalism. However, there has been little research on such integration. We have been researching the potential of integrating Agile approaches in one of the key SPL process areas, product derivation. In this paper we present an outline of our Agile process model for product derivation that was developed through industry based case study research.

BJÖRN B. BRANDENBURG: Scheduling and Locking in Multiprocessor Real-Time Operating Systems (Under the direction of James H. Anderson) With the widespread adoption of multicore architectures, multiprocessors are now a standard deployment platform for (soft) real-time applications. This dissertation addresses two questions fundamental to the design of multicore-ready real-time operating systems: (1) Which scheduling policies offer the greatest flexibility in satisfying temporal constraints; and (2) which locking algorithms should be used to avoid unpredictable delays? With regard to Question 1, LITMUSRT, a real-time extension of the Linux kernel, is presented and its design is discussed in detail. Notably, LITMUSRT implements link-based scheduling, a novel approach to controlling blocking due to non-preemptive sections. Each implemented scheduler (22 configurations in total) is evaluated under consideration of overheads on a 24-core Intel Xeon platform. The experiments show that partitioned earliest-deadline first (EDF) scheduling is generally preferable in a hard real-time setting, whereas global and clustered EDF scheduling are effective in a soft real-time setting. With regard to Question 2, real-time locking protocols are required to ensure that the maximum delay due priority inversion can be bounded a priori. Several spinlockand semaphore-based multiprocessor real-time locking protocols for mutual exclusion (mutex), reader-writer (RW) exclusion, and k-exclusion are proposed and analyzed. A new category of RW locks suited to worst-case analysis, termed phase-fair locks, is proposed and three efficient phase-fair spinlock implementations are provided (one with few atomic operations, one with low space requirements, and one with constant RMR complexity). Maximum priority-inversion blocking is proposed as a natural complexity measure for semaphore protocols. It is shown that there are two classes of schedulability analysis, namely suspensionoblivious and suspension-aware analysis, that yield two different lower bounds on blocking. Five


Question: An adjusted timeboxing process model for effective resource utilization.

This paper outlines a systematic approach for collecting accurate and relevant data in the field of software engineering, aimed at assessing the efficacy of software development methodologies and understanding the software development process. The methodology proposed utilizes goal-directed data collection, where the stated benefits and objectives of a methodology guide the formulation of specific questions to be addressed through data analysis. These goals further inform the development of data categorization schemes and the design of data collection instruments. The data gathered focuses on modifications to the software throughout its development phase, captured at the moment these changes occur. To uphold the integrity of the data, a concurrent validation process is integrated into the software development and data collection stages. This validation entails conducting interviews with the data providers to ensure the accuracy of the collected information. Empirical evidence from the application of this methodology across five distinct projects in two separate settings confirms its viability and utility. It was observed that without the inclusion of a validation step, up to half of the collected data could be unreliable, highlighting the essential role of validation in maintaining data quality in software change data collection.

**Question**: Analysis of the impact of agile methodologies on software project management

**Documents**: Agile Software Development: An Overview
This paper provides a comprehensive overview of agile software development methodologies, focusing on their principles, practices, and the benefits they offer over traditional project management approaches. Agile methodologies, such as Scrum, Kanban, and Extreme Programming (XP), emphasize flexibility, collaboration, and rapid delivery. They prioritize responding to change over following a plan, and value working software over comprehensive documentation. The paper discusses how agile methods facilitate continuous improvement, enable teams to deliver value to customers more frequently, and improve the ability to adapt to changing requirements. It also highlights the importance of self-organizing teams and the role of the product owner in defining and prioritizing the product backlog. The paper concludes by addressing common challenges and misconceptions associated with the adoption of agile methodologies, suggesting strategies for successful implementation.

**Similar Documents**: This comprehensive review delves into the core tenets and practices of agile software development methodologies, exploring how they contrast with conventional project management techniques. Agile approaches, encompassing frameworks like Scrum, Kanban, and Extreme Programming (XP), are characterized by their emphasis on adaptability, teamwork, and expedited product delivery. These methodologies advocate for embracing change over rigidly adhering to a predefined plan and prioritize the development of functional software over exhaustive documentation. The paper elaborates on how agile practices foster a culture of continuous enhancement, empower teams to expedite the delivery of tangible benefits to clients,

Migration of legacy systems to more advanced technologies and platforms is a current issue for many software organizations. Model-Driven Modernization combined with Software as a Service delivery model is a very promising approach, which possesses a lot of advant ges, including reduced costs, automation of migration ac tivities and reuse of system functionality. However, a drawback of such an innovative modernization approach is that it lacks mature software process models to guide its adoption. Thus , a methodology for seamless execution of different mig ration and deployment activities is quite needed. On the other hand, agile development methods have been successfully adopted in various projects, which partly or thoroughly use the engineering and delivery models exploited in the modernization process. This paper presents how a pa rticular methodology for Model-Driven Modernization with deployment to the Cloud is enriched with agile tech niques to address different challenging issues. The extended agile methodology could be used by organizations which ha ve already applied agile software development as well as by organizations that plan to introduce it in their work. KeywordsCloud computing; Agile Methodology; Modeldriven Modernization; Software as a service

The paper focuses on the analysis and optimization of production warehouses, proposing a novel approach to reduce inefficiencies which employs three lean manufacturing tools in an integrated and iterative framework. The proposed approach integrates the Unified Modeling Language (UML) – providing a detailed description of the warehouse logistics – the Value Stream Mapping (VSM) tool – identifying non-value adding activities – and a mathematical formulation of the so-called Genba Shikumi philosophy – ranking such system anomalies and assessing how they affect the warehouse. The subsequent reapplication of the VSM produces a complete picture of the reengineered warehouse, and using the UML tool allows describing in detail the updated system. By applying the presented methodology to the warehouse of an Italian interior design producer, we show that it represents a useful tool to systematically and dynamically improve the warehouse management. Indeed, the application of the approach to the company leads to an innovative proposal for the warehouse analysis and optimization: a warehouse management system that leads to increased profitability and quality as well as to reduced errors. 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

This survey covers hard real-time scheduling algorithms and schedulability analysis techniques for homogeneous multiprocessor systems. It reviews the key results in this field from its origins in the late 1960s to the latest research published in late 2009. The survey outlines fundamental results about multiprocessor real-time scheduling that hold independent of the scheduling algorithms employed. It provides a taxonomy of the different scheduling methods, and considers the various performance metrics that can be used for comparison purposes. A detailed review is provided covering partitioned, global, and hybrid scheduling algorithms, approaches to resource sharing, and the latest results from empirical investigations. The survey identifies open issues, key research challenges, and likely productive research directions.

The performance of parallel scientific applications depends on many factors which are determined by the execution environment and the parallel application. Especially on large parallel systems, it is too expensive to explore the solution space with series of experiments. Deriving analytical models for applications and platforms allow estimating and extrapolating their execution performance, bottlenecks, and the potential impact of optimization options. We propose to use such "performance modeling" techniques beginning from the application design process throughout the whole software development cycle and also during the lifetime of supercomputer systems. Such models help to guide supercomputer system design and re-engineering efforts to adopt applications to changing platforms and allow users to estimate costs to solve a particular problem. Models can often be built with the help of well-known performance profiling tools. We discuss how we successfully used modeling throughout the proposal, initial testing, and beginning deployment phase of the Blue Waters supercomputer system.

Agile software development practices such as eXtreme Programming (XP) and SCRUM have increasingly been adopted to respond to the challenges of volatile business environments, where the markets and technologies evolve rapidly and present the unexpected. In spite of the encouraging results so far, little is known about how agile practices affect communication. This article presents the results from a study which examined the impact of XP and SCRUM practices on communication within software development teams and within the focal organization. The research was carried out as a case study in F-Secure where two agile software development projects were compared from the communication perspective. The goal of the study is to increase the understanding of communication in the context of agile software development: internally among the developers and project leaders and in the interface between the development team and stakeholders (i.e. customers, testers, other development teams). The study shows that agile practices improve both informal and formal communication. However, it further indicates that, in larger development situations involving multiple external stakeholders, a mismatch of adequate communication mechanisms can sometimes even hinder the communication. The study highlights the fact that hurdles and improvements in the communication process can both affect the feature requirements and task subtask dependencies as described in coordination theory. While the use of SCRUM and some XP practices facilitate team and organizational communication of the dependencies between product features and working tasks, the use of agile practices requires that the team and organization use also additional plan-driven practices to ensure the efficiency of external communication between all the actors of software development.

Despite the fact that traceability is a required element of almost all safety-critical software development processes, the trace data is often incomplete, inaccurate, redundant, conflicting, and outdated. As a result, it is neither trusted nor trustworthy. In this vision paper we propose a philosophical change in the traceability landscape which transforms traceability from a heavy-weight process producing untrusted trace links, to a light-weight results-oriented trustworthy solution. Current traceability practices which retard agility are cast away and replaced with a disciplined, just-in-time approach. The novelty of our solution lies in a clear separation of trusted trace links from untrusted ones, the change in perspective from `living-with' inacurate traces toward rigorous and ongoing debridement of stale links from the trusted pool, and the notion of synthesizing available `project exhaust' as evidence to systematically construct or reconstruct purposed, highly-focused trace links.

In this paper we present a method for systematically defining the process architecture of any organization. We begin by presenting a detailed interpretation of the upper levels of Zachman’s framework, providing an answer to the cell formed by the intersection of the perspective of the Planner (row 1) and the dimension of Function (column 2). Our method consists of four steps: capturing the organizational structure; exhaustively analyzing the flow of information between the different organizational units, customers, and providers, allowing for a high-level understanding of the organization’s operation; identifying and modeling the configuration of value that best adapts itself to the creation of value for the organization (value chain, workshop, or network); and, given the specified value configuration, identifying, defining, and interrelating the different essential processes.

Programming is recognized as one of seven grand challenges in computing education. Decades of research have shown that the major problems novices experience are composition-based---they may know what the individual programming language constructs are, but they do not know how to put them together. Despite this fact, textbooks, educational practice, and programming education research hardly address the issue of teaching the skills needed for systematic development of programs.
 We provide a conceptual framework for incremental program development, called Stepwise Improvement, which unifies best practice in modern software development such as test-driven development and refactoring with the prevailing perspective of programming methodology, stepwise refinement. The conceptual framework enables well-defined characterizations of incremental program development.
 We utilize the conceptual framework to derive a programming process, STREAM, designed specifically for novices. STREAM is a carefully down-scaled version of a full and rich agile software engineering process particularly suited for novices learning object-oriented programming. In using it we hope to achieve two things: to help novice programmers learn faster and better while at the same time laying the foundation for a more thorough treatment of more advanced aspects of software engineering. In this article, two examples demonstrate the application of STREAM.
 The STREAM process has been taught in the introductory programming courses at our universities for the past three years and the results are very encouraging. We report on a small, preliminary study evaluating the learning outcome of teaching STREAM. The study indicates a positive effect on the development of students’ process competences.

The capability maturity model (CMM), developed to present sets of recommended practices in a number of key process areas that have been shown to enhance software-development and maintenance capability, is discussed. The CMM was designed to help developers select process-improvement strategies by determining their current process maturity and identifying the issues most critical to improving their software quality and process. The initial release of the CMM, version 1.0, was reviewed and used by the software community during 1991 and 1992. A workshop on CMM 1.0, held in April 1992, was attended by about 200 software professionals. The current version of the CMM is the result of the feedback from that workshop and ongoing feedback from the software community. The technical report that describes version 1.1. is summarised.<<ETX>>

Access control is important for protecting information integrity in workflow management system (WfMS). Compared to conventional access control technology such as discretionary, mandatory, and role-based access control models, task-role-based access control (TRBAC) model, an access control model based on both tasks and roles, meets more requirements for modern enterprise environments. However, few discussions on delegation mechanisms for TRBAC are made. In this paper, a framework considering temporal constraints to improve delegation and help automatic delegation in TRBAC is presented. In the framework, the methodology for delegations requested from both users and WfMS is discussed. The constraints for delegatee selection such as delegation loop and separation of duty (SOD) are addressed. With the framework, a sequence of algorithms for delegation and revocation of tasks are constructed gradually. Finally, a comparison is made between our approach and the representative related works.


Question: A revised timeboxing process model for efficient resource utilization.

This paper presents a comprehensive framework and foundational findings for evaluating software quality, focusing on its critical characteristics. The study's key outcomes and insights are as follows:

• By giving explicit consideration to the characteristics of software quality, substantial savings can be achieved in the overall costs throughout the software life cycle.

• The existing state of software development has certain constraints that limit our capacity for automatic and quantitative assessment of software quality.

• A refined hierarchy of software quality characteristics is established, clearly delineated and differentiated. The higher levels of this hierarchy are aligned with the practical applications of software quality evaluation, while the lower levels are closely associated with specific software metric evaluations that can be executed.

• Numerous metrics for software quality evaluation have been identified, categorized, and assessed based on their potential advantages, quantifiability, and ease of automation.

• Certain software life-cycle stages have been pinpointed as having a significant impact on software quality.

Most notably, this study offers a pioneering, precise, and structured framework for tackling the often ambiguous issues surrounding software quality. This framework, anchored in coherent definitions, distinctions, guidelines, and practical experiences, is not exhaustive but has reached a mature stage to serve as a robust foundation for further development and expansion.

**Question**: A Direct Search Method to solve Economic Dispatch Problem with Valve-Point Effect

**Documents**: A hybrid of genetic algorithm and particle swarm optimization for recurrent network design

**Similar Documents**: An innovative methodology, the Hybrid Genetic Algorithm-Particle Swarm Optimization (HGAPSO), is presented for the design of recurrent neural and fuzzy networks. This method integrates genetic algorithm (GA) and particle swarm optimization (PSO) to form a new evolutionary learning approach. In HGAPSO, the creation of new generation individuals is achieved through a combination of crossover, mutation operations, and PSO. The elite strategy, a central concept in HGAPSO, involves enhancing the best-performing individuals in a population before they are propagated to the next generation. These elites are considered a swarm, with each member acting as a particle. PSO is used to refine these elites, simulating a natural maturation process. The enhanced elites constitute half of the new generation population, while the remaining half is generated through crossover and mutation operations on these refined elites. HGAPSO is applied to recurrent network design, demonstrating its effectiveness in addressing complex design challenges. For recurrent neural networks, a fully connected architecture is designed to tackle a temporal sequence production problem. In the case of recurrent fuzzy network design, a Takagi-Sugeno-Kang-type structure is employed for dynamic plant

By classifying programs according to their relationship to the environment in which they are executed, the paper identifies the sources of evolutionary pressure on computer applications and programs and shows why this results in a process of never ending maintenance activity. The resultant life cycle processes are then briefly discussed. The paper then introduces laws of Program Evolution that have been formulated following quantitative studies of the evolution of a number of different systems. Finally an example is provided of the application of Evolution Dynamics models to program release planning.

Datacenter-based Cloud Computing services provide a flexible, scalable and yet economical infrastructure to host online services such as multimedia streaming, email and bulk storage. Many such services perform geo-replication to provide necessary quality of service and reliability to users resulting in frequent large inter-datacenter transfers. In order to meet tenant service level agreements (SLAs), these transfers have to be completed prior to a deadline. In addition, WAN resources are quite scarce and costly, meaning they should be fully utilized. Several recently proposed schemes, such as B4 [1], TEMPUS [2], and SWAN [3] have focused on improving the utilization of inter-datacenter transfers through centralized scheduling, however, they fail to provide a mechanism to guarantee that admitted requests meet their deadlines. Also, in a recent study, authors propose Amoeba [4], a system that allows tenants to define deadlines and guarantees that the specified deadlines are met, however, to admit new traffic, the proposed system has to modify the allocation of already admitted transfers. In this paper, we propose Rapid Close to Deadline Scheduling (RCD), a close to deadline traffic allocation technique that is fast and efficient. Through simulations, we show that RCD is up to 15 times faster than Amoeba, provides high link utilization along with deadline guarantees, and is able to make quick decisions on whether a new request can be fully satisfied before its deadline.

Deciding which, among a set of requirements, are to be considered first and in which order is a strategic process in software development. This task is commonly referred to as requirements prioritization. This paper describes a requirements prioritization method called Case-Based Ranking (CBRank), which combines project's stakeholders preferences with requirements ordering approximations computed through machine learning techniques, bringing promising advantages. First, the human effort to input preference information can be reduced, while preserving the accuracy of the final ranking estimates. Second, domain knowledge encoded as partial order relations defined over the requirement attributes can be exploited, thus supporting an adaptive elicitation process. The techniques CBRank rests on and the associated prioritization process are detailed. Empirical evaluations of properties of CBRank are performed on simulated data and compared with a state-of-the-art prioritization method, providing evidence of the method ability to support the management of the tradeoff between elicitation effort and ranking accuracy and to exploit domain knowledge. A case study on a real software project complements these experimental measurements. Finally, a positioning of CBRank with respect to state-of-the-art requirements prioritization methods is proposed, together with a discussion of benefits and limits of the method.

Many organizations maintain textual process descriptions alongside graphical process models. The purpose is to make process information accessible to various stakeholders, including those who are not familiar with reading and interpreting the complex execution logic of process models. Despite this merit, there is a clear risk that model and text become misaligned when changes are not applied to both descriptions consistently. For organizations with hundreds of di↵erent processes, the e↵ort required to identify and clear up such conflicts is considerable. To support organizations in keeping their process descriptions consistent, we present an approach to automatically identify inconsistencies between a process model and a corresponding textual description. Our approach detects cases where the two process representations describe activities in di↵erent orders and detect process model activities not contained in the textual description. A quantitative evaluation with 53 real-life model-text pairs demonstrates that our approach accurately identifies inconsistencies between model and text.

8 1094-7167/04/$20.00 © 2004 IEEE IEEE INTELLIGENT SYSTEMS to elucidate the planet’s past climate, water activity, and habitability. Science is MER’s primary driver, so making best use of the scientific instruments, within the available resources, is a crucial aspect of the mission. To address this criticality, the MER project team selected MAPGEN (Mixed Initiative Activity Plan Generator) as an activity-planning tool. MAPGEN combines two existing systems, each with a strong heritage: the APGEN activity-planning tool1 from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the Europa planning and scheduling system2 from NASA Ames Research Center. This article discusses the issues arising from combining these tools in this mission’s context.

Business process models, often modelled using graphical languages like UML, serve as a base for communication between the stakeholders in the software development process. To fulfil this purpose, they should be easy to understand and easy to maintain. For this reason, it is useful to have measures that can give us some information about understandability, analyzability and maintainability of a business process model. Shao and Wang (2003) have proposed a cognitive complexity measure. It can be used to estimate the comprehension effort for understanding software. This paper discusses how these research results can be extended in order to analyze the cognitive complexity of graphical business process models

Scrum Teams use lightweight tools like Story Points, the Burn down chart, and Team Velocity. While essential, these tools alone provide insufficient information to maintain a high energy state that yields Hyper productivity. More data is required, but data collection itself can slow Teams. This effect must be avoided when productivity is the primary marker of success. Here we describe nine metrics that can develop and sustain Hyper productive Teams -- Velocity, Work Capacity, Focus Factor, Percentage of Adopted Work, Percentage of Found Work, Accuracy of Estimation, Accuracy of Forecast, Targeted Value Increase, Success at Scale, and the Win/Loss Record of the Team. The unique contribution of this paper is to demonstrate how a light touch and lightweight strategy can be used to compare Teams with different Story Point reference scales.

This paper presents a real-world, capacitated examination timetabling problem from Universiti Malaysia Pahang (UMP), Malaysia. The problem has constraints which have not been modelled before, these being the distance between examination rooms and splitting exams across several rooms. These constraints provide additional challenges in defining a suitable model and in developing a constructive heuristic. One of the contributions of this paper is to formally define this real-world problem. A further contribution is the constructive heuristic that is able to produce good quality solutions for the problem, which are superior to the solutions that are produced using the university’s current software. Moreover, our method adheres to all hard constraints which the current systems fails to do. 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Improving the operational effectiveness and efficiency of processes is a fundamental task of business process management (BPM). There exist many proposals of process improvement patterns (PIPs) as practices that aim at supporting this goal. Selecting and implementing relevant PIPs are therefore an important prerequisite for establishing process-aware information systems in enterprises. Nevertheless, there is still a gap regarding the validation of PIPs with respect to their actual business value for a specific application scenario before implementation investments are incurred. Based on empirical research as well as experiences from BPM projects, this paper proposes a method to tackle this challenge. Our approach toward the assessment of process improvement patterns considers real-world constraints such as the role of senior stakeholders or the cost of adapting available IT systems. In addition, it outlines process improvement potentials that arise from the information technology infrastructure available to organizations, particularly regarding the combination of enterprise resource planning with business process intelligence. Our approach is illustrated along a real-world business process from human resource management. The latter covers a transactional volume of about 29,000 process instances over a period of 1 year. Overall, our approach enables both practitioners and researchers to reasonably assess PIPs before taking any process implementation decision.

To improve resource efficiency and design intelligent scheduler for clouds, it is necessary to understand the workload characteristics and machine utilization in large-scale cloud data centers. In this paper, we perform a deep analysis on a newly released trace dataset by Alibaba in September 2017, consists of detail statistics of 11089 online service jobs and 12951 batch jobs co-locating on 1300 machines over 12 hours. To the best of our knowledge, this is one of the first work to analyze the Alibaba public trace. Our analysis reveals several important insights about different types of imbalance in the Alibaba cloud. Such imbalances exacerbate the complexity and challenge of cloud resource management, which might incur severe wastes of resources and low cluster utilization. 1) Spatial Imbalance: heterogeneous resource utilization across machines and workloads. 2) Temporal Imbalance: greatly time-varying resource usages per workload and machine. 3) Imbalanced proportion of multi-dimensional resources (CPU and memory) utilization per workload. 4) Imbalanced resource demands and runtime statistics (duration and task number) between online service and offline batch jobs. We argue accommodating such imbalances during resource allocation is critical to improve cluster efficiency, and will motivate the emergence of new resource managers and schedulers.


Question: Problems in forecasting and justifying usage patterns using the technology acceptance model and the theory of planned behavior in compulsory usage scenarios.

This paper endeavors to clarify the distinctions between moderator and mediator variables in social psychological research, emphasizing the significance of accurately using these terms. We aim to educate theorists and researchers on the distinct characteristics of moderators and mediators through a detailed conceptual and strategic analysis. Beyond mere pedagogy, we explore the practical implications of these distinctions across various phenomena, such as control and stress, attitudes, and personality traits. Our discussion also includes a guide to analytical methods that are effective for both moderators and mediators, within the context of a broader causal system encompassing both types of variables. This approach facilitates a deeper understanding of the mechanisms underlying social psychological phenomena, enhancing the clarity and precision of research findings. In the context of predicting and explaining usage behaviors with models like the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) and the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) in mandatory usage scenarios, the correct identification and treatment of moderators and mediators are crucial for accurately capturing the dynamics of user behavior. By applying the distinctions outlined in this paper, researchers can refine their models to better account for the complexities of user engagement in situations where usage is obligatory.

This paper presents the results of the wearable computing prototype supporting trainingand qualification activities at the SKODA production facilities in Czech Republic. The emerged prototype is based upon the first of the 2 main “Variant Production Showcases” (training and assembly-line) which are to be implemented in the WearIT@work project (EC IP 004216). As an introduction, the authors of this paper investigate current training processes at Skoda, and derive the potential benefits and risks of applying wearable computing technology. Accordingly, the approach of creating the wearable prototypes, via usability experiments at the Skoda production site, is explained in detail. As a preliminary result, the first functional prototypes, including a task recognition prototype, based upon the components of the European Wearable Computing Platform, are described. The paper is rounded up by providing a short outlook regarding the second envisaged test case, which is focussed upon selected assembly line operations of blue collar workers.

This critical review of B.J. Fogg’s book Persuasive Technology regards captology as an eclectic and formative work. It summarises two other reviewers’ work and identifies several new strengths. It scrutinises Fogg’s functional triad computers functioning as tools, media and social actors and some categorical changes are recommended. It investigates further Johnson’s concerns about specific ethical omissions, nominating a new term, compusuasion, for the resultant but unintended, exogenous behaviour/attitude change effects of captological design. The review commences to more carefully define what constitutes persuasion and draws attention to the distinction between persuasion techniques in general and the behavioural changes that result from advocacy and education. The reviewer concludes that a fundamental ethic be that the designer’s intent be exposed at the commencement of the user’s engagement with the program and proffers the idea of persuasion resulting in a new conviction, induced by others, as a helpful definition of

Existing models for describing a process such as a business process or a software development process tend to focus on the what or the how of the process For example a health insurance claim process would typically be described in terms of a number of steps for assessing and approving a claim In trying to improve or redesign a process however one also needs to have an understanding of the why for example why do physicians submit treatment plans to insurance companies before giving treatment and why do claims managers seek medical opinions when assessing treatment plans An understanding of the motivations and interests of process participants is often crucial to the successful redesign of processes This thesis proposes a modelling framework i pronounced i star consisting of two mod elling components The Strategic Dependency SD model describes a process in terms of in tentional dependency relationships among agents Agents depend on each other for goals to be achieved tasks to be performed and resources to be furnished Agents are intentional in that they have desires and wants and strategic in that they are concerned about opportunities and vulnerabilities The Strategic Rationale SR model describes the issues and concerns that agents have about existing processes and proposed alternatives and how they might be addressed in terms of a network of means ends relationships An agent s routines for carrying out a process can be analyzed for their ability workability viability and believability Means ends rules are used to suggest methods for addressing issues related issues to be raised and assumptions to be challenged The models are represented in the conceptual modelling language Telos The modelling concepts are axiomatically characterized The utility of the framework is illustrated in each of four application areas requirements engineering business process reengineering organizational impacts analysis and software pro cess modelling Advantages of i over existing modelling techniques in each of these areas are described

This study extends the technology acceptance model to identify factors that influence technology acceptance among pre-service teachers in Ghana. Data from 380 usable questionnaires were tested against the research model. Utilising the extended technology acceptance model (TAM) as a research framework, the study found that: pre-service teachers’ pedagogical beliefs, perceived ease of use, perceived usefulness of computer technology and attitude towards computer use to be significant determinants of actual use of computer technology. Results obtained employing multiple stepwise regression analysis revealed that: (1) pre-service teachers’ pedagogical beliefs significantly influenced both perceived ease of use and perceived usefulness, (2) both perceived ease of use and perceived usefulness influence attitude towards computer use and attitude towards computer use significantly influences pre-service teachers’ actual use of computers. However, statistically, perceived ease of use did not significantly influence perceived usefulness. The findings contribute to the literature by validating the TAM in the Ghanaian context and provide several prominent implications for the research and practice of technology integration development.

Current practice in Human Computer Interaction as encouraged by educational institutes, academic review processes, and institutions with usability groups advocate usability evaluation as a critical part of every design process. This is for good reason: usability evaluation has a significant role to play when conditions warrant it. Yet evaluation can be ineffective and even harmful if naively done 'by rule' rather than 'by thought'. If done during early stage design, it can mute creative ideas that do not conform to current interface norms. If done to test radical innovations, the many interface issues that would likely arise from an immature technology can quash what could have been an inspired vision. If done to validate an academic prototype, it may incorrectly suggest a design's scientific worthiness rather than offer a meaningful critique of how it would be adopted and used in everyday practice. If done without regard to how cultures adopt technology over time, then today's reluctant reactions by users will forestall tomorrow's eager acceptance. The choice of evaluation methodology - if any - must arise from and be appropriate for the actual problem or research question under consideration.

Purpose: E-books are not as popular as other types of e-publications, such as e-journals and e-newspapers. The possible reasons for this could be because the technology for creating/accessing e-books (both hardware and software) is not yet matured, users’ perspectives about e-books need to be changed and the awareness of e-books needs to be raised. The purpose of this study is to investigate the use and usability of e-books from users’ perspectives in an academic and research environment.

Smartphones are increasingly utilized in society and enable scientists to record a wide range of behavioral and environmental information. These information, referred to as Unobtrusive Ecological Momentary Assessment Data, might support prediction procedures regarding the mood level of users and simultaneously contribute to an enhancement of therapy strategies. In this paper, we analyze how the mood level of healthy clients is affected by unobtrusive measures and how this kind of data contributes to the prediction performance of various statistical models (Bayesian methods, Lasso procedures, etc.). We conduct analyses on a non-user and a user level. We then compare the models by utilizing introduced performance measures. Our findings indicate that the prediction performance increases when considering individual users. However, the implemented models only perform slightly better than the introduced mean model. Indicated by feature selection methods, we assume that more meaningful variables regarding the outcome can potentially increase prediction performance.

Wearable computers are one of the new technologies that are expected to be a part of users' lives extensively in near future. While some of the users have positive attitudes towards these new products, some users may reject to use them due to different reasons. User experience is subjective, and effected by various parameters. Among these the first impression, namely the perceived qualities has an important impact on product acceptance. This paper aims to explore the perceived qualities of wearables and define the relations between them. An empirical study is conducted, to find out the hierarchy and meaningful relationships between the perceived qualities of smart wearables. The study is based on personal construct theory and data is presented by Cross-Impact Analysis. The patterns behind affection and affected qualities are explored to understand the design requirements for the best integration of wearables into daily lives.

This paper investigated the value of including "playfulness" in expectation-confirmation theory (ECT) when studying continued use of a web site. Original models examined cognitive beliefs and effects that influence a person's intention to continue to use an information system. Here, an extended ECT model (with an additional relationship between perceived playfulness and satisfaction) was shown to provide a better fit than a simple path from perceived usefulness to satisfaction. The results indicated that perceived playfulness, confirmation to satisfaction, and perceived usefulness all contributed significantly to the users' intent to reuse a web site. Thus, we believe that the extended ECT model is an appropriate tool for the study of web site effects.

One of the main topics discussed within the realm of the dark side of IT is addiction. IT addiction has been found to bring adverse consequences on users’ lives. In order to overcome the difficulties associated with IT addiction, interrupting and quitting addiction has become an important research agenda. Recent research findings have shown that IT addicts do not always feel guilty about their usage, and in many cases, they do not even perceive their usage as problematic. In this study, we draw on cognitive dissonance theory to theorize and propose a model showing that the degree of users’ cognitive dissonance can make a difference in their willingness to quit their IT addiction. We tested the model using data collected from 226 social network sites users. The analysis provided empirical support for our model and shed light on the mediation and moderation effects of cognitive dissonance in this process. 1


Question: Problems in forecasting and justifying usage patterns using the technology acceptance model and the theory of planned behavior in compulsory usage settings.

This study delves into the intricacies of forecasting user intentions by juxtaposing the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) with the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB). While both models have been widely utilized in understanding the adoption and usage of technology, their efficacy in mandatory usage scenarios has been a subject of debate. The TAM, focusing on perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use, and the TPB, considering attitudes, subjective norms, and perceived behavioral control, are analyzed for their predictive capabilities in contexts where technology usage is compulsory. Through empirical research, the study highlights the unique contributions of each model and the scenarios under which one may outperform the other. This comparative analysis provides insights into the nuances of user behavior prediction, particularly when the use of technology is not a matter of choice but a requirement, offering valuable implications for practitioners and researchers alike.

0950-5849/$ see front matter 2010 Elsevier B.V. A doi:10.1016/j.infsof.2010.12.001 ⇑ Address: School of Computing, Blekinge Institute 372 25, Sweden. E-mail addresses: kai.petersen@bth.se, kai.petersen URLs: http://www.bth.se/besq, http://www.ericsso Context: Software productivity measurement is essential in order to control and improve the performance of software development. For example, by identifying role models (e.g. projects, individuals, tasks) when comparing productivity data. The prediction is of relevance to determine whether corrective actions are needed, and to discover which alternative improvement action would yield the best results. Objective: In this study we identify studies for software productivity prediction and measurement. Based on the identified studies we first create a classification scheme and map the studies into the scheme (systematic map). Thereafter, a detailed analysis and synthesis of the studies is conducted. Method: As a research method for systematically identifying and aggregating the evidence of productivity measurement and prediction approaches systematic mapping and systematic review have been used. Results: In total 38 studies have been identified, resulting in a classification scheme for empirical research on software productivity. The mapping allowed to identify the rigor of the evidence with respect to the different productivity approaches. In the detailed analysis the results were tabulated and synthesized to provide recommendations to practitioners. Conclusion: Risks with simple ratio-based measurement approaches were shown. In response to the problems data envelopment analysis seems to be a strong approach to capture multivariate productivity measures, and allows to identify reference projects to which inefficient projects should be compared. Regarding simulation no general prediction model can be identified. Simulation and statistical process control are promising methods for software productivity prediction. Overall, further evidence is needed to make stronger claims and recommendations. In particular, the discussion of validity threats should become standard, and models need to be compared with each other. 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

0747-5632/$ see front matter 2012 Elsevier Ltd. A http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2012.08.001 ⇑ Corresponding author. Tel.: +886 02 7734 3347; f E-mail address: joum@ntnu.edu.tw (M. Jou). Cloud computing technology has matured as it has been integrated with every kind of digitalization processes. It offers numerous advantages for data and software sharing, and thus making the management of complex IT systems much simpler. For education in engineering, cloud computing even provides students with versatile and ubiquitous access to software commonly used in the field without having to step into an actual computer lab. Our study analyzed learning attitudes and academic performances induced by the utilization of resources driven by cloud computing technologies. Comparisons were made between college students with high school and vocational high school backgrounds. One hundred and thirtytwo students who took the computer-aided designing (CAD) course participated in the study. Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) was used as the fundamental framework. Open-ended sets of questionnaires were designed to measure academic performance and causal attributions; the results indicated no significant differences in the cognitive domain between the two groups of students, though it is not so in both the psychomotor and the affective domains. College students with vocational high school background appeared to possess higher learning motivation in CAD applications. 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Prior research has pointed to discrepancies between users' privacy concerns and disclosure behaviors, denoted as the privacy paradox, and repeatedly highlighted the importance to find explanations for this dichotomy. In this regard, three approaches have been proposed by prior literature: (1) use of actual disclosure behavior rather than behavioral intentions, (2) systematic distinction between pre-existing attitudes and situation-specific privacy considerations, and (3) limited and irrational cognitive processes during decision-making. The current research proposes an experiment capable to test these three assumptions simultaneously. More precisely, the authors aim to explore the contextual nature of privacy-related decisions by systematically manipulating (1) individuals’ psychological ownership with regard to own private information, and (2) individuals’ affective states, while measuring (3) pre-existing attitudes as well as situation-specific risk and benefit perceptions, and (4) intentions as well as actual disclosure. Thus, the proposed study strives to uniquely add to the understanding of the privacy paradox.

Mobile learning is the next step in the development of distance learning. Widespread access to mobile devices and the opportunity to learn regardless of time and place make the mobile learning an important tool for lifelong learning. The research objectives are to examine the possibility of acceptance in mobile learning (m-Learning) and study main factors that affect using mLearning that focus on higher education students in Saudi Arabia. The researcher used a quantitative approach survey of 80 students. The modified acceptance framework that based on the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT) model is adopted to determine the factors that influence the students’ intention to use m-Learning. The results from statistical analysis show that the acceptance level of students on m-Learning is in the high level.

In this paper, we present results from a study of mobile ticketing service adoption in public transportation. The theoretical background of the study is based on technology adoption and trust theories, which are augmented with concepts of mobile use context and mobility. Our empirical findings from analyses of a survey data suggest that compatibility of the mobile ticketing service with consumer behavior is a major determinant of adoption. Mobility and contextual factors, including budget constraints, availability of other alternatives, and time pressure in the service use situation were also found to have a strong effect on the adoption decision. Our findings suggest that contextual and mobile service-specific features are important determinants of mobile service adoption and should thus be integrated into the traditional adoption models.

This paper describes persuasive design methods and compares this to an application currently under development for diabetes mellitus patients. Various elements of persuasion and a categorization of persuasion types are mentioned. Also discussed are principles of how successful persuasion should be designed, as well as the practical applications and ethics of persuasive design. This paper is not striving for completeness of theories on the topic, but uses the theories to compare it to an application intended for diabetes mellitus patients. The results of this comparison can be used for improvements of the application.

Given the amount of perceived risk involved in Internet shopping, many potential Internet shoppers tend to wait and observe the experiences of others who have tried it before considering adopting it. This study explores how positive informational social influence affects consumers’ decision of Internet shopping using a laboratory experiment. The research results reveal that positive informational social influence reinforces the relationships between perceived ease of use and consumer attitude toward Internet shopping, as well as attitude and their intention to shop. Implications for the current investigation and future research directions are provided.

The purpose of this paper is to present and test a modeling procedure because researchers have struggled for decades to develop stages-of-growth models that are both theoretically founded and empirically validated. This article presents the concept and hypothesis of stages, the history of stage models, and a procedure that may serve as a useful tool in modeling stages of growth. Based on previous research and lessons learned from case study experience of the government sector in Norway, a procedure for the stages of growth modeling process is suggested and demonstrated. The procedure is used for developing a stage model for e-government interoperability. This article provides new insight into issues and challenges faced when engaging in stages of growth research. The paper proposes a new approach to stages of growth modeling. The utility of the suggested procedure is to improve theory building and empirical validation. The contribution to academia is the modeling process that can be applied in future developments of stages of growth. The contribution to practice lies in the stage hypothesis of organizational development over time.

We report on the results of a study in which 19 new mobile phone users were closely tracked for the first six weeks after service acquisition. Results show that new users tend to rapidly modify their perceptions of social appropriateness around mobile phone use, that actual nature of use frequently differs from what users initially predict, and that comprehension of service-oriented technologies can be problematic. We describe instances and features of mobile telephony practice. When in use, mobile phones occupy multiple social spaces simultaneously, spaces with norms that sometimes conflict: the physical space of the mobile phone user and the virtual space of the conversation.

In this study, we conducted extensive reviews of online shopping literatures and proposed a hierarchy model of online shopping behavior. We collected 47 studies and classified them by variables used. Some critical points were found that research framework, methodology, and lack of cross-cultural comparison, etc So we developed a cross-cultural model of online shopping including shopping value, attitudes to online retailer's attributes and online purchasing based on the integrated V-A-B model.


Question: Problems in forecasting and clarifying usage patterns using the technology acceptance model and the theory of planned behavior in compulsory usage scenarios.

This study explores the efficacy of predicting and explaining computer technology acceptance among users, particularly focusing on the correlation between intentions and actual usage. The research aims to enhance understanding of the factors that lead to the acceptance or rejection of computer systems by managers and professionals, a significant challenge in many organizations. A longitudinal investigation involving 107 participants was conducted to gauge the predictive power of intentions on system use. After a one-hour introduction to a specific system, the participants' intentions were found to correlate 0.35 with system usage after 14 weeks, increasing to 0.63 at the end of the study period. Perceived usefulness was a dominant factor influencing intentions, accounting for more than half of the variance in intentions at the conclusion of the 14-week period. Perceived ease of use also exerted a small yet significant impact on intentions, although this effect diminished over time. Attitudes played a mediating role, albeit partially, in the relationship between beliefs and intentions. Surprisingly, subjective norms did not significantly affect intentions. These findings indicate the potential for developing straightforward yet potent models to understand the determinants of user acceptance. Such models could be invaluable for evaluating system effectiveness and guiding managerial strategies aimed at increasing computer technology utilization. (INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY; USER ACCEPTANCE; INTENTION MODELS)

Existing models for describing a process such as a business process or a software development process tend to focus on the what or the how of the process For example a health insurance claim process would typically be described in terms of a number of steps for assessing and approving a claim In trying to improve or redesign a process however one also needs to have an understanding of the why for example why do physicians submit treatment plans to insurance companies before giving treatment and why do claims managers seek medical opinions when assessing treatment plans An understanding of the motivations and interests of process participants is often crucial to the successful redesign of processes This thesis proposes a modelling framework i pronounced i star consisting of two mod elling components The Strategic Dependency SD model describes a process in terms of in tentional dependency relationships among agents Agents depend on each other for goals to be achieved tasks to be performed and resources to be furnished Agents are intentional in that they have desires and wants and strategic in that they are concerned about opportunities and vulnerabilities The Strategic Rationale SR model describes the issues and concerns that agents have about existing processes and proposed alternatives and how they might be addressed in terms of a network of means ends relationships An agent s routines for carrying out a process can be analyzed for their ability workability viability and believability Means ends rules are used to suggest methods for addressing issues related issues to be raised and assumptions to be challenged The models are represented in the conceptual modelling language Telos The modelling concepts are axiomatically characterized The utility of the framework is illustrated in each of four application areas requirements engineering business process reengineering organizational impacts analysis and software pro cess modelling Advantages of i over existing modelling techniques in each of these areas are described

The measurement scales for the perceived usefulness and perceived ease of we constructs introduced by Davis [12/ have become widely used for forecasting user acceptance of emerging information technologies. An experiment was conducted to examine whether grouping of items caused artifactual inflation of reliability and validity measures. We found support for our hypothesis that the reliability and validity stemmed notfrom item grouping butfrom the constructs of perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use being clearly defined, and the items used co measure each of these consn-ucts clearly capturing the essence of the conscrucI.

Conversational agents (CA) use dialogues to interact with users so as to offer an experience of naturalistic interaction. However, due to the low transparency and poor explanability of mechanism inside CA, individual's understanding of CA's capabilities may affect how the individual interacts with CA and the sustainability of CA use. To examine how users' understanding affect perceptions and experiences of using CA, we conducted a laboratory study asking 41 participants performed a set of tasks using Apple Siri. We independently manipulated two factors: (1) personal experience of using CA, and (2) technical knowledge about CA's system model. We conducted mixed-method analyses of post-task usability measures and interviews, and confirmed that use experience and technical knowledge affects perceived usability and mental models differently.

The paper develops ethical guidelines for the development and usage of persuasive technologies (PT) that can be derived from applying discourse ethics to this type of technologies. The application of discourse ethics is of particular interest for PT, since 'persuasion' refers to an act of communication that might be interpreted as holding the middle between 'manipulation' and 'convincing'. One can distinguish two elements of discourse ethics that prove fruitful when applied to PT: the analysis of the inherent normativity of acts of communication ('speech acts') and the Habermasian distinction between 'communicative' and 'strategic rationality' and their broader societal interpretation. This essay investigates what consequences can be drawn if one applies these two elements of discourse ethics to PT.

Mobile instant messaging (e.g., via SMS or WhatsApp) often goes along with an expectation of high attentiveness, i.e., that the receiver will notice and read the message within a few minutes. Hence, existing instant messaging services for mobile phones share indicators of availability, such as the last time the user has been online. However, in this paper we not only provide evidence that these cues create social pressure, but that they are also weak predictors of attentiveness. As remedy, we propose to share a machine-computed prediction of whether the user will view a message within the next few minutes or not. For two weeks, we collected behavioral data from 24 users of mobile instant messaging services. By the means of machine-learning techniques, we identified that simple features extracted from the phone, such as the user's interaction with the notification center, the screen activity, the proximity sensor, and the ringer mode, are strong predictors of how quickly the user will attend to the messages. With seven automatically selected features our model predicts whether a phone user will view a message within a few minutes with 70.6% accuracy and a precision for fast attendance of 81.2%

Few studies have examined interactions between IT change and organizational change during information systems evolution (ISE). We propose a dynamic model of ISE where change dynamics are captured in four dimensions: planned change, improvised change, organizational change and IT change. This inductively-generated model yields a rich account of ISE and its drivers by integrating the four change dimensions. The model shows how incremental adjustments in IT and organizational processes often grow into a profound change as users improvise. We demonstrate the value of the dynamic model by illustrating ISE processes in the context of two manufacturing organizations implementing the same system over a study period of five years. This paper makes its contribution by holistically characterizing improvisation in the context of IT and organizational change. Our ISE model moves research in organizational and IT change towards a common framing by showing how each affects the other’s form, function and evolution.

This paper investigated the value of including "playfulness" in expectation-confirmation theory (ECT) when studying continued use of a web site. Original models examined cognitive beliefs and effects that influence a person's intention to continue to use an information system. Here, an extended ECT model (with an additional relationship between perceived playfulness and satisfaction) was shown to provide a better fit than a simple path from perceived usefulness to satisfaction. The results indicated that perceived playfulness, confirmation to satisfaction, and perceived usefulness all contributed significantly to the users' intent to reuse a web site. Thus, we believe that the extended ECT model is an appropriate tool for the study of web site effects.

Though NFC mobile payment offers both convenience and benefits to consumers, its adoption rate is still very low. This study aims to explore the factors determining consumers’ adoption of NFC mobile payment. In this study, building on TAM, an extended adoption intention model is developed by incorporating three sorts of variables into it, namely mobile payment system factors (compatibility and perceived complementarity), user characteristics (mobile payment knowledge), and a risk-related factor (perceived risk). The model is empirically tested with a sample of 377 validated respondents. Compatibility, perceived ease of use and mobile payment knowledge are found to be the factors determining individuals’ intention to use NFC mobile payment. Against our expectations, perceived usefulness and perceived risk do not affect use intention significantly in adopting NFC mobile payments among consumers. We discuss the theoretical and practical implications of these findings, and point out the limitations and need for future research.

BACKGROUND
The use of smartphone applications (apps) to assist with weight management is increasingly prevalent, but the quality of these apps is not well characterized.

PURPOSE
The goal of the study was to evaluate diet/nutrition and anthropometric tracking apps based on incorporation of features consistent with theories of behavior change.

METHODS
A comparative, descriptive assessment was conducted of the top-rated free apps in the Health and Fitness category available in the iTunes App Store. Health and Fitness apps (N=200) were evaluated using predetermined inclusion/exclusion criteria and categorized based on commonality in functionality, features, and developer description. Four researchers then evaluated the two most popular apps in each category using two instruments: one based on traditional behavioral theory (score range: 0-100) and the other on the Fogg Behavioral Model (score range: 0-6). Data collection and analysis occurred in November 2012.

RESULTS
Eligible apps (n=23) were divided into five categories: (1) diet tracking; (2) healthy cooking; (3) weight/anthropometric tracking; (4) grocery decision making; and (5) restaurant decision making. The mean behavioral theory score was 8.1 (SD=4.2); the mean persuasive technology score was 1.9 (SD=1.7). The top-rated app on both scales was Lose It! by Fitnow Inc.

CONCLUSIONS
All apps received low overall scores for inclusion of behavioral theory-based strategies.

Developers aim at providing value through their systems and products. However, value is not financial only, but depends on usage and users’ perceptions of value. In this paper, we clarify the concept of value from the users’ perspective and the role of user involvement in providing value. First, theories and approaches of psychology, marketing and human-computer interaction are reviewed. Secondly, the concept of ‘user values’ is suggested to clarify the concept of value from the user’s point of view and a category framework of user values is presented to make them more concrete and easier to identify. Thirdly, the activities and methods for adopting user values in development work are discussed. The analysis of the literature shows that value has been considered in multiple ways in development. However, users’ perspectives have received less attention. As a conclusion, we draw future research directions for value-centered design and propose that user involvement is essential in identifying user values, interpreting the practical meaning of the values and implementing them in development work.