Revisiting Agility to Conceptualize Information Systems Agility

Pankaj,; Hyde, Micki; Ramaprasad, Arkalgud; Tadisina, Suresh K.

doi:10.4018/978-1-60566-222-0.ch002

Cited by 10 publications

(18 citation statements)

References 46 publications

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“…Peer-reviewed academic literature alludes to several benefits of IS agility. While the authors clearly distinguish between flexibility and agility [11], the published literature often does not make this distinction and hence pertinent literature from both areas is examined. Also literature from other areas like supply chain management and manufacturing (which was and is at the forefront of the agility phenomenon) is also examined.…”

Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…We arrive at the definition or construct of an agile IS based on prior work done by the authors in this area. Agility in general is defined [10] [11] as a formative construct comprised of the ability to sense a change, diagnose a change, select a response, and execute the response in realtime: 1) Sense: Ability to sense the stimuli for change (as they occur) in real-time; 2) Diagnose: Ability to interpret or analyze stimuli in real-time to determine the nature, cause, and impact of change;…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Exploring the Benefits of an Agile Information System

Chaudhary¹,

Hyde²,

Rodger³

2017

IIM

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Information Systems (IS) agility is a current topic of interest in the IS industry. The study follows up on work on the definition of the construct of IS agility and attributes for sensing, diagnosis, and selection and execution in an agile IS. IS agility is defined as the ability of an IS to sense a change in real time; diagnose it in real time; and select and execute a response in real time. Architecting an agile IS is a complex and resource-intensive task, and hence examination of its benefits is highly desired and appropriate. This paper examines the benefits of an Agile Information System. Benefits of an agile IS were derived from related academic literature and then refined using practitioner literature and qualitative data. The benefits considered were the first order or direct benefits. These benefits were then empirically validated through a survey of IT practitioners. The results of the survey were analyzed and a rank order of the benefits was arrived at. An exploratory factor analysis was also done to find the common dimensions underlying the benefits. It is suggested that organizations can use the empirically validated benefits from this study to justify and jump-start their capital and labor expenditure to build agility into their Information System.

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Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Exploring the Benefits of an Agile Information System

Chaudhary¹,

Hyde²,

Rodger³

2017

IIM

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

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“…Agility in general is defined [9,10] as a formative construct comprised of the ability of an information to sense a change, diagnose a change, select a response, and execute the response in real-time: 1) Sense: Ability to sense the stimuli for change (as they occur) in real-time;…”

Section: The Construct Of Information Systems Agilitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Sensing Attributes of an Agile Information System

Pankaj¹,

Hyde²,

Ramaprasad³

2013

IIM

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Information Systems (IS) agility is a current topic of interest in the IS industry. The study follows up on the work on the definition of the construct of IS agility which is defined as the ability of IS to sense a change in real time; diagnose it in real time; and select and execute an action in real time. It explores the attributes for sensing in an Agile Information System. A set of attributes was initially derived using the practitioner literature and then refined using interviews with practitioners. Their importance and validity were established using a survey of the industry. All attributes derived from this study were deemed pertinent for sensing in an agile information system. Dimensions underlying these attributes were identified using Exploratory Factor Analysis. This list of attributes can form the basis for assessing and establishing sensing mechanisms to increase IS agility.

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“…In many sports, agility training is used to improve athletic performance, whereas flexibility training is considered a supportive conditioning for preventing injuries from sudden stretch of muscles and joints when performing agility-demanding tasks in competitions (Alter, 2004). (Pankaj et al, 2009). The definitions of agility and flexibility provided by sports science literature meet these criteria.…”

Section: Figure 1: Components Of Universal Agility In Sports Sciencementioning

confidence: 99%

“…IS Agility can be viewed as a particular instance of the general concept of agility (Pankaj, Hyde, Ramaprasad, & Tadisina, 2009). Establishing a good conceptualisation of agility in general is essential for providing a conceptual foundation for IS Agility.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

In A Quest to Solve Information System Agility Problems : A SaaS Experience

Yang¹

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<p>Change is endemic in modern business competition. In an age of globalisation, with the rapid development of information technologies (IT), changes occur at a much faster pace, and are also more unpredictable. Being agile in a turbulent environment has been ranked highly by executives in surveys of business issues conducted in past five years. Today nearly all organisations rely on information systems (IS) to operate. IS Agility is critical in achieving overall agility and performance in business. However, despite the strong interest from the practitioner community, IS Agility in academia has often been perceived as an overly abstract concept that is difficult to study. Resultantly, despite its importance, little has been published on how to systematically solve IS Agility problems with theoretical rigour and practical relevance. This “how to” question is a challenging one to researchers and is the major motivation of the present study. A key difficulty to study IS Agility is the lack of a solid conceptualisation. In this thesis, based on a multidisciplinary literature review looking for a unified theory of IS Agility, we proposed the IS Agility Nomological Network (ISANN) as a holistic conceptualisation to be used for problem solving. Such a conceptualisation includes an IS Agility Cycle illustrating four stages (i.e. Sense, Diagnose, Select, and Execute) of the dynamic interactions between IS and its human agents (e.g. IS users and IS developers), a decision tree presenting four main IS Agility drivers (i.e. Change Frequency, Uncertainty, Information Intensity, and Time Criticality), and a pyramid incorporating four IS Agility Providers (i.e. Agile System-Development, Agile-System Architecture, Agile System-Operation, and Agile-System Configuration ). We classify IS Agility as having at least two sides, Dev Agility and Ops Agility. The former represents the agility of IS development function while the later refers to the IS operation function. We believe they are not the same, as agility in system development process doesn’t necessarily translate to agility in the resulting system operation. To be able to answer the “how to” question and design a systematic problem-solving approach, we then operationalised ISANN by developing data and task models in real-world settings. These models were used to investigate and analyse IS Agility problems faced by Software as a Service (SaaS) adopters. Such a SaaS environment, due to its multi-tenancy nature, provides a great opportunity to observe the interactions and trade-offs between Dev Agility (e.g. stories from engineers and developers) and Ops Agility (e.g. stories from operators and users), as well as an abundant source of IS Agility related business problems. Eventually, more elements and factors emerged from this SaaS practice and were merged into the final artefact created in this study: ISACAM (Information System Agility Causation Analysis Method). ISACAM incorporates all the dimensions and facts derived from the theoretical conceptualisation and the ongoing real-world problem-solving practice. The effectiveness of ISACAM in solving IS Agility problems has been observed through improved performance in real-life businesses. Furthermore, five technological rules have been synthesised to offer a prescription for designing solutions to improve IS Agility.</p>

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Revisiting Agility to Conceptualize Information Systems Agility

Cited by 10 publications

References 46 publications

Exploring the Benefits of an Agile Information System

Exploring the Benefits of an Agile Information System

Sensing Attributes of an Agile Information System

In A Quest to Solve Information System Agility Problems : A SaaS Experience

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