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Two trends that have become increasingly noticeable in recent years are increased data volumes and an increased focus on climate change. With an ever-increasing number of companies performing value-creating activities at the intersection of these two areas, and still relatively few previous studies, there is an interest in investigating how these two areas can be integrated. The purpose of the work is therefore to investigate the integration of sustainability data in Business Intelligence (BI) for companies in greentech, i.e. companies whose goal is to use technology to contribute to a more sustainable future. Based on this, guidelines and insights about good design and implications for the business are then generated. An interdisciplinary approach is utilized where accepted design theory, such as Donald Norman's design principles and the Action Design Research development framework, is combined with information systems and business intelligence theory. In practice, this has meant an iterative process where a prototype of a Business Intelligence tool has been developed to visualize sustainability data for a greentech company. The tool has been continuously evaluated by representatives from different parts of the company to investigate which factors are most important for high usability and what effects more easily accessible sustainability data has on the business. The investigation shows, among other things, that it is of great importance that the tool is closely aligned with the organization’s other activities, both in terms of design and daily operations, and that a highly requested functionality is the ability to segment and compare data in many ways. At the same time, there are several aspects that add complexity to the issue, such as a conflict between the organization and the employees as to whether Swedish or English should be the language of the tool. In addition, the results also indicate that a lack of easily accessible and accurate data can result in decisions being made based on intuition and experience, despite the advice of previous research. Something that also emerges clearly during the tests is the trend that an increasing number of companies need to report more sustainability information, and the area is therefore highly relevant for further research. / Två trender som blivit alltmer påtagliga de senaste åren är ökade datamängder och ökat fokus på klimatförändringar. Med ett ständigt växande antal företag som bedriver värdeskapande verksamhet i skärningen mellan dessa två områden, och ännu relativt få tidigare studier, finns det således ett intresse att undersöka hur dessa två områden kan integreras. Syftet med arbetet formuleras som en ansats att undersöka integreringen av hållbarhetsdata inom Business Intelligence (BI) för företag inom greentech, alltså företag vars mål är att nyttja teknik för att bidra till en mer hållbar framtid. Utifrån detta genereras sedan riktlinjer och insikter kring god design och implikationer för verksamheten. En tvärvetenskaplig ansats utnyttjas där vedertagen designteori, såsom Donald Normans designprinciper och utvecklingsramverket Action Design Research, kombineras med teori för informationssystem och Business Intelligence. I praktiken har detta inneburit en iterativ process där en prototyp av ett Business Intelligence-verktyg utvecklats för att visualisera hållbarhetsdata för ett greentech-företag. Verktyget har kontinuerligt utvärderats av representanter från olika funktioner i företaget för att undersöka vilka faktorer som är viktigast för hög användbarhet samt vilka effekter mer lättillgängliga hållbarhetsdata har på verksamheten. Undersökningen visar bland annat att det är av stor vikt att verktyget knyts nära övrig verksamhet, både designmässigt och verksamhetsmässigt, samt att en högt efterfrågad funktionalitet är att kunna segmentera och jämföra data på många olika sätt. Samtidigt finns flera aspekter som adderar komplexitet till frågeställningen, exempelvis en motsättning mellan organisationen och medarbetarna kring huruvida svenska eller engelska bör användas som språk i verktyget. Dessutom pekar också resultaten på att en avsaknad av lätt tillgängliga och korrekta data kan resultera i att beslut fattas baserat på intuition och erfarenhet, trots litteraturens avrådan. Någonting annat som även framkommit under testerna är trenden att allt fler företag behöver rapportera mer hållbarhetsinformation, och området därför är högaktuellt för vidare undersökningar.

While IS research into on-line Inter-Personal (IP) Social Networks (SN) is highly visible, there has been surprisingly little focus on the use of on-line social networks for Inter-Organizational (IO) communications, interactions, and goal achievement. We explore the issues and challenges facing organizations in their design and use of inter-organizational social network information systems (IO SNIS). Artifact design principles are drawn from a new and insightful model that contrasts the advantages of existing innovative inter-personal (IP) SNIS artifacts with Social Network Theory on differences between IP and IO Social Networks. This research extends the existing streams of IS social networking research into the inter-organizational domain and encourages additional IS research into the analysis, design, and build of artifacts that animate the social behavior of organizations. We develop a key design concept for IO SNIS and establish the design principles underlying the general artifact design and the specific design features that apply the design constructs to an exemplar IO social domain. This dissertation uses Action Design Research (ADR) approach within the Design Science Research (DSR) paradigm to formulate the research opportunity and anticipate a practice-inspired and theory-ingrained artifact. The researcher works with a practitioner team in the domain of mid-market private equity (MMPE) to explore the model and evaluate existing on-line inter-organizational artifacts to establish specific design features for an IO SNIS artifact. We find that the design principles can generalize from the IO SNIS Design Concept Model to other IO Social domains and that the design features can be used to build an instantiation of IO SNIS in the Private Equity domain.

In this thesis, we report the findings of designing data export functionality in Uppsala University Psychosocial Care Program (U-CARE) at Uppsala University. The aim of this thesis was to explore the design space for generic data export functionality in data centric clinical research applications for data analysis. This was attained by the construction and evaluation of a prototype for a data-centric clinical research application. For this purpose Action Design Research (ADR) was conducted, situated in the domain of clinical research. The results consist of a set of design principles expressing key aspects needed to address when designing data export functionality. The artifacts derived from the development and evaluation process each one constitutes an example of how to design for data export functionality of this kind.

Aim Develop an IT artifact that provides formative feedback for students based on their programming assignments. Background One of the best methods to learn programming is by practice. Providing feedback to students is an important and a valuable factor for improving learning, which plays a vital part in the student’s possibility to enhance and improve its solutions. Software development courses have several assignments and each course instructs about 100 students. To assess and provide feedback for all the students and each assignment demands considerable resources. In a survey conducted by TCO (2013) half of the respondents’ state that feedback is rarely or never given in reasonable time. Method Action Design Research (ADR) was used to intervene an organizational problem in parallel with building and evaluating an IT artifact. Conclusion The results from the study were four generated design principles and a proposed solution on how to use existing static code analysis tools for provide formative feedback to students.

Agila arbetssätt och den agila filosofin har över de två senaste decennierna blivit ett självklart element I det flesta IT-systemutvecklingsprojekt. Fördelarna som följer med den agila filosofin (exempelvis ökad kundanpassning och snabbare leveranser) har bidragit till att större företag börjat att införa agila arbetssätt i hela organisationen – det vill säga inte bara i enskilda projekt. Denna idé har lett till att olika generella ramverk som benämns för Skalade agila ramverk (Scaled Agile Framework) har introducerats på marknaden. Ett par exempel på befintliga ramverk är Scrum of Scrums, LeSS, Scaled Agile Framework och Lean Scalable Agility. Av existerande ramverk är “Scaled Agile Framework” (SAFe) den mest implementerade och väletablerade. Det finns emellertid flera utmaningar med att införa SAfe i stora verksamheter. En utmaning är att skalade agila ramverk är komplexa och tar lång tid att införa. En annan utmaning är att det saknas verktyg som stöttar organisationer i deras försök att implementera ramverket. Detta är problematiskt eftersom det kan leda till en ineffektiv implementeringsprocess, högre kostnader och att vinsterna med den agila filosofin reduceras. Detta har lett oss till det problem som vi adresserar i studien; det saknas kunskap om hur bedömningsmodeller för SAFe skall designas. Problemet har sporrat oss att utföra en studie där vi, tillsammans med en organisation i näringslivet, har designat och utvärderat ett användbart och icke-komplext verktyg för bedömning av skalade agila ramverk. Syftet är med verktyget är att det skall effektivisera implementeringsprocessen av SAFe. Problemet har också legat till grund för vår forskningsfråga som lyder: Hur bör ett verktyg för bedömning av SAFe implementationer designas? För att finna svar på forskningsfrågan har vi valt att följa forskningsmetoden Action Design Research (ADR). ADR metoden vill bidra IS-forskning genom att 1) den adresserar ett problem i en specifik organisatorisk kontext genom design av en IT-artefakt samtidigt som den 2) stödjer identifiering av designprinciper. Studiens resultat visar att bedömningsmodellen fungerar, att den bidrar till att lösa det adresserade problemet samt att de designprinciper som presenteras är korrekta. / Agile methods and the agile manifesto has been for the last two decades a central focus point of software development in the world. The benefits that come with the usage of the agile philosophy (for example, increased customer adaptation and quicker deliveries) has led larger companies to try to adopt the principles on their entire organization - not only on smaller projects. This adoption has translated to the emergence of various frameworks that are generally labeled as Scaled agile frameworks. A few examples of these frameworks are Scrum of Scrums, LeSS, Scaled Agile Framework and Lean Scalable Agility. These frameworks are being widely adopted by large companies, with SAFe (Scaled Agile Framework) being the most adopted on the market. However, these frameworks have become a pinnacle of complexity due to the large size of the frameworks which proves to be a challenge for the company that is using them. This is problematic because there are no real tools to evaluate the implementation of scaled agile frameworks. With no tools to use, there is a risk of having an inefficient implementation process which constitutes to higher costs and that the general benefits of Agile manifesto are lost on the way. This has led us to the problem that we’re addressing in this study: There is a lack of knowledge on how to design assessment models for the SAFe framework. This problem has spurred us into conduct a study where we, together with an organization within the IT-industry, have designed and evaluated a tool that effectively assesses the implementation of SAFe. The problem set the groundwork for our science and the question we seek to answer in this study is: How should a tool for assessment of SAFe implementation be designed? Consequently, to find answers to this question, we have chosen to use the research method Action Design Research (ADR). The method of ADR wants to contribute to IS-research by 1) To design an uncomplex tool that can help IT industry to evaluate their scaled agile framework implementation and 2) provide theoretical knowledge translated into design principles that will contribute to other design efforts in similar contexts. The result provided in this study will help show that the design knowledge works, provide rigor to the study, help solve the given problem of the study and show that the design knowledge is correct

Financial exclusion is a major developmental problem. Perception has it that financial exclusion emanates from the lack of access to banking and financial services, and the general understanding is that ICT-based access to such services is the solution. In this research, which was undertaken in Ghana, Critical Realism (CR) revealed deeper causes (generative mechanisms) that underlie financial exclusion. The research followed a mixed-method approach. The CR approach guided the research to create an initial model from which hypotheses were deduced and tested; the design science approach, guided the research to create the design theory and an instantiation of an application that uses the design theory; and the quantitative method, was used to evaluate the hypotheses. CR revealed how, in a credit economy, people have a need for credit to pursue business or education opportunities. The generative mechanisms identified have revealed how the credit market for the unbanked includes the reality that a wellfunctioning credit market is self-sustaining with two mechanisms: signalling and adoption. The signalling mechanism facilitates users’ access to credit, which they in turn are able to spend on more services. On the other hand, the adoption mechanism enables the development of more services making the market more valuable, thus attracting more users in a self-feeding loop. The key findings suggest that being banked does not necessarily lead to financial inclusion and financial wellbeing. Transactional banking only serves as an "enrichment agenda for the banks", with minimal benefit to the people. There are also other non-financial technologies such as sharing and social technologies that have an effect on the provision of credit; in addition to their main purpose of saving and/or earning income, for the unbanked, by sharing resources. In Ghana, despite having bank accounts, most of the banked do not use them, because of cost and inappropriate services. This research reveals that the unexamined notion of being banked as a fundamental requirement for financial inclusion may require further investigation. The research has found that the unbanked keeping to themselves and the use of cash creates anonymity and makes them invisible to formal financial institutions, who prefer identity over anonymity, thus contributing to their financial exclusion. The following design needs were identified: inexpensive credit and value-added services such as saving groups, financial accounting services, service to report delinquent customers and education. The research offers a conceptualization of a financial inclusion ICT artefact to draw attention to the multifaceted and complex environment financial inclusion effort is immersed. This calls for an integrated approach since the issues with financial exclusion extend beyond financials and have an effect on the broader society. The research, therefore, proposes a substantive framework for improving the design and development of financial inclusive systems, which helps build trust using obligation transactions. It offers an approach to computing an individual’s financial inclusiveness, which also helps safeguard his/her financial wellbeing. The thesis makes a contribution to Information Systems theory in proposing a framework on financial inclusion using ICT. The contribution to practice is the design of an ICT artefact. / School of Computing / Ph. D. (Computer Science)