Contributions in Merlin

Purpose This paper aims to explore the concept of early warning signs (EWSs) in offshore-outsourced software development (OOSD) projects at the team level. It also aims to identify the EWSs of failure in the onshore-offshore project context and understand how they are perceived by responsible managers. Design/methodology/approach A grounded theory approach is followed by gathering data from 19 failed OOSD projects using project managers from client and vendor sides as the key informants. Findings This study identified 13 EWSs of failure in five categories of trust and team cohesion, common project execution structures, awareness of shared work context, collaboration between teams and onshore-offshore team coordination capabilities. EWSs were found to comprise two components: early warning issues and early signals of failures. Research limitations/implications India-based vendors’ data in the study formed the primary weakness of the work regarding generalizability, even though it brought homogeneity to data. Lack of triangulation of failure data through client or vendor peers proved impossible in this research as failure remains a very sensitive topic. Dual composition of EWSs could be applied to institutionalize an early warning tool in projects. Originality/value The paper develops an exploratory model of EWSs of failure and project failure in the OOSD project context. The two-component framework of EWSs allows project managers to eliminate false positives while identifying EWSs. It contributes to the information system failure, risk management and information technology offshoring research streams.

Sharing has been a common form of access to resources in human societies. While sharing is as old as mankind, the ‘sharing economy’ is a phenomenon that advanced with digital information and communication technology (ICT), in particular the Internet, and came to the fore as a part of the digital transition. The proliferation of digital platforms and the increasing interest in participation in the sharing economy calls for a better understanding of the current trends and future course of digital sharing and its implications for sustainability. The present work introduces the intersection between “sustainability” and the “digital sharing economy” as a subject area that requires a transdisciplinary approach. The study of the digital sharing economy will inevitably require scholars and experts from manifold disciplines; this can encourage collaboration and knowledge co-producttion in achieving common understandings, joint approaches, and compatible solutions to tackle complex societal issues. In cases, society has been unable to perceive the changes brought by digital transition alongside its pace. This has led to limitations and deficiencies in projecting future trends and implications of digitalization for societies. Based on the ontological assumption of this work, all human interactions are in fact social practices; these practices shape shape society and in particular economic structures. This ontology has been also used in former studies on the impacts of the ICT applications on society and the environment in the normative context of sustainability, e.g. in the work of Hilty and Aebischer (2015). The conceptual framework proposed by Hilty and Aebischer, which we use as the analytical tool for our transdisciplinary approach, structures and analyzes the life-cycle effects, enabling effects, and structural effects (LES model) of digitalization. Therefore, our findings are drawn from the adoption of the LES model to address the interdisciplinary implications of the digital sharing economy, as one existing “use-case” of ICT, for the sustainability of the environment and societies. We found that the enabling effects of digital sharing for the various actors in production and consumption processes and the effects of sharing on sustainability requires investigation. The expected long-term structural changes resulting from these enabling impacts should be also considered with regard to their relevance for sustainability. From a structural change perspective, the digital sharing economy has promoted individual economic empowerment, but it has also raised some social and environmental concerns. In particular, it has been criticized for labour exploitation and its tendencies to create unequal access in communities, to create unregulated marketplaces and to promote unfair competition. Therefore, prominent considerations here would be towards creating and improving equal opportunities for fair distribution/competition for everyone in sharing markets. Institutions and related policies can speed up the digital transition towards sustainable development. For policy making with regard to digital sharing practices, it will be essential to define paradigms that support sustainable, collaborative production and consumption with respect to planetary boundaries.

Am Anfang war eine Bank ein Tisch (auf Italienisch «banco»), an dem Geld gewechselt wurde. 1928, im Geburtsjahr der «Finanz und Wirtschaft», war sie dann ein imposantes Gebäude. Heute verschwinden Banken aus Gebäuden und begeben sich in die Wolken, in die Cloud, und manche Kundenberater sowie Asset-Manager werden durch Roboter ersetzt. Welches Rüstzeug kann eine wissenschaftliche Hochschule unter diesen Umständen den Bankerinnen und Bankern der Zukunft mitgeben?

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Peer code review is a practice widely adopted in software projects to improve the quality of code. In current code review practices, code changes are manually inspected by developers other than the author before these changes are integrated into a project or put into production. We conducted a study to obtain an empirical understanding of what makes a code change easier to review. To this end, we surveyed published academic literature and sources from gray literature (e.g., blogs and white papers), we interviewed ten professional developers, and we designed and deployed a reviewability evaluation tool that professional developers used to rate the reviewability of 98 changes. We find that reviewability is defined through several factors, such as the change description, size, and coherent commit history. We provide recommendations for practitioners and researchers. Preprint [https://pure.tudelft.nl/portal/files/45941832/reviewability.pdf]. Data and Materials [https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.1323659].

The basal ganglia (BG) are involved in motivation and goal‐directed behavior. Recent studies suggest that limbic territories of BG not only support reward seeking (appetitive approach) but also the encoding of aversive conditioned stimuli (CS) and the production of aversive‐related behaviors (avoidance or escape). This study aimed to identify inside two BG nuclei, the striatum and pallidum, the territories involved in aversive behaviors and to compare the effects of stimulating these territories to those resulting from stimulation of the anterior Insula (aIns), a region that is well‐known to be involved in aversive encoding and associated behaviors. Two monkeys performed an approach/avoidance task in which they had to choose a behavior (approach or avoidance) in an appetitive (reward) or aversive (air‐puff) context. During this task, either one (single‐cue) or two (dual‐cue) CS provided essential information about which context‐adapted behavior should be selected. Microstimulation was applied during the CS presentation. Stimulation generally reduced approaches in the appetitive contexts and increased escape behaviors (premature responses) and/or passive avoidance (noninitiated action) in aversive context. These effects were more pronounced in ventral parts of all examined structures, with significant differences observed between stimulated structures. Thresholds to induce effects were lowest in the pallidum. Striatal stimulation led to the largest diversity of effects, with a subregion even leading to enhanced active avoidance. Finally, aIns stimulations produced stronger effects in the dual‐cue context. These results provide causal evidence that limbic territories of BG, like aIns, play crucial roles in the selection of context‐motivated behaviors.