Digital Transformation (DT), being the latest trend for business transformation and organizational change, synchronizes business processes and integrates information technology leading to operational efficiency and innovation which contributes to overall business strategy. However, aligning technology and processes with people within the organization and the customers remains a challenge. Studies have concluded that the main focus of implementation towards the technical aspect rather than human aspect of the project brings to failure. Thus, it leads to the necessity of integration project management and change management practices to develop holistic approach and the aim for this research to answer the question: How can project management and change management be integrated and facilitate the implementation of digital transformation projects? In order to fill in the research gap on integrated PM and CM and also DT project implementation, the researchers embarked on a qualitative study, explored the literature and conducted semi-structured interviews with five organizations implementing DT project. It included project managers and business analysts from digital services consulting firms and multinational companies. Using thematic analysis, the researchers developed an integrated PM and CM framework that will help facilitate the implementation of DT projects. It can serve as a guideline for coordination and managing both technological and human side of the project during digital project delivery or implementation. In answering the research question, the study recommends four creative ways to integrate PM and CM as inspired by the developed framework. First, integrate the principles, processes, tools & techniques of PM and CM into a holistic approach at certain phases of the DT project lifecycle to achieve the DT deliverables, thus balancing the technical and human aspect of the project. Second, focus PM and CM methodologies and techniques that have emphasis towards promoting customer centric approach or creating value towards end users of the software such as the Agile Methodology. Third, create a smart tool or software that automatically captures both the PM and CM tools, such gantt chart and project communication updates that can be easily shared online to the rest of the stakeholders. And finally, include CM to PM’s knowledge area and PMO’s creation of CM owner or team to facilitate the implementation of DT project.

Agile project management is most often examined in relation to software development, while information security frameworks are often examined with respect to certain risk management capabilities rather than in terms of successful implementation approaches. This dissertation extended the study of both Agile project management and information security frameworks by examining the efficacy of implementing a security framework using a nontraditional project management approach. Such an investigation is significant because of the high rate of failed IT projects, gaps in the current security framework implementation literature, and increased regulatory pressure on Health Insurance Portability and Accountability (HIPAA)-covered entities to become compliant with the HIPAA Security Rule. HIPAA-covered entities have struggled to achieve HIPAA compliance since the Act's enforcement date. Specifically, academic medical centers have struggled to achieve and authoritatively document their compliance with the HIPAA Security Rule. To aid HIPAA-covered entities in confirming and documenting their HIPAA Security Rule compliance, the HITRUST Alliance has published the Common Security Framework. Thomas Jefferson University selected the Common Security Framework to help them assess and document their HIPAA Security Rule compliance. However, there is a documented gap in the literature on successful methods for implementing information security-related projects, particularly HIPAA compliance. In this single-case case study, the author examined the implementation of an Information Security Framework based on Agile values. Specifically examined were the values of (a) individuals and interactions over processes and tools; (b) working software over comprehensive documentation; (c) customer collaboration over contract negotiation; and (d) responding to change over following a plan. The results of this investigation indicated that an information security framework implementation based on Agile values is a viable approach for successfully implementing the Common Security Framework at an academic medical center.

This study aims to enlighten the effect the agile leadership has on alienation. Two different companies, with different leadership styles, are examined in an attempt to determine if leadership is a contributing factor to alienation among the employees. The study was conducted through the use of a case study of two stores of two different companies. To obtain the purpose of this study the following questions have been asked: • Which features of alienation can be found among the employees? • What effect does the leadership have on the employee’s alienation? To acquire the purpose of the study the theoretical framework is based on a presentation of the traditional leadership, the agile leadership and alienation. The study shows that the employees have encountered some features of alienation. The study shows that the employee at the company who practices the agile leadership encounters fewer of the alienation features, than the employees at the company who practices the traditional leadership. The results of the study showed that some of the features had a bigger impact on the employees. We also found that the agile leadership had good effects on alienation, as the self organized-team, an including approach and lack of hierarchy had beneficial effects on the employee’s sense of control and motivation. / Studiens syfte är att belysa det agila ledarskapets påverkan på alienation. Två företag med två olika ledarskapsstilar har undersökts för att kunna avgöra om ledarskapet är en faktor som kan påverka alienation hos medarbetarna. Undersökningen har gjorts med hjälp av en fallstudie, där två butiker från två olika företag undersökts. Studiens syfte har lett till följande frågeställningar: •     Vilka drag av alienation kan påträffas bland medarbetarna?•     Vad har ledarskapet för effekt på medarbetarnas alienation? En teoretisk referensram bestående av en genomgång av det traditionella ledarskapet, det agila ledarskapet samt alienation har utformats för att svara på frågeställningarna. Då alienationsbegreppet har stor betydelse har det bearbetats noga och brutits ned i fem beståndsdelar. Studien visar att intervjupersonerna upplever drag av alienation. Det framgår att medarbetaren på företaget med agilt ledarskap påträffar färre drag av alienation än medarbetarna på företaget med traditionellt ledarskap. Studien visade att de olika dragen av alienation har olika inverkan på medarbetarna. Det framkom även att det agila ledarskapet hade goda effekter på alienation, då det självorganiserade teamet, ett inkluderande förhållningssätt och avsaknad av hierarki främjade medarbetarnas känsla av kontroll och motivation i arbetet.

The thesis is concerned with a comparison of two rapid web development frameworks for the Java platform - Tapestry 5 and Grails. The goal is to get acquainted with both of the frameworks, explain their basic principles and usage, compare their solution to common challenges and their contribution to faster development. Furthermore, the goal is to de fine a set of criteria for the comparison and match each one of them with their respective weights representing their importance in certain decision making scenarios. The frameworks are new and under dynamic development, therefore the bene ts of this thesis are an extensive research in foreign resources, summary of the acquired knowledge, practical usage examples and furthermore the assessment of the frameworks' strenghts and weaknesses. The conclusions and comparison quanti cation can then be used to strategically choose the appropriate framework if necessarry.

This diploma thesis is focused on agile management of relational databases. The gole is to provide detail analysis of changes which are performed on daily bases by DBA or software developers and describe how these changes can hugely affect performance of database system and its data. The principles of best known development methodics are described in part one (chapter 2 and 3). Following second part (chapter 4) contains descriptions of basics steps of agile strategies which have been often used in application solutions. Finally the third part (chapter 5 and following) contains detail information about usual performed database tasks.

Background. Agile Software Development (ASD) promises agility and flexibility in dealing with uncertainty by prioritizing interaction between people supported by informal communication and knowledge sharing. The lack of practices to manage the knowledge as a resource might jeopardize the application of knowledge in the production of goods and service. The utilization of Knowledge Management (KM) strategies can significantly support achieving and sustaining competitive advantage and brings several benefits to software development. However, how to manage knowledge in ASD is still not well understood or investigated.  Objectives. The main objective of this thesis is to contribute to the software engineering field by providing a different perspective on directions that KM can take to improve knowledge-based resource (KBR) management in ASD. The detailed objectives are: (i) Understand the current ASD environment regarding KM; (ii) Identify KBRs in ASD and its implications for KM; and (iii) Provide an initial set of variables to evaluate knowledge criticality of knowledge items in ASD.  Method. We used a mixed-methods approach to address the objective of this thesis. The methods selected to conduct the studies include systematic literature review, grounded theory, and improvement case study. The data collection comprised a literature review, semi-structured interviews, and practitioners’ feedback through static validation.  Results. From our SLR we observed that that KM strategies in ASD promote mainly knowledge transfer through practices that stimulate social interaction to share tacit knowledge in the project layer, increasing the risk of losing knowledge by keeping the knowledge localized inside a few individual’s minds. When it comes to coordination, practitioners utilize KBRs in their routines, through social collaboration within teams’ environment/settings. However, this process is nonsystematic, which brings inefficiency to KBR utilization resulting in knowledge loss. It can generate negative implications to the course of the software development, including meaningless searches in databases, frustration because of recurrent problems, and unawareness of knowledge sources. To support decision making related to knowledge retention, we have developed an initial version of the method to evaluate the criticality (KCEM) of a knowledge item, which is divided into two categories, relevance, and scarcity.  Conclusion. The current results of this thesis are of particular interest. However, we recognize that the work is unfinished. As a complement to this thesis, we have planned our long-term objective, which is to contribute to creating scalable KM solutions for companies adopting ASD.We divide this long-term objective into three studies: Carry out a complementary study to apply KCEM in different companies; explore efficient ways of storing codified knowledge in combination with the KCEM, and investigate how to define metrics to evaluate the outcomes of KM practices. / S.E.R.T.E.R.T. Research Profile

I dagens snabbt föränderliga arbetsmarknad har agile blivit ett populärt managementkoncept för att utveckla flexibla organisationer som snabbt kan besvara marknadens efterfrågan. Men vad händer med roller, ansvar och mandat när agilt arbetssätt införs i ett tidigare traditionellt hierarkiskt företag. Syftet med denna undersökning är att uppmärksamma hur roller, ansvar och mandat fungerar i en organisation som övergått till ett agilt arbetssätt. För att besvara arbetets syfte har två forskningsfrågor tagits fram;  1. Skiljer sig företag X roller, mandat och ansvar från teorin i agilt arbetssätt? 2. Skiljer sig roller, mandat och ansvar mellan de team som arbetar med mjukvara, hårdvara och både mjukvara och hårdvara på företag X?  Metoden för arbetet har en induktiv ansats och en kvalitativ fallstudie har genomförts. Arbetets primärdata har samlats in genom åtta semistrukturerade intervjuer hos företag X. Sekundärdata har samlats in från vetenskapliga artiklar, böcker och hemsidor. För att analysera datan har grundad teori använts.  Resultatet har visat att många respondenter har en positiv inställning till det nya arbetssättet men förståelsen för roller, ansvar och mandat varierar mellan respondenterna. I vissa delar skiljer sig resultatet från teorin. I de delar som inte stämmer överens så har respondenterna inte förstått sin roll, detta beror på brist på utbildning men också på brist på kommunikation eller avstånd mellan teamen. Frågeställningen om det är någon skillnad i tillämpandet av agile i team som jobbar med hårdvara respektive mjukvara konstaterar vi egentligen inte är den stora utmaningen, utan det handlar mer om beroenden mellan olika team, både externt och internt. Samma sak kan uppstå för team som arbetar på distans eller inte talar samma språk. Det handlar om brist på kommunikation och ett tätt samarbete vilket är vad agile går ut på.  Agile är lätt att förstå, men ibland svår att tillämpa särskilt i stora organisationer men Företag X har gjort en mycket bra och seriös ansats i sitt tillämpande och kommer med tiden att anpassa sig mer och mer till den agila samarbetsformen. Det hade därför varit intressant att göra samma studie igen om ett år för att se hur organisationen och människorna anpassat sig. / In today’s fast changing marketplace, agile have become a popular management concept in order to develop flexible organisations which quickly are able to adapt to the market demands. But what is the impact in the organisation with roles , responsibilities and mandate when an agile organisation is implemented. The objective with this study is to understand how roles, responsibilities and mandates works in an organisation which have gone from a traditional hierarchical organisation to implement the agile way of working.  We formed two hypothetical questions we wanted to respond to.   1. Does Company X deviate in roles, responsibilities and mandate from the theoretical agile way of working?   2. Is there a deviation in roles, responsibilities and mandate between the agile teams who are working with software, hardware and both soft and hardware at Company X?   We have used an inductive methodology approach and a qualitative case study have been performed. The study’s primary data have been been gathered through eight semi structured interviews at Company X. The secondary data have been obtained through literary studies of articles, books and web-pages. In order to analyse the data a grounded theory approach have been used.  The result have showed that many of the respondents have a positive attitude towards the new way of working, but that the understanding of roles, responsibilities and mandate varies between the respondents and deviates from  the theory. In the areas where we found deviations from  the theory, the respondents have not understood their roles, which indicates lack of continues trainings, but also a lack of communication and distance between the teams. The hypothesis for if there are any deviations of how the agile roles and responsibilities have been applied or interpreted between teams who are working with hard or software, we can conclude that these differences are not the major challenge, instead the deviations are based on dependencies between different teams both external and internal.The same situation can apply to teams who are remotely located or do not speak the same language. It falls back on lack of communication and a closer collaboration which is the objective of agile. Agile is easy to understand, but sometimes hard to apply especially in large organisations. Company X have made a very good and serious approach in their implementation and will over time adapt more and more to the agile way of working. It would therefore be interesting to perform the same kind of study again in a year to understand how the organisation and people have adapted.

Traditionellt har inköpsprocessen inom offentlig sektor utgått från projektmodellen vattenfall med tydliga faser och milstolpar. För att skapa större flexibilitet och effektivitet har IT-branschen frångått den traditionella projektmodellen och istället övergått till agila arbetsmetoder. En utmaning som uppstått genom detta är att inköpsprocessen inom den offentliga sektorn sällan är anpassad till agila arbetssätt. Den offentliga sektorn är en stor inköpare av IT men en betydande del av de offentliga IT-projekten misslyckas idag i form av överskriden budget. En orsak till detta kan vara att den traditionella inköpsprocessen har svårt att möta de förutsättningar som krävs för ett agilt arbetssätt, då den hindrar effektiviteten och måluppfyllelsen vid inköp av IT.   I denna studie undersöks vilka möjligheter och utmaningar som finns inom en agil inköpsprocess för IT, samt hur en agil inköpsprocess skulle kunna struktureras och tillämpas i syfte att öka effektiviteten, kundnyttan och harmoniseringen mellan inköp av IT och implementeringen.   En kvalitativ studie har genomförts där primärdata insamlats genom intervjuer. Totalt har 23 djupintervjuer genomförts med olika aktörer inom inköpsprocessen såsom beställare, upphandlare och leverantörer. Den största delen av datainsamlingen är genomförd på Luleå kommun men intervjuer har även utförts med externa respondenter med kunskap om agila arbetssätt inom offentlig sektor. Intervjuerna har analyserats genom en tematisk analys, som resulterat i ett flertal identifierande möjligheter och utmaningar för agilt inköp av IT samt ett ramverk för agilt inköp av IT.   Studien visar att det finns både möjligheter och utmaningar inom en agil inköpsprocess för IT. Offentliga organisationer som bland annat genomsyras av de agila grundvärderingarna, med motiverade och förändringsbenägna individer och förtroende för leverantörer har goda möjligheter att arbeta med agilt inköp. Utmaningar finns inom ett ökat behov av struktur, högre grad av effektstyrning, proaktiv uppföljning, en förändrad anbudsutvärdering och en kulturell omställning.   I studien har ett ramverk för agilt inköp av IT inom offentlig sektor framtagits. Ramverket är baserat på den nationella inköpsprocessen och de agila grundvärderingarna. Inom varje fas i inköpsprocessen presenteras aktiviteter som bidrar till att skapa en agil inköpsprocess. Aktiviteterna innefattar bland annat att skapa självorganiserande team, ställa krav på effektmål, skapa en jämn riskfördelning och arbeta med incitament för effektivitet. Studien bidrar med ny kunskap inom hur ett agilt arbetssätt kan anammas inom inköpsprocessen för IT inom offentlig sektor. Genom att använda det agila ramverket kan offentliga organisationer skapa en ökad harmonisering mellan inköpsprocessen och implementeringen av IT, med förhoppningen att det ökar effektiviteten och kundnyttan. / Traditionally, the public procurement process has originated in the waterfall project model, with distinct phases and gates. To gain more flexibility and efficiency, the IT industry have adapted agile project methods instead. A challenge that has arisen due to this change is that the traditional procurement process rarely is adapted to agile project methods. Furthermore, the public sector is a large buyer of IT, but a significant part of all public projects within IT are failing in terms of exceeded budget. One reason for this could be that the traditional procurement process has difficulties in meeting the conditions required for agile methods, since it prevents the efficiency and goal achievement of IT procurement.   In this study, the possibilities and challenges of an agile procurement process for IT was researched. The study also included how the procurement process could be structured and applied, with the aim to increase the efficiency, the customer value and the harmonization between procurement of IT and the implementation.   The research questions were answered by a qualitative study where primary data was collected through interviews. A total of 23 deep interviews were conducted with different participants in a procurement process such as purchasers, suppliers and clients. The largest amount of data was collected at Luleå kommun, but interviews were also conducted with external respondents with knowledge of agile methods in the public sector. The interviews were analyzed through a thematic analysis, which resulted in several opportunities and challenges concerning agile procurement, together with a framework for agile procurement of IT.   The study shows that there are both opportunities and challenges in an agile procurement process of IT. Public organizations that for example is permeated of the agile ground values, with motivated individuals with a likeness of change and trust towards the suppliers, have good opportunities to work with agile procurement. Challenges exists in an increased need of structure, a change in purchasing and contract procedures and the need of education and a culture shift.  In the study, a framework for agile procurement of IT in the public sector has been developed. The framework is based on the national procurement process in Sweden and the agile ground values. In each procurement process phase activities that characterize agile methods are presented. The activities include for example creating self-organizing teams, setting requirements based on impact goals, creating a model for shared risk and work with incentives for efficiency. The study contributes to new knowledge of how agile methods can be incorporated in the public procurement process. By using the agile framework public organization can increase the harmonization between the procurement process and the implementation of IT, with the aim to increase the customer value and efficiency.

Scrum is one of the Agile software development processes broadly adopted in industry. Scrum promotes frequent customer involvements and incremental short release. Sprint planning is a critical step in Scrum that sets up next release goals and lays out plans to achieve those goals. This thesis presents a Sprint Planning dEcision Support System (SPESS) which is a tool to assist the managers for Sprint planning. Among considering other Sprint planning factors, SPESS takes into consideration developer competency, developer seniority and task dependency. The results are that the assignments of the tasks of each Sprint to developers guarantee that each team member contributes to their fullest potential, and project planning is optimized for the shortest possible time. Keywords—Scrum, Sprint planning, planning poker, competence, task dependence, Hungarian algorithm, Essence. / Includes bibliography. / Thesis (M.S.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2018. / FAU Electronic Theses and Dissertations Collection

Hospitals are looking to industry for proven tools to manage increasingly complex operations and reduce costs simultaneously with improving quality of care. Currently, €˜lean€™ is the preferred system redesign paradigm, which focuses on removing process waste and variation. However, the high level of complexity and uncertainty inherent to healthcare make it incredibly challenging to remove variability and achieve the stable process rates necessary for lean redesign efforts to be effective. This research explores the use of an alternative redesign paradigm €“ €˜agile€™ €“ which was developed in manufacturing to optimize product delivery in volatile demand environments with highly variable customer requirements. €˜Agile€™ redesign focuses on increasing system responsiveness to customers through improved resource coordination and flexibility. System dynamics simulation and empirical case study are used to explore the impact of following an agile redesign approach in healthcare on service access, care quality, and cost; determine the comparative effectiveness of individual agile redesign strategies; and identify opportunities where lean methods can contribute to the creation of responsive, agile enterprises by analyzing hybrid lean-agile approaches. This dissertation contributes to the emerging literature on applying supply chain management concepts in healthcare, and opens a new path for designing healthcare systems that provide the right care, at the right time, to the right patient, at the lowest price.