Engineering situational methods for professional service organizations : an action design research approach

Abstract

Professional service organizations are organizations predominantly employed with professionals; employees with specific and dedicated expertise in an area. IT support of the primary operations in this type of organizations is suboptimal. Methodological support of development and implementation of information systems in professional service organizations is not producing expected results, as for instance can be observed by alacking business-IT alignment. This research brings together ideas from situational method engineering and action design research to address this issue. From the field of situational method engineering, the concept of method chunk is introduced as a made-to-measure IS development methodology element.In this research method chunks (atomic methodology elements) are developed that address hiatus in the ISD methodology in two distinct organizational cases. Action design research combines insight from design science and action research to not only design a technology component, but also embed the designed artifact in the conditions of use. The situational method engineering -action design research based approach produces five key contributions: (1) an analysis of information systems development in the professional service organizations domain; (2) custom tailored method chunks that address specific needs in an ISD process, (3) an method to develop method chunks in the professional service-organisations domain (4) an adaptation of situation method engineering based on the action design research approach; and (5) an real-life application of the action design reserach approach.