By Fayez Alqahtani
A study conducted by Alexander Benlian and Thomas Hess (2008) titled “The Adoption of and Satisfaction with Web2.0 Based Collaboration and Knowledge Management Technologies in Global Software Development – Insights from an Empirical” will be reviewed in this post.
According to this paper several Web 2.0 tools started to be adopted in organisation. Web 2.0 technologies are suitable platforms for collaboration and knowledge management. It has been started to be used particularly in distributed nature of organisations like software companies. This research looked at the adoption of Web2.0 in global software development firms, and the satisfaction of Web2.0 Collaboration and Knowledge Management Technologies in this type of organisation.
There are 7 web 2.0 tools has been investigated to assess the level of web 2.0 adoption and to know the type of work that these tools used in. These tools are web services, collective intelligence, peer-to-peer, social networking, RSS, podcast, wikis, blogs and mush-ups. Around the half of IT managers asked to assess the level of the web 2.0 technologies adoption say that their companies plan to adopt them. Social networking, RSS and wikis are some of the most relevant tools for collaboration and Knowledge Management in the global software development context from the employs point of view. On the other hand, most of the employs can see any relevant for mush-up. Around the half are satisfied with financial return on investment in these technologies over the past five years. Regarding to the main areas of using web 2.0 technologies in the software development process, the tools are variant. For example, in the plan face, the more participatory oriented tools like wiki, social networking and blogs are used.
The researchers conducted a survey with quantitative and qualitative questions. In total 400 IT managers have been contacted to participate in the survey and 108 of them participated. Authors of this paper claimed that they did 3 case studies and in other part of the paper they stated that they reviewed three examples of organisations that adopted web 2.0. Even though this research is more specific on a particular type of business, it was important for me to analysis how this research investigated the adoption of web 2.0 and what the result is. This study shoes two factors that could drive the adoption of such technology. These factors are the distribution nature of the organisation geographic location. The second factor is the work type meaning if the work is collective and need group of people to do it, so organisations will be more motivated to adopt this technology.
References
Benlian, A., & Hess, T. (2008). The Adoption of and Satisfaction with Web2. 0 Based Collaboration and Knowledge Management Technologies in Global Software Development–Insights from an Empirical Study. Paper presented at the 19th Australasian Conference on Information Systems
Popularity: 13% [?]
