This paper aim s to provide two real SMEs company cases on how livin g-lab methodology could be appli ed to support adoption of ICT by organisation. This study is part of CoVES proj ect which aim s to dev elop advance collabor ation technologi es which ar e affordabl e by SMEs to support th eir vir tu al comm unication an d collabor ations. As th e outcom es of this study, th e CoVES livin g-lab methodology has prov en to be successful, despi te th e di ff er en t degr ees of adap tation on introduc ed ICT at two pr es en ted cas es. KeywordsLivin g-lab, SMEs, Collabor ation, proce edin gs, Product Innov ation, Real tim e comm unication INTRODUCTIONTo collaborate with different project partners or customers across different locations is becoming a common practice for many engineers (Katzy and Sung, 2005;Brynjolfsson 1994; Scott and Timmerman,1999). Apart from good planning and scheduling of works, effectiveness of collaboration between different collaboration partners thus becoming a critical factor for ensuring the ongoing progress and success of projects. The objective of the CoVES (Collaborative Virtual Engineering for SMEs) project is to provide solutions and methods to support engineers who are collaborating in distributed and virtual environment. Although there are already many different types of collaboration solutions in the market (i.e. Skype, Sharepoint, Yahoo Messenger and many others), but most of these solutions are developed by different vendors, hence difficult to synchronise the information across these different solutions. On the other hand, the actual productivity gains through using these collaboration solutions are still not very visible (Brynjolfsson and Yang, 1996). Therefore to understand how these collaboration solutions are used by the users will help to better reveal the productivity gain.Several ICT researchers (Orlikowski,1992;Orlikowski,1993;Scherer and Keller, 2002) have addressed that to better understand how ICT are adopted by organisations, more studies on how ICT are adopted in real organisation settings will provide more insight than control lab experiment. In Orlikowski (1993) adopted structuration theory framework, she has pointed out the importance to address the organisation, technology and individual users at same time to get a good understanding on how IT, organisation and individual users are influencing each other, and hence have better understandings on how IT are adopted. Therefore the objective of this paper will not focus the technical details on how different communication technologies are integrated or synchronised, but to illustrate how SMEs are adopting these technologies, productivity gain and lessons learned. Living Lab methodology which focuses on involving users in research and development processes has been used by several researchers (Folstad, 2008;Katzy, Loeh, and Sung, 2005) as a method to quickly capture user behaviours and obtain fast feedbacks into development requirements. In this way, better understanding on how collaboration solutions are adopted ...

We consider the processes of achieving alignment in coordinated inter-organizational networks through a case study of a system development project in ARC Transistance, a network of European automobile clubs that cooperate to provide pan-European service. The theoretical contribution of the paper is, first, an extended strategic alignment model for inter-organizational networks that distinguishes between integration of IS with business strategy and infrastructure, and what we label 'accordance' between the strategies and infrastructures of the network and the member firms. Second, we propose that for a network organization, network and member strategies might be complementary as well as tightly coupled. We similarly argue that IS architectures for networks should strive for being 'business strategy-neutral' to more easily accommodate the diversity of members. Finally, we discuss how the process of developing a network information system can be a driver towards network alignment, but how the lack of effective governance structures makes alignment harder to achieve.

Projects that operate in a virtual mode remain to be risky. Despite improving technology they fail more often and are less productive. This paper focuses on team collaboration and virtual project management in the search for solutions and argues that new research environments are needed to achieve results with higher external validity. One under researched element of virtual project management is the link between the project team and its environment. This especially has an impact on the continuous (re-) structuration of the project and its team members. The paper discusses a living laboratory environment in which real-life situations are used to study technical and organisational scenarios to go beyond traditional close system control group experiment for the longitudinal study of virtual project team collaboration. As an example of research results from the living laboratory the paper presents a set of coordination routines, how they evolve within the team over time, and their impact on productivity. Such routines can serve as best practices for virtual project management.

GERMANY

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