In the beginning of the e-commerce era, retailers mostly adopted vertically integrated solutions to control the entire e-commerce value chain. However, they began to realize that to achieve agility, a better approach would be to focus on certain core capabilities and then create a partner ecosystem around them. From a technical point of view, this means it is advised to have a lightweight platform architecture with small core e-commerce functionality which can be extended by additional services from third party providers. In a typical e-commerce ecosystem with diverse information systems of network partners, integration and interoperability become critical factors to enable seamless coordination among the partners. Furthermore an increasing adoption of cloud computing technology could be observed resulting in more challenging integration scenarios involving cloud services. Thus, an e-commerce platform is required that suites the advanced needs for flexible and agile service integration. Therefore, this paper aims to present a reference architecture of a novel pluggable service platform for e-commerce. We investigate on currently available online shop platform solutions and integration platforms in the market. Based on the findings and motivated by literature on service-oriented design, we develop an architecture of a service-based pluggable platform for online retailers. This design is then instantiated by means of a prototype 123Inf Syst E-Bus Manage (2016) 14:469-489 DOI 10.1007 for an e-commerce returns handling scenario to demonstrate the feasibility of our architecture design.

There are two approaches of software development and their combination that have attracted a lot of interest from the research community lately. The first is the Distributed/Global Software Development, which entails development in multiple geographically dispersed sites. The second approach is the Agile Software Development, which incorporates an evolving development process for better adaptation to changing environments and requirements. Their combination is a challenging topic due to a lot of contradicting characteristics. In this paper, the successful communication between remote sites and especially the communication of requirements in an Agile Distributed Software Development process are investigated. The research is based on a case study at Cegeka, a Belgium ICT company with branches in the Netherlands and Romania. The Dutch and Romanian sites are engaged in agile global software development practice, facing a situation with requirements understanding. Enhancement of the awareness of the vision of the product and the vision of the company through the communication of requirements between the Business Analyst and the Scrum Master is the main challenge that this paper aims to address. However, due to the limited information we have on how the Scrum Master and the Business Analyst from Cegeka communicate, we cannot give very specific answer but just a general solution and best practices. Nonetheless it should be a good starting point for improving requirements communication within the distributed software development process between the Romanian and the Dutch sites of Cegeka. AbstrakAda dua pendekatan pengembangan perangkat lunak dan kombinasi dari kedua pendekatan tersebut menjadi bahan yang menarik banyak minat komunitas riset akhir-akhir ini. Kedua pendekatan dimaksud yaitu pengembangan perangkat lunak metode Distributed/Global, yang digunakan untuk lokasi yang tersebar secara geografis, serta pengembangan perangkat lunak metode Agile, yang dapat dengan mudah beradaptasi terhadap perubahan lingkungan dan kebutuhan. Kombinasi kedua pendekatan tersebut menjadi tantangan karena banyak karakteristik yang saling bertentangan. Dalam tulisan ini, diamati proses komunikasi yang berhasil antara dua daerah yang berjauhan, utamanya terkait kebutuhan dalam pengembangan perangkat lunak agile distributed. Penelitian ini merupakan studi kasus di Cegeka, sebuah perusahaan TIK milik Belgia yang memiliki cabang di Belanda dan Rumania. Daerah Belanda dan Rumania telah mencoba praktik agile global software development, namun pemahaman akan kebutuhannya belum sama. Peningkatan kesadaran akan visi produk dan visi perusahaan melalui komunikasi terkait kebutuhan antara Analis Bisnis dan Scrum Master adalah tantangan utama yang ingin disampaikan makalah ini. Namun, karena terbatasnya informasi terkait bagaimana Scrum Master dan Analis Bisnis dari Cegeka berkomunikasi, penelitian ini tidak dapat memberikan jawaban yang sangat spesifik namun solusi umum dan praktik terbaik. Meskipun demikian, hal ini menjadi titik awal yang baik unt...