Business Agility and Information Technology Diffusion: IFIP TC8 WG 8.6 International Working Conference, May 8-11, 2005, Atlanta, Georgia, USA (IFIP ... in Information and Communication Technology)

This book addresses issues related to business agility and the diffusion of Information Technology (IT). Success, even survival, in today's business environment has been made complex and difficult by technologically-based competitive pressure. One promising strategy is to be agile and ready to adapt quickly to changes in the environment or market. Such strategy takes shape as an agile software development, agile manufacturing, agile modeling and agile iterations. In contrast, successful IT diffusion is known to be a process that takes time and careful effort. Many IT projects that succeeded in developing a product have subsequently failed in changing the behavior of the target group when diffusion just didn't happen. Therefore this volume responds to the question: What is the relationship between agility and IT diffusion?The book's scope covers information systems and technology issues, as well as organizational and managerial issues, related to agility and IT diffusion. The planned perspectives include topics such as diffusion of agile methods, enabling business agility with IT, creating agile environments that facilitate diffusion of IT, theories and frameworks for understanding diffusion and agility issues, best practices relating to business agility and IT diffusion, software process improvement and agility, diffusion studies of specific agile technologies, and impacts of diffusion of IT agile methods.