This volume is a collection of papers on emerging concepts, approaches and ideas in information systems research. It examines theoretical and methodological issues related to both information systems development in general and the complexity of information systems as socio-technical systems. The book draws on invited papers selected from the proceedings of the 25th International Conference on Information Systems Development (ISD) held in Katowice, Poland, August 24 - 26, 2016. The invited conference papers were revised and expanded and present research that is focused on context, creativity, and cognition in information systems development. These issues are significant as they provide the basis for organizations to identify new markets, support innovative technology deployment, and enable mobile applications to detect, sense, interpret, and respond to the environment.

This book is about complexity in Information Systems (IS). The subject is addressed from both conceptual and applied perspectives. Concepts are drawn from information theory, industrial design and software engineering. Its content capitalizes on experiences gathered by the authors during various contracting jobs involving software architecture, modeling and IS architecture that were conducted for large organizations in the banking and industry sectors, as well as in the public sector. The authors develop the point of view according to which mastering complexity involves two essential steps: first, one should develop a clear understanding of the real nature of complexity within the IS; second, one should identify the primary causes which contribute to its uncontrolled growth and organize these into a logical framework, in order to define efficient countermeasures. Both technical and psychological causes of complexity are to be considered. Two themes make up the main thread of the book: complexity and value. Both themes are quite common when considered separately, but their interplay remains a largely unexplored topic. The analysis of this interplay is one of the sources of originality of this book.

This book covers complex software engineering projects, new paradigms for system development, object-orientated design and formal methods, project management and automation perspectives.

This book contains the best papers of the Sixth International Conference on Enterprise Information Systems (ICEIS 2004), held in Porto (Portugal) and organized by INSTICC (Institute for Systems and Technologies of Information, Communication and Control) in collaboration with PORTUCALENSE UNIVERSITY, who hosted the event. Following the route started in 1999, ICEIS has become a major point of contact between research scientists, engineers and practitioners on the area of business applications of information systems. This conference has received an increased interest every year, from especially from the international academic community, and it is now one of the world largest conferences in its area. This year, five simultaneous tracks were held, covering different aspects related to enterprise computing, including: “Databases and Information Systems Integration”, “Artificial Intelligence and Decision Support Systems”, “Information Systems Analysis and Specification”, “Software Agents and Internet Computing” and “Human-Computer Interaction”. The sections of this book reflect the conference tracks.

Project success is widely covered, and the discourse on project complexity is proliferating. The purpose of this book is to merge and investigate the two concepts within the context of information system (IS) projects and understand the symbiosis between success and complexity in these projects. In this original and innovative research, exploratory modelling is employed to identify the aspects that constitute the success and complexity of projects based on the perceptions of IS project participants. This scholarly book aims at deepening the academic discourse on the relationship between the success and complexity of projects and to guide IS project managers towards improved project performance through the complexity lens. The research methodology stems from the realisation that the complexity of IS projects and its relationship to project success are under-documented. A post positivistic approach is applied in order to accommodate the subjective interpretation of IS-project participants through a quantitative design. The researchers developed an online survey strategy regarding literature concerning the success and complexity of projects. The views of 617 participants are documented. In the book, descriptive statistics and exploratory factor analysis pave the way for identifying the key success and complexity constructs of IS projects. These constructs are used in structural-equation modelling to build various validated and predictive models. Knowledge concerning the success and complexity of projects is mostly generic with little exposure to the field of IS project management. The contribution to current knowledge includes how the success of IS projects should be considered as well as what the complexity constructs of IS projects are. The success of IS projects encompasses strategic success, deliverable success, process success and the ‘unknowns’ of project success. The complexity of IS projects embodies organisational complexity, environmental complexity, technical complexity, dynamics and uncertainty. These constructs of success and complexity are mapped according to their underlying latent relationships to each other. The intended audience of this book is fellow researchers and project and IS specialists, including information technology managers, executives, project managers, project team members, the project management office (PMO), general managers and executives that initiate and conduct project-related work. The work presented in this first edition of the book is original and has not been plagiarised or presented before. It is not a revised version of a thesis or research previously published. Comments resulted from the blind peer review process were carefully considered and incorporated accordingly.

Why do enterprise systems have complicated search pages, when Google has a single search box that works better? Why struggle with an expense reimbursement system that is not as easy as home accounting software? Although this seems like comparing apples to oranges, as information and communication technologies increasingly reach into every industry

Recognizing that complexity calls for innovative, conceptual, and methodological solutions, Dealing with Complexity in Development Evaluation by Michael Bamberger, Jos Vaessen, and Estelle Raimondo offers practical guidance to policymakers, managers, and evaluation practitioners on how to design and implement complexity-responsive evaluations that can be undertaken in the real world of time, budget, data, and political constraints. Introductory chapters present comprehensive, non-technical overviews of the most common evaluation tools and methodologies, and additional content addresses more cutting-edge material. The book also includes six case study chapters to illustrate examples of various evaluation contexts from around the world.