Abstract
This book presents cutting-edge research and thinking on agile information systems. The concept of agile information systems has gained strength over the last 3 years, coming into the MIS world from manufacturing, where agile manufacturing systems has been an important concept for several years now. The idea of agility is powerful: with competition so fierce today and the speed of business so fast, a company’s ability to move with their customers and support constant changing business needs is more important than ever. Agile information systems: • have the ability to add, remove, modify, or extend functionalities with minimal penalties in terms of time, cost, and effort • have the ability to process information in a flexible manner • have the ability to accommodate and adjust to the changing needs of the end-users. This is the first book to bring together academic experts, researchers, and practitioners to discuss how companies can create and deploy agile information systems. Contributors are well-regarded academics known to be on the cutting-edge of their fields. The Editor, Kevin Desouza, has organized the chapters under three categories: • discussion of the concept of agile information systems (i.e. defining agile information management, its attributes, antecedents, consequences, etc.) • discussion of information systems within the context of agility (i.e., descriptions of agile information systems and their attributes, how to build agile information systems, etc.) • discussion of organizational management issues in the context of agile information systems (i.e., how to prepare the organization for agile information systems, management of agile information systems for improved organizational performance, etc.)