Improvement of performance has become ever more critical to construction project success and has been subject to a considerable amount of research and attention over the past two decades. In this regard, the Saudi Ministry of Interior (SMoI) has adopted a new approach - Standard Design Model (SDM) - for the development of its construction programme to successfully manage its complex project portfolio and improve project performance. The SMoI-SDM approach is based on the standardisation of design, material specifications, contract documents and processes. It is anticipated that many lessons will be learnt due to the re-use of SDMs for future projects as well as sharing learning between on-going projects, thus leading to continuous project performance improvement. The aim of this research is to develop a framework for improving the performance of SDMs in SMoI projects. A qualitative case study approach was adopted to provide an in-depth insight into the current performance of SDM projects and identify critical success factors (CSFs) affecting the process of improvement of SDMs project performance. Four case studies were selected involving two on-going and two completed projects. Three key themes were identified from the case studies analysis; these are: adaptability of SDMs to context; contract management; and construction management. Consequently, a framework was developed to improve SDM projects performance as well as the expected performance improvement curve that results from the cumulative learning and experience. The framework validation was conducted through a workshop involving the same stakeholders who participated in the case studies, in which the feedback on possible improvements to the framework was obtained. The framework demonstrated its practicality, clarity and appropriateness for use across the SDM projects.Significantly, this research has the potential to direct standardisation of design and process in construction projects in particular in the public sector and could help achieve a sustained project performance improvement in the Saudi construction industry.

Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) play a vital role for organizations to measure project performance. The core objective of Key Performance Indicators is that not only organizations but also customers want their projects to be completed within the stipulated time and budget while maintaining the quality standards. Performance measurement is foundation for continual improvement. Subsequently, as a regular rule, benchmarking is the next step to improve contractors’ efficiency and effectiveness of products and processes. Camp (1989) introduced benchmarking concepts and defines it as “the continuous process of measuring products, industry leaders.” It is a problem to measure the performance of large projects such as construction and communication projects using predefined KPIs. Objective of this research is to find a framework to improve project performance through benchmarking of key performance indicators, to identify the suitable KPI prevailing in the construction industry of Kuwait and develop and calculate the KPIs to assess the performance of the construction projects and making recommendations to improve project performances of construction industry. For this study two Kuwaiti construction companies are selected i.e. Company AA and Company BB. Performance of their financial and non-financial data is analyzed. Primary data is collected through questionnaires and in performance of Company BB. Data also revealed that Company BB’s are having cost and time overrun. Organizations like Company BB have to investigate reasons of cost and time delays causing dissatisfaction. Decision of material selection and delivery time should be carefully taken. Organizations should improve its employment policies from selection to compensation, working conditions, motivations and availability of health and safety facilities; as satisfied customers can satisfy customers. Subsequently, Company BB management performance needs immense improvement at all levels and in all processes. Consideration of design quality indicators (DQI) as per requirement of stakeholders and bio-diversity impacts, it is impossible to satisfy the internal or external stakeholders of construction projects. This thesis contributes useful and new knowledge to the Kuwaiti construction industry. This study reveals the importance of significant KPIs needed for the growth of medium construction organizations through benchmarking the bigger organizations. The ultimate goal of this study is to highlight the importance of KPIs to access success of medium construction organizations. Although it is believed KPIs could be used for benchmarking of bigger size organizations.

Dr. Bower confirmed that earned value management (EVM) is not widely adopted, and that many project managers see the methodology as being overly complex and difficult to implement. He identified several serious challenges associated with conventional EVM.and addressed the first issue by creating a new theoretical concept called Assured Value Analysis (AVA). This add-in process provides two new measures, permitting improvements to EVM that take into account the added certainty provided through procurement. Assured Value (AV) represents the budget for a future signed contract, and Expected Cost (EC) represents the agreed cost of that contract. Those measures permit the calculation of a Total Cost Variance that includes not only cost deviations to date, but also future ones to which the project team is already committed. AVA also allows conventional EVM formulae to take into account the Assured Value and Expected Cost of future signed agreements. A simple notional project is used to demonstrate the implementation of AVA. He resolved the remaining challenges and issues through realising that the isolation of project phases would provide a simplified but more dependable methodology, one that also provides features not found in conventional EVM. Significant milestones are normally planned to occur at the end of a project phase. By assessing project performance only at the end of each completed phase, performance calculations are significantly simplified.. His new technique, Phase Earned Value Analysis (PEVA) simplifies the calculation of PV, EV and AC, and also provides benefits that are not possible with EVM. Since the planned and actual phase completion dates are known, an intuitively simple but accurate time-based schedule variance and schedule performance index (i.e. SVP and SPIP) can be measured. PEVA also permits the forecasting of future phase end cost figures and phase completion dates using the phase CPI and SPI ratios. Since PEVA employs data points having specific x axis and y-axis values, those can be readily plotted and trend lines identified with standard spreadsheet functions. This is a powerful feature, as it allows key project stakeholders to visualise emerging project performance trends as each phase is completed. Finally, he successfully combined the AVA and PEVA concepts, resulting in a new EVM methodology - Phase Assured Value Analysis (PAVA) - which takes into account the assurance provided by procurement, simplifies the calculation of earned value through phases, and provides powerful forecasting and charting features. He validated this new combined approach in multiple respects. The new AVA and PEVA formulae were rigorously established and confirmed through standard algebraic procedures. The formulae were tested in sample project situations, to clearly demonstrate their functions. He argues that the PAVA approach conforms to the 32 criteria established in the United States for full EVM compliance. He presented AVA and PEVA to critical audiences at major project management conferences in North America and the UK, as well as several gaining expert criticism from organisations and practitioners. Finally, he used archived cost and schedule records to retrospectively test the combined PAVA methodology on a significant office facilities and technology program.

The impact of user risks on project performance has long been acknowledged by researchers. Identifying approaches or capabilities to reduce the likelihood of the occurrence of user risks and their consequences is then critical. By viewing information system development (ISD) as a knowledge intensive process, this study attempts to explore possible knowledge or capabilities that must be present to counter risks related to user risk elicited from the information processing perspective. We adopted the uncertainty reduction and coping concepts, and extended their study by restructuring the theoretical model to align it with the proposed reduction and coping concepts. Specifically, the effects of user risk reduction capabilities are reflected in the impacts of user participation, the relation between user with information system developer and user informance experience. At the same time, risk coping is demonstrated by hypothesizing the moderating role of ISD business expertise on the relationship between user risk and project performance. Data collected from 235 IS professionals on the basis of their experiences of recently completed ISD projects confirmed all of our hypotheses. The results successfully demonstrated that the eliciting of user risk can be reduced when users participate in the project, users and developers have wonderful relationship and users have good experiences. Furthermore, the impact of risk on project performance can be eased when developers have sufficient ISD business expertise. This study concludes with a presentation of the implication and conclusion.

Information system development (ISD) has long been treated as the process that system developers craft an artifact to support business operation based on their special expertise. However, a significant portion of projects still have failed because the developed outcome cannot fit users¡¦ needs or meet predefined project schedule. Given that ISD is a knowledge intensive process, a lack of sufficient knowledge has been identified as one critical risk which may harms the effectiveness of planning and control. By viewing ISD projects as a series of problem solving process in which ISD team members generate usable knowledge, based on available potential knowledge, to counter problem, this study aims at understanding how managers can adopt approaches to increase the availability of potential knowledge and build a team which can effectively transform available knowledge into usable form. Through incorporating those concepts into research design, this study proposed a model to examine the impacts of those proposed approaches. An empirical survey methodology was adopted to collect required data. PLS was then used to test the proposed research model. The results showed that problem solving competence can benefit project performance, and the organization practices, including member selection, training, knowledge management system and external resources, reduce the insufficient potential knowledge, and indicate the important moderating role of the knowledge transfer facilitators. The implications toward academic and practitioner are also provided.

The management information systems (MIS) department has played a role that supports information systems development, functionality and business operations in the organization. However, information system development (ISD) projects have a high failure rate because the users¡¦ needs cannot be met. Most of the previous literature indicated that users should be involved and participate in ISD projects to enhance project performance. Nevertheless, the failure rate of ISD projects is still high because of the complex relationship between users and developers. To deal with this problem, previous studies indicated that co-production behavior can facilitate project performance and success. They did not discuss the drivers that influence users to work as co-producers in ISD projects. Different from previous studies, and based on the MARS model concept adopted from the organizational behavior field, this study applies some drivers of co-production and implies that the information system is co-produced by users and developers. Via the MARS model, we attempt to explore the critical role of motivation, IT knowledge, role clarity, and organizational support in influencing user co-production behavior. We also expected that co-production behavior has an influence on system quality and user satisfaction from the perspective of service-dominant logic. Data collected from 178 users confirmed our hypothesis that co-production behavior is positively associated with user satisfaction and system quality, and extrinsic motivation has a positively significant influence on user satisfaction co-production behavior. Finally, the implications for academia and practitioners are also provided.

An empirical survey methodology is applied to test the research model and hypotheses proposed in this study. Five out of ten hypotheses are validated in our research model with Path Analysis. The research result reveals that the structural dimension of a group¡¦s social capital has the most impact on its absorptive abilities. On the other hand, a firm¡¦s absorptive capability of knowledge is affected by the relational dimensions of group external social capital. Furthermore, the result validates that both absorptive capability and the performance of project and product exhibit significant path dependency. This result will be useful to both the academic and business particularly in its advocacy of the cultivation of the structural dimension of a group¡¦s social capital.

The purpose of this research was to create measures and models for the evaluation of Open Source Software (OSS) projects. An exploratory analysis of the development and maintenance processes in OSS was conducted for this purpose. Data mining and text mining techniques were used to discover knowledge from transactional datasets maintained on OSS projects. Large and comprehensive datasets were used to formulate, test and validate the models. A new multidimensional measure of OSS project performance, called project viability was defined and validated. A theoretical and empirical measurement framework was used to evaluate the new measure. OSS project data from SourceForge.net was used to validate the new measure. Results indicated that project viability is a measure of the performance of OSS projects. Three models were then created for each dimension of project viability. Multiple data mining techniques were used to create the models. Variables identified from process, product, resource and end-user characteristics of the project were used. The use of new variables created through text mining improved the performance of the models. The first model was created for OSS projects in the development phase. The results indicated that end-user involvement could play a significant role in the development of OSS projects. It was also discovered that certain types of projects are more suitable for development in OSS communities. The second model was developed for OSS projects in their maintenance phase. A two-stage model for maintenance performance was selected. The results indicated that high project usage and usefulness could improve the maintenance performance of OSS projects. The third model was developed to investigate the affects of maintenance activities on the project internal structure. Maintenance data for Linux project was used to develop a new taxonomy for OSS maintenance patches. These results were then used to study the affects of various types of patches on the internal structure of the software. It was found that performing proactive maintenance on the software moderates its internal structure.

Although the functional enhancement and price decrease of computer hardware have rapidly increased the popularity of computers, quality software is the key to determine the value of information systems. Unfortunately, software development is a highly uncertain business. Many projects fail or escalate. Since software development is a labor and knowledge intensive taks, proper management of team composition is a critical research issue. The purpose of his research is to explore the relationship between knowledge diversity of software team and project performance. Research on team composition and performance is not new. However, few have studied the relationship on software development team. In this research, a research framework based on conflict theory is developed and an empirical study was conducted on Taiwanese firms to examine the extended model. Major funding include (1) knowledge diversity has significant positive effects on task conflict, and the task conflict has significant positive effects on team learning, (2) value diversity has positive effects on relationship conflict, and the relationship conflict has positive effect on the quality of interaction. These findings are useful in helping decision makers to manage software project teams by selecting the right team members.

This paper is based on expertise structure and knowledge management (KM) perspective to develop an empirical ¡§Input-Process-Outcome¡¨ model to examine the relationship among expertise complement, expertise deployment, expertise location, expertise integration, problem-solving competency and project performance in the context of information system development (ISD) teams. We adopted the survey method and focused on the members in ISD teams to collect research data. PLS analysis was employed to examine the research model. A total of 76 ISD teams, including 337 members, confirmed our model. Results revealed that (1) expertise complement and expertise deployment are two antecedents that positively affect expertise integration and problem-solving competency; (2) expertise location is found to have a main impact on expertise deployment and expertise integration; (3) expertise integration and problem-solving competency serving as mediators are found to have a positive impact on project performance. This study offers a perspective for conducting the research and practice, as well as achieving a better insight into the fields of expertise composition structure, KM, and ISD.