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Innovators: Marcus Rothenberger sees the practical side of research

Marcus Rothenberger (W. P. Carey MBA '94, Ph.D. '99) combines his passions for teaching and research -- as well as a fair dose of management and administration experience -- in his position as chair of the Management Information Systems (MIS) department at the University of Nevada Las Vegas College of Business. This arrangement suits him well. In this month's Innovators feature we talk with Rothenberger about the synergy between his teaching and research.

2011-05-03

One definition of innovator is trailblazer: "one who opens up a new line of research or technology." Through its doctoral program, the Department of Information Systems has prepared a cadre of scholar innovators who are research leaders in universities across the nation. Their work enhances our understanding of the concepts behind information technology, and their new ideas move into the field to change and improve the way we do business. The "Innovators" series profiles these very special alumni. Marcus Rothenberger (W. P. Carey MBA '94, Ph.D. '99) came to the W. P. Carey School of Business to obtain an MBA with a concentration in international business, which he expected to put to use in his native Germany. But, smitten with the American university system and a newfound appreciation of academic research, Rothenberger instead decided to stay at the Department of Information Systems to pursue a PhD. Today, he is chair of the Management Information Systems (MIS) department at the University of Nevada Las Vegas College of Business. "It is pretty common in Europe to earn an international component to your education, so that was my original goal at ASU," Rothenberger explains of his decision to add on to the undergraduate degree he obtained at Germany's Darmstadt University of Technology. "But I discovered that I really liked the U.S. university system and I thought it would be nice to be part of that. At first, the idea of teaching was what drove my interest in the Ph.D., but during my time in the W. P. Carey School's doctoral program I learned about research — what it is, how to approach it, what it means — and got excited about that aspect of the job." These days he is combining his passions for teaching and research — as well as a fair dose of management and administration experience -- in his position as department chair at UNLV. This arrangement suits him well. Finding synergy between teaching and research is a motivational factor for Rothenberger. "My favorite courses to teach are the ones that relate to my research," he says, pointing to two of the graduate-level courses he's taught for the past few semesters: systems analysis and design, a general introduction to software development methodology, and an elective in the graduate MIS program called IT Architecture. Because of the fast pace and ever-changing nature of the technology field, staying on top of the latest developments in technology is a must for any MIS professor, Rothenberger believes. "Otherwise," he jokes, "your students end up knowing more than you do." "Keeping up with those changes and advances, and finding that synergy between teaching and research is so important," he adds. "If I teach a topic that I know intimately from my research — which sometimes includes case studies with companies who are using these technologies in the real world — I can bring something extra to the classroom." Combining theory and practice Rothenberger's research touches on a number of different aspects under the general heading of improving software development and implementation processes. He is a proponent of the design science research paradigm, which he defines as "the creation or design of a solution to a problem, and evaluation of whether that solution works." In addition to this practical, business-centric, approach, Rothenberger?s work also involves traditional MIS research paradigms that develop or test theory based on the analysis of case-studies and surveys. "Research should of course have a theoretical implication — otherwise it is a consulting project — but it should also have some relevance and practicality to it," he explains. A good example is one of Rothenberger's current research projects -- conducted with a master's degree student at UNLV — which seeks to build an estimation model for corrective software maintenance projects. If there is an error or bug in software that needs to be corrected, it is very difficult for companies to predict how long that corrective maintenance effort will take. "Most formal estimation models are based on software development, not software maintenance," Rothenberger explains. Because the tasks required for developing software differ from those involved in correcting it, development estimation techniques cannot easily be applied to software maintenance. "The issue is how we can better predict the effort involved in corrective maintenance," he says. "Software maintenance experts typically make ad-hoc estimates based on their experience of how long similar projects lasted, and because there is no formal process for predicting maintenance effort, such estimates are often based on their gut feeling." Along with his student and a colleague, Rothenberger hopes to change this process from a gut-feeling guess to a more precise estimate. The three are conducting a qualitative study with a large number of software maintenance experts to determine the key factors in estimating how long corrective maintenance effort takes. The project identifies a number of key factors relating to the developer experience, code characteristics, the nature of the defects, and the environment. "We ranked these factors by order of importance, and then we can look at these factors in various maintenance projects and see how projects that took a certain amount of effort performed across these factors," Rothenberger explains. "Based on that, we can calibrate a model that allows us to provide a better tool for estimation of maintenance projects." This useful tool would allow other companies to gain a more accurate idea of the length and scope of a maintenance project before embarking on it. Rothenberger has also conducted several research projects examining the implementation of enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems. Companies adopting these complex software systems that power back-end operations across an entire enterprise have a substantial amount of time and money at stake — so a seamless integration is an important goal. Examining what causes a successful or not-so-successful implementation, Rothenberger gleaned some eight or nine factors that serve as predictors for a successful implementation. "One of the key drivers was the level of competency an organization obtains before the ERP implementation. This influences how well they can direct their consulting teams, and prepare the organization for change, among other things," he explains. Another area of Rothenberger's research interests is one of the top trends in IT architecture today: the shift to service-oriented architectures, where software components are hosted on remote servers as services and developers can orchestrate new applications from these hosted resources. Keeping curriculum current These service-oriented models are what his students will likely be using in the future, Rothenberger notes. Staying abreast of technology trends that will impact students — and making sure the curriculum reflects those trends — is one of his key responsibilities as chair of the department. Rothenberger works closely with his executive advisory board and with CIOs of local organizations in Las Vegas to ensure that students are studying technology topics with relevance in the real world. "Relationships with companies and organizations in town are really important to keeping our curriculum current," he explains. Rothenberger has worked with IBM, for example, to develop courses on technologies that are used by the local gaming industry in Las Vegas. As department chair, part of his job is to assure that students can find job opportunities in a tough economic environment — a difficult challenge, but one he feels the school is handling well. "Dealing with shrinking state budgets as we try to meet the demands of our business community is a huge challenge. But even given the current economy, we are doing quite well in terms of being able to place our students in meaningful jobs," he says. "Luckily, MIS is a field that is in high demand."

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