Context Of Information Systems Development Research Articles

Knowledge Retention Challenges in Information Systems Development Teams

Information systems development (ISD) is an integral part of organizational agility in today’s competitive business environment. High turnover, agile ways of working, and fluid work environments pose challenges for ISD. This paper explores the erosion of knowledge retention (KR) arising from ISD staff churn in a New Zealand-based financial organization in the aftermath of a major earthquake. In this exploratory study, the authors develop a causal model of KR in the ISD context, which articulates the challenges to and consequences of ineffective KR at the routine and exiting stages of KR. The model identifies four challenges—coordination complexity, insufficient resources for knowledge retention, insufficient attention to knowledge retention, and slow staff replacement and handover processes—that can affect the loss of ISD knowledge when routine and exiting KR fall into disarray. This study also reveals that role stress and reduced ISD agility reinforce the cycle of knowledge loss.

Transactive memory systems, team learning and project outcomes in information systems development projects: the moderating roles of shared leadership

Little work exists to examine shared leadership as an internal team context. This study aims to explore how and in what ways shared leadership impacts team processes and outcomes. Specifically, this study proposes the moderating effects of shared leadership on the relationship between transactive memory system (TMS) and team learning and between team learning and project outcomes. A survey method was adopted to test the proposed model. Based on partial least squares (PLS) analysis, the results confirmed a negative effect of shared leadership on the relationship between team learning and project outcomes. High-level shared leadership substitutes the effects of team learning on project outcomes. However, the moderating effect of shared leadership on the relationship between TMS and team learning was not supported. This study makes theoretical contributions and practical implications for understanding the context of information systems development (ISD) project teams.

Learning Effects of Domain, Technology, and Customer Knowledge in Information Systems Development: An Empirical Study

This study examines learning effects (i.e., the effects of prior experience) in information systems development (ISD). ISD is characterized by disparate tasks, teams, and levels of project complexity across projects. These features challenge our understanding of how learning effects occur in the ISD context. Drawing on the theory of transfer of learning, this study examines how ISD project teams learn and under what conditions the learning effects are stronger or weaker. We find that ISD project teams’ experience in prior projects translates into performance gains for the current ISD project when the prior and current projects share the same domain, technology, or customer knowledge elements—domain, technology, and customer being the most essential knowledge types for ISD. Moreover, we find that the learning effects of domain, technology, and customer knowledge are substitutive for one another and that these learning effects become stronger or weaker depending on the extent of ISD projects’ team and task complexities. The study makes significant contributions to the ISD literature on learning effects and the roles of domain, technology, customer knowledge, and project complexity, as well as to the general organizational learning literature. It also provides important managerial insights into practical concerns such as project staffing and knowledge acquisition for ISD organizations. The online appendix is available at https://doi.org/10.1287/isre.2017.0713 .

Explaining knowledge sharing with social capital theory in information systems development projects

Purpose– Owing to their complex and knowledge-intensive nature, information systems development (ISD) projects require effective collaboration between business and technology experts. In this regard, social capital theory may provide a valuable framework and insight into explaining knowledge sharing behavior in an ISD context. The purpose of this paper is to expand the theory of knowledge sharing as developed thus far in the ISD project context using the full-blown team social capital theory.Design/methodology/approach– The expertise and communication effectiveness of business and technology professionals were posited as antecedents of team social capital and knowledge sharing. The research model for this study integrates expertise, communication, knowledge sharing, social capital, and team performance into a structural equation modeling. The research model was empirically tested with a data set from business and technology professional pairs collected from 115 ISD project teams.Findings– The results indicated that team social capital and knowledge sharing have significant influences on team performance. Team social capital appears to have a stronger influence on knowledge sharing than business and technology expertise. Communication effectiveness and technology expertise are important antecedents to raise team social capital.Originality/value– In this study, the social capital theory is applied toward enhancing the theory of knowledge sharing in ISD project teams. General social capital construct and measures are adopted and modified into the team social capital measures and validated empirically.

Learning Across Knowledge Types in Information Systems Development: An Empirical Study

This study examines learning effects (i.e., the effects of prior experience) in outsourced information systems development (ISD). Outsourced ISD is characterized by disparate tasks, teams, customers, and levels of project complexity across projects. These features challenge the understanding of how learning effects occur in the outsourced ISD context. Drawing upon the theory of transfer of learning, this study examines how outsourced ISD project teams learn and under what conditions they learn better or worse. We find that ISD project teams’ experience in prior projects is transferred to performance gains in the current ISD project when the prior and current projects share the same domain or technology knowledge elements, domain and technology being the most essential knowledge types for ISD. Moreover, we find that these learning effects become stronger or weaker depending on the extent to which ISD project teams are familiar with the customers and the extent to which ISD projects are complex in its task and team. The study makes significant contributions to the outsourced ISD literature on learning effects, the roles of domain and technology knowledge, customer experience, and ISD project complexity, as well as to the general organizational learning literature. It also provides important managerial insights into practical human resource concerns such as project staffing and knowledge acquisition for outsourced ISD organizations.

Editorial

Editorial

The Sensemaking-Coevolution-Implementation Theory of Software Design

Understanding software design practice is critical to understanding modern information systems development. New developments in empirical software engineering, information systems design science and the interdisciplinary design literature combined with recent advances in process theory and testability have created a situation ripe for innovation. Consequently, this paper utilizes these breakthroughs to formulate a process theory of software design practice: Sensemaking-Coevolution-Implementation Theory explains how complex software systems are created by collocated software development teams in organizations. It posits that an independent agent (design team) creates a software system by alternating between three activities: organizing their perceptions about the context, mutually refining their understandings of the context and design space, and manifesting their understanding of the design space in a technological artifact. This theory development paper defines and illustrates Sensemaking-Coevolution-Implementation Theory, grounds its concepts and relationships in existing literature, conceptually evaluates the theory and situates it in the broader context of information systems development.

The effects of information sharing, collective efficacy and team conflict on system development team performance

Understanding the factors that determine information systems development (ISD) outcomes is an important step towards successfully deploying those systems. The ISD process is an information intensive and collaborative endeavour typically performed in teams. As a result, the process involves the sharing of information among multiple individuals. Previous research has demonstrated that information sharing has a direct positive effect on team performance. However, little is known about key mechanisms that underlie this relationship. The goal of this research is to understand direct and indirect effects of information sharing in the ISD context. Specifically, collective efficacy and conflict are theorised as intervening mechanisms in the information sharing and team performance relationship. Data were collected from experienced software development professionals. Information sharing was found to influence ISD team performance directly and indirectly via team conflict and collective efficacy. The results of the study provide important insight into effectively managing software development activities.

Agility from First Principles: Reconstructing the Concept of Agility in Information Systems Development

Awareness and use of agile methods has grown rapidly among the information systems development (ISD) community in recent years. Like most previous methods, the development and promotion of these methods have been almost entirely driven by practitioners and consultants, with little participation from the research community during the early stages of evolution. While these methods are now the focus of more and more research efforts, most studies are still based on XP, Scrum, and other industry-driven foundations, with little or no conceptual studies of ISD agility in existence. As a result, this study proposes that there are a number of significant conceptual shortcomings with agile methods and the associated literature in its current state, including a lack of clarity, theoretical glue, parsimony, limited applicability, and naivety regarding the evolution of the concept of agility in fields outside systems development. Furthermore, this has significant implications for practitioners, rendering agile method comparison and many other activities very difficult, especially in instances such as distributed development and large teams that are not conducive to many of the commercial agile methods. This study develops a definition and formative taxonomy of agility in an ISD context, based on a structured literature review of agility across a number of disciplines, including manufacturing and management where the concept originated, matured, and has been applied and tested thoroughly over time. The application of the texonomy in practice is then demonstrated through a series of thought trials conducted in a large multinational organization. The intention is that the definition and taxonomy can then be used as a starting point to study ISD method agility regardless of whether the method is XP or Scrum, agile or traditional, complete or fragmented, out-of-the-box or in-house, used as is or tailored to suit the project context.

Multi‐metaphor method: organizational metaphors in information systems development

Abstract. Conventional methods have been criticized for their positivist philosophy and for either ignoring the organizational context of information systems development (ISD) or using only a simplistic, machine‐based conceptual model of organizations. We have developed an approach to enable systems developers to use a richer view of organizations and a more interpretive approach. Multi‐Metaphor Method (MMM) supports developers via a range of metaphors as cognitive structuring devices to understand an organization so that developers can learn to move between different ways of ‘reading’ the social context in which ISD occurs. We explain the rationale and theoretical underpinnings of MMM and then discuss our action research to investigate the viability and relevance of MMM during ISD practice. We show how the developers’ use of organizational metaphors via MMM did not just enable rich conceptualizations of the client organizations but also influenced the ISD process and final product. We review the learning outcomes and discuss the implications for systems development practice of our research.

Toward a complexity theory of information systems development

PurposeExisting literature acknowledges information systems development (ISD) to be a complex activity. This complexity is magnified by the continuous changes in user requirements due to changing organizational needs in changing external competitive environments. Research findings show that, if this increasing complexity is not managed appropriately, information systems fail. The paper thus aims to portray the sources of complexity related to ISD and to suggest the use of complexity theory as a frame of reference, analyzing its implications on information system design and development to deal with the emergent nature of IS.Design/methodology/approachConceptual analysis and review of relevant literature.FindingsThis article provides a conceptual model explaining how top‐down “official” and bottom‐up “emergent” co‐evolutionary adaptations of information systems design with changing user requirements will result in more effective system design and operation. At the heart of this model are seven first principles of adaptive success drawn from foundational biological and social science theory: adaptive tension, requisite complexity, change rate, modular design, positive feedback, causal intricacy, and coordination rhythm. These principles, translated into the ISD context, outline how IS professionals can use them to better enable the co‐evolutionary adaptation of ISD projects to changing stakeholder interests and broader environmental changes.Originality/valueThis paper considers and recognizes the different sources of complexity related to ISD before suggesting how they could be better dealt with. It develops a framework for change to deal with the emergent nature of ISD and enable more expeditious co‐evolutionary adaptation.

A Conceptual Framework for Studying Gender in Information Systems Research

This paper aims to attend the under-theorisation of gender within the Information Systems (IS) literature by adopting a critical and feminist approach to the organisational context of IS development and use. The IS are conceived of as innovations with theoretical concepts and observations for comprehending the innovation process advanced within Social Studies of Technology being described and applied to IS. Consequently, a conceptual framework for studying gender and IS is constructed by combining insights derived from: (1) gender and computing, concerning the differences and inequalities of development and use of IS; (2) gender and society concerning the existence of gendered spheres; (3) studies of gender and organisations concerning the social division of labour; and (4) gender and technology, concerning the masculinity of technology culture. The developed framework is tabulated, areas for future research suggested and potential research questions outlined. The latter employ examples from the field of nursing to illustrate their tangible application. The framework constitutes a contribution to IS research by providing access to additional explanations for organisational phenomena (such as user rejection); by deepening our understanding of the innovation process; by improving IS practice through increased awareness of social issues (especially gender); and by promoting further potential topics for IS researchers.

The Cognitive Process of Problem Solving: A Soft Systems Approach

In this paper we describe the nature and problems of business and define one aspect of the business environment. We then propose a framework based on augmented soft systems methodology and object technology that captures both the soft and hard aspects of a business environment within the context of organisational culture. We also briefly discuss cognitive informatics and its relevance to understanding problems and solutions. Polya's work, which is based around solving mathematical problems, is considered within the context of information systems development. We propose a generic reusable business object model based on general systems theory. We also show how these approaches can be integrated to provide a strategy for understanding business problems and developing integrated solutions.

Attributional Bias as a Source of Conflict Between Users and Analysts in an Information Systems Development Context—Hypotheses Development

One potential obstacle to effective information systems development involves the conflict between users and developers. It has been argued that information systems development personnel have different perceptions of what constitutes systems effectiveness than do users. System objectives are accomplished from the developer's viewpoint when a system has technical validity. System objectives are accomplished from the user's viewpoint when the system has organizational validity. Differences in the assessment of information systems project success are accentuated when users perceive the project as a failure. Attribution theory, a social psychology theory, is employed here to explain the source and outcome of such conflict. Also discussed are alternative ways of resolving those differences.

Project manager's influence tactics and authority

Ever since firms started using computers for processing their business data, researchers and practitioners have been preoccupied by the successful implementation of information systems (IS). Over the years, researchers have studied several aspects of IS implementation, be it measuring success or developing and testing models that explain IS project success or failure. However, up to now, few IS implementation studies have focused on the role played by the project leader. This paper presents the results of a study of 139 IS project managers. The study examined both the tactics adopted by these project managers to influence people, and their level of decision authority. It then attempted to determine if these two characteristics varied along with the project's organizational structure. The findings of the study point to the mediating role played by project managers' level of decision authority in linking organization structures to influence tactics. While influence tactics used do not vary across project structures, they do so across various levels of decision authority. In turn, the level of authority of project leaders varies across structures and steadily increases on the functional-project continuum. Three influence profiles emerged from the study, namely, the humanist, the political and the authoritarian project manager, providing further interpretation to influence tactics and behavior in an IS development context.