For decades the standardization of the model used to develop an information solution remains an important question for professional. Application of standardized methods and techniques introduces “order” in the development process. At the same time, this often leads to “rigid” understanding of the methodology and suboptimal end result. Although we have had both structured and agile methods in use for number of decades, today we still have a number of development models. Often, the debate is either advocating for the development of new all-inclusive framework or defending irreplaceability of some despite the overwhelming evidence of difficulties in providing solutions for long/term or complex information systems products. Still, we are more focused on overall information solution development process, and less on the framework. Putting overall development processes in forefront of any new framework discussion should be one of the guiding principles and focusing on processes has lead companies towards efficient build and deployment process, as the same time making sure that continuous integration and delivery are paramount to flexible and high quality software development. We should be more focused on overall information solution development process. The result should be a platform, a different approach to information solution development – not a new framework. Finally, the intention of this paper is not to provide the overview or the critique of Scrum, nor it intends to discuss Agile methods in general. Our intention is to address some of the practical limitations and suitability of Scrum methodology in today development requirements. Also, we would like to complement anticipated debate and to emphasize some of the open questions in software development processes.

Information systems are complex artefacts whose technical and social components ask for long development cycles in which end users and decision makers sometimes do not immediately see the value. Such scenario could be seen in implementation of any kind of information system, but especially in implementation of large scale public sector information systems that in addition to software development and implementation involve rather complex sector reforms (e.g. health information systems, social protection registries, education information systems, etc.). Sometimes both managers and engineers “do not have time for slow and systematic development” and are looking for solutions that can produce value in short term and with small investment – so called “quick wins”.

The value of information systems quick wins has been recognized in both business and IT communities in many contexts. Some key business services could be “fixed” without investing into strategic developments, providing much more value in comparison to development efforts, a quick win can increase the confidence into development team, small and focused efforts are more agile in responding to ever-changing business requirements, and probably most important for long-term complex systems development, smartly positioned quick wins can produce regeneration scheme reinforcing the support, investment and incentives for the information system implementation.

However, practitioners are faced with some challenges related to the quick win approach that do not sound that good: sometimes quick wins are really not so “quick”, asking for considerable efforts without strategic impact, some quick fixes generate actually more efforts for their long-term consolidation, systemic methodologies of incremental delivery are sometimes mixed with a series of quick wins which can lead to methodological mess and “slow but certain failure”, etc.

In this paper we are looking for specific cases of quick wins that produced the positive reinforcement effects and became the true assets of an information system development, but also for quick wins that proved to be not so successful, especially in terms of an issue that we consider probably the major pitfall in quick win approach – when quick win gives the illusion of “strategic solution” and actually stops further development.

This study looks at competition in Bosnian telecommunication sector especially assessing key factors in consumer’s choice of mobile operator. By analyzing traditional network effects related to telecom sector, as well as current regulatory and strategies approach by different operators in the market, we have developed a decision-making model that estimates key variables in selection process and assessed the relations between three competing operators.

Our sample size is 2500 citizens of BiH randomly selected, and we have observed customers of all three licensed mobile operators. By using collected data we estimated Logit and Multinomial Logit models for all three mobile operators and investigated the relationships between them. We find that ethnicity still plays, and is the key “raison d’être”, why citizens of BiH prefer individual operators, and a traditional network variables characteristic for network industries like telecommunication (exp. network size, technology, switching cost, lock-in, value-added services, etc.) do not play significant role in consumer’s operator selection. In addition, we have discovered that privatization of one of the operators did have a positive impact on market dynamics – putting forward some of the network oriented variables, but overall did not significantly reduced ethnicity-based consumer’s decision making.

The results of our research can be widely used and has significant implications for telecom sector business strategy and consumer’s approach, especially in post-conflict situation or ethnicity divided regions/countries. The fact that many of traditional network effect found in telecom sector do not play significant role in BiH’s market, puts a specific pressure on companies to understand-why and to adopt market policies tailored to country specifics.

In November 2004 the Council of Ministers of BiH adopted a Policy, Strategy and Action Plan for Information Society Development in BiH. These three documents contained the main guidelines and principles, strategy and mechanisms, defined priorities and activities for the sustainable and continuous development of Bosnia and Herzegovina as a society based on knowledge and the intensive use of information and communications technologies.

The “Policy of Information Society Development in Bosnia and Herzegovina” presented a framework document on the basis of which laws, regulations and other bylaws were passed for the process of developing and building an information society. The “Strategy of Information Society Development in BiH” focused on five development pillars, namely; legal infrastructure, e-Education, e-Governance, ICT infrastructure and ICT industry. However, to prevent the Strategy from remaining just one of BiH’s strategic documents an appropriate “Action Plan of Information Society Development in BiH” was prepared. The Action Plan constituted a platform upon which the Strategy was to be implemented. At the moment of its development the Action Plan pertained to the period 2004-2010.

This paper examines genesis and curent  status of the Policy, Strategy and Action plan for information society development in BiH. It provides an insight into the overall methodology framework for development of the documents, process and its dynamics, as well as the  role and activities of different programme decision bodies. In addition, this paper will look at the overall results and current status of the Action Plan and provide recommendation for future steps in implementation process.

Analysis of the implementation of the Action Plan was carried out according to the method of secondary analysis; precissly as an overview of previously published sectoral analyses and through discussions held with some of the key stakeholders involved in the implementation of the whole Strategy. As a part of our findings, it is important to note that in the area of legal infrastructure BiH did not achieve significant progress due to the relatively small number of adopted laws. On the other hand, significant results were noticed in e-Education segment, as one of the key pillars in the Action Plan, but implementation of the sector projects only reached around 50% of set-out tasks. As noted in the Strategy, the e-Governance sector is considered to be the most complex so implementation level of around 50% should be viewed as a significant result, especially having in mind that BiH still does not have a single government authority tasked with the development and promotion of an information society. In respect to ICT infrastructure development most initiatives came from the dominant and alternative telecom operators, as well as Regulatory Agency. Unfortunately the least work was done in the ICT industry sector, where minimum of work was done.

In this paper we discuss one relatively hidden but important issue related to information systems development – weak integration of performing and managing the information systems development. Among others, two causes for such weak integration are identified as important – weak integration of methodological support to the performing and managing the development, and difficulties in knowledge transfer. We show that in practice this may have some important adverse consequences for development process, such as communication problems between engineering and managerial parts of the development team, or insisting on application of inappropriate method. In this paper we argue that the methodological integration is, rather than methodological innovation, a potential solution to this problem – both processes have traditionally quite well developed methodological support but the essential interconnection of these methods is often missing. As another potential improvement primarily intended to facilitate knowledge transfer within development team, we also suggest stronger integration of knowledge that the development process managers should possess.

In this paper we argue that the provision of highly accessible and integrative electronic services for citizens and businesses require reliable state level electronic identification and authentication management that offers at least the same level of security and data integrity as existing (semi)manual systems. We illustrate that by presenting and juxtaposing two conceptually different, but exceptionally well implemented eID systems (Austria and Belgium), as well as the case of country without implemented eID system (Bosnia and Herzegovina). First two case studies clearly demonstrate that a successful implementation of eID system at the national level radically improves the interaction between clients and service providers, while the later case shows that without nationally implemented eID system, even well designed and implemented e-Government systems, cannot transform the potential into optimal performance and provide integrated and easily accessible services to citizens and businesses.

S curve model is one of fundamental expressions that gives a generic description of technological development. Introduction of new technology is often a big step for company and can be implemented in various ways; frequently producing negative transition gap referred as S curve gap. Consequently, enlarging the costs of transition and brings the company in the situation in which the users cannot achieve the same efficiency as they could with old technology. Having this in mind, it is important for companies to determine optimal point and modus for replacing an old technology with a new one. Technology lifecycle described with S curve can be mathematically represented with a function extrapolated from data about technology itself. That enforces the idea of mathematical modeling of this particular problem, and using this model forecast technology growth and optimal point of introduction of the new technology. Mathematical expression that describes “S curves” are often referred as growth curves. Growth curves are using data from the past and presence to forecast the technology growth in the future.

In this paper we will give an overview of the various models that can be used in technological forecasting. Analytical expressions of those curves will be presented as well as the characteristic of every model and way to use it when we have a necessary data. Technological forecasting models can be categorized in various ways according to different criteria. This paper will categorize them on the basis of the structure of the stochastic models in three groups: trend curve models, linearised trend curve models and non-linear auto-regressive models. The way to use those curves will be explained as well as quality of the overall technology predictions.

Strapped between 20th century that’s marked with permanently engraved suffering, and globally oriented 21^st century, BiH continues to evolve. Throughout its recent history, Bosnia went through  one-party, unitary system as part of the SFRY, trubulent war, post Dayton state of independency, up to its current status of economic, political and ideological transition – not an ideal market for private business growth. In order the combat this situation, a vigorous and dynamic economic injection is needed which will drive Bosnia toward economic prosperity, political stability, and ultimately ease the process of European integration.  One way to support and encourage a sustainable economy is through SME sector, particularly, through franchise model.  More specifically, for start up businesses, franchises can be viewed as an available instrument for encouraging, developing and nurturing entrepreneurial talent, promoting corporate governance and transparency, as well as attracting foreign investment resources and competencies – both tangible and intangible, to the country in transition. This paper is aimed at analyzing and proving that investments through franchising model are an excellent way of encouraging a sustainable regional economic development  and can serve as a mean of promoting and strengthening home country SME sector, with focus on BiH as a country in transition within SEE.  Nevertheless, franchising is not panacea, and it is clear that is has its downfalls; in fact, for the success of the economy, they can not be ignored.

Traditionally, the interaction between a citizen or business and a government agency took place in a government office. Often “E-Government” refers to the use of information technologies (such as Wide Area Networks, the Internet, and mobile computing) that have the ability to transform relations between government agencies and citizens, businesses, as well as among different government structures. With emerging information and communication technologies it is possible to locate service centers closer to the clients, citizents, and such centers may consist of an unattended kiosk in the government agency, a service kiosk located close to the client, or the use of a personal computer in the home or office. These technologies can serve a variety of different ends: better delivery of government services to citizens, improved interactions with business and industry, citizen empowerment through access to information, or more efficient government management. The resulting benefits can be less corruption, increased transparency, greater convenience, revenue growth, and/or cost reductions.

Analogous to e-commerce, which allows businesses to transact with each other more efficiently (B2B) and brings customers closer to businesses (B2C), e-government aims to make the interaction between government and citizens (G2C), government and business enterprises (G2B), and inter-agency relationships (G2G) more friendly, convenient, transparent, and inexpensive.

On the other hand e-government standards are becoming increasingly complex. Official interactions between government and citizens (G2C), government and business enterprises (G2B), and inter-agency relationships (G2G), and information technologies as the medium through which these interactions are made, creates a whole new regulatory requirement that translate into core legal changes haven’t seen so far.  The specifics are primarily reflected in person’s identification, determining and authenticating government documents contents, utilization of hardware and software resources used (e-messages, e-signatures, e-stamps of legal persons). In addition, e-government success and level of achievement is often measured only be its technical levels. Legal and regulatory aspect are completely overlooked, and they role in overall e-government success is tremendously underestimated.

It is for this reason that a extensive group of legal and technical issues include those pertaining to the identification of signatory and verification of the signed electronic record authenticity in case of dispute.

The basic hypothesis of the paper is that this situation require a change in the existing rules of government procedures and the adjustment of the existing rules to new e-government techniques. The hypothesis will be proved by analyzing the B&H legislation related to government and sucessul e-government practices and case-studies, court procedures, e-signatures, and the analysis of comparative law solutions pertaining to the e-government by means of following methods: comparative-law, historical, normative and analytical method.

Strapped between 20th century that’s marked with permanently engraved suffering, and globally oriented 21^st century, BiH continues to evolve.  Throughout its recent history, Bosnia went through  one-party, unitary system as part of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (SFRY), trubulent war, post Dayton state of independency, up to its current status of economic, political and ideological transition – resulting in a situation where efficient and effective public administration  is essential, and in BiH, the public administration requires a serious reform.  Under constant pressure to streamline its public administration reform (PAR) processes, information and communication technologies (ICT) are key element of government activities.  Specifically, eGovernence, and mGovernence as a subsector, has immediate impact on the overall re-engineering of PAR, as well as its support toward a more efficient and effective administration.  This paper establishes the link and effect of eGovernment and mGovernment on PAR, as well as analyses realistically the situation within BiH for exploiting the eGovernment and mGovernment to it full potential. 

Nevertheless, eGovernence and mGovernenece, as well as overall ICT usage is not panacea, and it is clear that it has to have a clear approach, strategy as well as action plan in order to have an positive impact. One way to do this is through regional frameworks, such as Electronic South Eastern Europe Initiative, an intergovernmental platform of the countries of the Western Balkans who jointly employed ICT as a strategic tool for economic growth, employment rise, EU integration and long-term stability of the region. The strategic efforts of these regional frameworks are focused on Information Society development, encapsulated in Electronic South Eastern Europe (eSEE) Agenda (2002/2007) and eSEE Agenda Plus (2007/2012), and both of these strategic documents are supplemented by Taskforce for Broadband Action Plan (bSEE) position on eGovernment, as well as mGovernment – as central development point within agenda in the upcoming period.   

The aim of this research is to provide qualitative assessments of the EU membership economic criteria on Bosnia and Herzegovina as reference country. We are going to use available quantitative and qualitative indicators relevant for the EU integration process of BiH in order to explain the economic challenges that Bosnia and Herzegovina may face in the process of European integration. We will combine methodology used by the European Commission in assessments of countries’ readiness for the EU integration with other relevant indicators (e.g. EBRD transition indicators) in order to explain BiH position in respect to the EU economic criteria for membership. Our preliminary analysis implies that the biggest challenges for Bosnia and Herzegovina may be found in the following fields: lack of consensus on economic policy in the country; (under)development of the financial sector and non-banking financial institutions; enormous barriers to market entry and exit at the market; lack of a functional legal framework efficiently regulating property rights as well as competition policy; underdeveloped SME sector in the market; and a high share of the public sector in GDP. From the other side, Bosnia and Herzegovina has significantly good results in the following areas: macroeconomic stability seen through the stability of prices (this is in line with a long period of price stability) and budget deficits; liberalization of prices and foreign trade.

The IT maturity can be seen as an issue of matching services offered by IT with the requirements of the business. In businesses of any significant size, IT maturity and alignment of IT with business is a hard problem that currently is not completely solved. With the advent of cross-organizational collaborations, the problem gets a new dimension because in cross-organizational settings there is usually no single decision point. Various maturity levels can be identified for the alignment between business and IT. Therefore, maturity models seem to be a suitable vehicle for deeper understanding and assessment of IT maturity within companies. In order to assess current status of IT maturity in BIH companies a crosscutting overview of two commonly used IT/IS models has been used in our research – Nolan’s stage model and IT value-perception model.

In 1979, Richard L. Nolan developed, and in 1995, he updated his six stages IT Evolution/Maturing Model (Nolan and Croson, 1995) as one of the earliest models/frameworks of the information system stage development, meaning the evolution of information technologies within companies. Nolan is of an opinion that the companies, instead of trying to make a single large stride forward when it comes to the implementation of IT within their operations, should think of IT evolution as a sequential process. He proposes six stages that this evolution should be taking place through. These six stages are, according to Nolan, divided in two eras: the Data Processing Era ((i) Initiation, (ii) Expansion and (iii) Control) and the IT Era ((iv) Integration, (v) Data administration and (vi) Maturity) separated by the technology transformation gap/discontinuity.

It was due to the shortcomings of Nolan’s model, especially the lack of an empirical proof of the model itself, that Winggers, Kok and De Boor – de Wit (2004) defined the new model of the IT evolution within the company named the “IT value perception” model. The authors of this model defined the correlation between the maturity of demands on the X-axis and the maturity of supply on the Y-axis, and presented the IT transformation in the company within four stages: (i) IT as facilitator, (ii) IT as service, (iii) IT as partner, and (iv) IT as enabler.

In order to better understand and analyze the IT maturity in BiH companies, a research was conducted on basic characteristics and current state of IT and information systems. Methodology-vise, this research presents a quantitative research of the IT maturity of the companies themselves and the method used is an opinion poll conducted on a target group of professionals. A questionnaire was sent to 120 BH companies, while 40 of them participated in a very research, which represents 30% response rate.

The usual perception of BH businesses as being quite traditionally organized and without usage of modern information technologies simply does not fit into factual data received through research. Of course, one must be skeptical regarding some of the answers and statistics related to that. For example, 68,6% of companies claimed to have integrated IT systems. It is quite questionable does the term “integrated IT system” has the same meaning for all respondents. Truly integrated IT systems are generally not so easy to find and it is hard to believe that two thirds of BH companies are having such situation.

On the other hand some of the answers clearly position most of the companies into more mature stages of both models used. The fact that 88,5% companies responded that they cannot function without IT, that 97,1% companies consider IT responsible for their increased efficiency and considers IT to be their competitive advantage, the fact that 74,3% of companies are taking the information technologies into account within their strategic planning and that 51,4% of companies are having their CIO positioned to companies’ top management has shown that there is a clear understanding of the strategic importance of the information technologies and its enabling role for their businesses. It means that majority of companies that responded to research are in IT era in Nolan model’s sense, and are perceiving the IT as  partner and enabler for their core businesses, in “IT value perception” model’s sense.

This paper describes case study of implementing open source solution. Solution is implemented for purpose of creating distance learning web portal for training of judges and prosecutors in Bosnia and Herzegovina. This case study shows how open source solutions can be implemented efficiently and cost effectively. In spite of the considerable requirement from beneficiaries for the software, project team found a solution that was implemented in five months. This paper also shows how implementation of the information technologies can make reengineering process faster. As a result, of such solution, training is done differently. Paper concludes that, implementation of distance learning solution allowed training center to reengineer their work, and judges and prosecutors to speed up the training process.

’’Transnationalisation’’ is the phenomenon that explains a huge increase of transnational corporations (TNCs), their filial and affiliations throughout the world. The first TNCs are registered in XVII^th century in Holland and England but at the end of the last century this phenomenon became extremely important for economic science. Recent estimates suggest that there are about 65.000 TNCs today, with about 850.000 foreign affiliates throughout the world.

The research will focus on the expansion of international production and combination of factors, which influence the most, this process. The first is policy liberalization, then rapid technological change and increasing international competition. The paper will also analyze other relevant factors for the expansion of TNCs.

The paper will emphasize correlation between foreign direct investments and transnational corporations. The research should present that the most developed countries in the world get the highest amount of FDI but transition countries the smallest one. Also, the most developed countries are major hosts of TNCs and the biggest benefits from the transnationalisation go there.

The paper will particularly research the influence of this phenomenon in transition countries. Main focus of the research will be to show that the most benefits of transnationalisations go to the most developed countries, opposite to the expected logic that primary recipients would be developing or transition countries, thus they are the ones that should adopt the open-market concept and neo-liberal economic model to the fullest.

The holistic approach to systems analysis gives different perspective to a dynamic view of the system as a whole. Modeling system by usage of that framework produces the network of influences that produce various deviation-amplifying and deviation-countering loops which shape the identity of the system. This paper presents the results of a research based on a theoretical framework given by holistic dynamic approach to system change and on an empirical research of the public opinion. The research has addressed the problem of spreading the Internet culture in Federation of BH on the normally expected level. The paper gives the simplified model of that system that provides useful framework for the analysis of potential systems change as a whole, as the consequence of changing just one or several influences between its elements. Two major influences were identified as the potential candidates for the change. The paper also opens the space for much more comprehensive research that can produce more accurate and sophisticated model of the system.