Centre for Innovation and Structural Change
J. E. Cairnes School of Business & Economics
Enterprise Agility Cluster
Key Projects
AGILE & LEAN NETWORK OF EXCELLENCE
2010 - 2015
€2.5m industry contribution confirmed to NUIG
The goal of this project is to establish an Irish network of excellence in agile and lean software
development, and to position Irish companies, Irish subsidiaries and Irish researchers as thought and
technology leaders in agile and lean development. It aims to create techniques, knowledge and tools
allowing companies that develop innovative software systems to fully exploit the value-driven, wasteminimization, efficiency and effort-saving advantages of agile and lean development. It is managed in
an agile manner, with short-term iterations and goals, collocation where possible, and validation of the
value of each activity via continuous involvement of all stakeholders.
The cluster has secured €2.5m in industry contribution to NUI Galway to sustain this activity until
2015. Contributors include international market and technology leaders in their field:
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Information Mosaic (Dublin),
Intel (Leixlip),
Ericsson (Athlone),
Cisco (Galway),
Lumension Security (Galway),
APC Schneider (Galway)
QAD (Shannon)
The project also includes leading consultants in agile and lean management:
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Almir (Limerick)
Lean Business Systems (Limerick)
The contribution varies across partners, and includes (i) financial contribution (ii) staff time to engage
in joint research, co-authoring, guest lectures, and providing feedback on the quality and value of BIS
programmes and modules (iii) hosting, placement and employment of NUIG researchers and students,
and (iv) providing access and resources for student projects.
DECISION SUPPORT SYSTEMS FOR AGILE PROJECT MANAGEMENT
2008 – 2011
Principal Investigators: Dr Kieran Conboy, Prof. Willie Golden & Dr. Tom Acton
€400,000
This project, part of a larger PRTLI funded initiative, examines the impact of group decision support
systems (GDSS) on team-based project management and organisational decision making, particularly
in agile environments. Focusing on decision processes, team decision activities, group decision
behaviour and decisional guidance mechanisms, the research aims to support team-based decision
making and increase organisational value.
Centre for Innovation and Structural Change
J. E. Cairnes School of Business & Economics
GLOBAL AGILE INNOVATION (GAIA)
2007 – 2010
Principal Investigator: Dr Kieran Conboy
€550,000
The Global Agile Innovation (GAIA), an Enterprise Ireland ‘Innovation Partnership’ project (the second
largest ever issued under this scheme at the time), was successfully completed in October 2010. A
collaboration between NUI Galway and Lero – the Irish Software Engineering Research Centre, this
project implemented in Ireland relevant aspects of the FLEXI project, a pan-European ITEA2 project
which focuses on merging agile and innovative practices and assisting industry partners in achieving
shorter development lifecycle.
GAIA focused on: (i) agile method training, implementation and customisation; (ii) adoption of project
management techniques suitable for an agile development environment; (iii) analysis of how agile
methods can be adjusted to ensure adherence to quality standards and (iv) the development of an
innovation framework and accompanying metrics to ensure that innovation is facilitated and
encouraged in an agile environment.
The project’s industry partners were Fidelity Investments’ Galway facility and Danish company
Rovsing’s Limerick office. Fidelity Investments and Rovsing Ireland both implemented these new and
emerging approaches, seeking to develop reliable and safe systems, products and services in a global
development context efficiently; the goal being to increase quality, productivity and profitability.
Specifically, Fidelity leveraged this in their new R&D centre in Galway, while Rovsing used agile
methods in the development of mission- and life-critical aerospace and automotive systems.
This project led to over 60 papers published in leading journals and conferences, such as Information
Systems Research, the European Journal of Information Systems, Information & Software
Technology, the International Conference in Information Systems (ICIS), the European Conference in
Information Systems (ECIS), IFIP 8.6 and the XP200n conference series.
Other notable
achievements include the establishment of a monthly ‘Agile Forum’, a research and industry seminar
series established in association with the Information Technology Association, Galway (ITAG), which
attracts between 40 and 60 companies per event. The purpose of these was to disseminate findings
from the project to the local community; to establish the four partners as key sources of agile
knowledge and experience and to create an interactive forum for the discussion of problems regarding
agility. As a result, Galway software companies were exposed to best practices among the
community.
MANAGING AGILE IS DEVELOPMENT
2007 – 2010
Principal Investigators: Dr Kieran Conboy (NUIG) and Prof. Brian Fitzgerald (UL)
€250,000
The Science Foundation Ireland funded this project to examine the project management techniques
that can be adopted in agile ISD projects, and how these need to be tailored and extended to suit
these dynamic and complex environments. The study included a large-scale survey (>900 project
teams) and a series of in-depth case studies.
Centre for Innovation and Structural Change
J. E. Cairnes School of Business & Economics
FLEXI (EU Commission ITEA 2 Funding)
2007 - 2009
Principal Investigator of Irish component: Dr Kieran Conboy
€100,000
to NUIG
(Part of €30m EU consortium)
This was the first time a business school submission was funded under the ITEA2 funding scheme.
The project expanded the GAIA project above, allowing the staff funded on that to integrate into a
European network of 38 industry and research partners (see below), exchanging research expertise,
data, findings, as well as industry best practices. The goals of the FLEXI project were (i) to improve
the innovation capabilities of European software intensive industry through agility, decision making
tools and partnering; (ii) to deliver business and product flexibility by establishing efficient partner
ecosystems; (iii) to scale up agile product development in large, multi-site and global settings; and (iv)
to enable smooth integration of complex systems and products in order to save costs and calendar
time. The Irish component of the project delivered, among many other artefacts, an agile assessment
framework, 55 publications including 22 journal papers and 33 conference papers.
SENIOR FULBRIGHT RECIPIENT
2009
This award to Dr. Kieran Conboy facilitated a collaboration with Carnegie Mellon University, in
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA, focusing on links between NUI Galway and CMU around information
systems research and teaching. Outputs from this collaboration included joint supervision, and CMU’s
involvement in various aspects of current project proposals.