Information Systems Development Teams Research Articles

Team delivery capability and agility: complementary effects on information systems development project outcomes

Contemporary Information systems development (ISD) involves not only implementing a predefined set of requirements but also managing changes that emerge during the development process due to unanticipated business and technical needs. ISD project requirements increasingly become both planned and emergent. ISD teams need delivery capabilities to routinely execute what has been planned, and agile capabilities to sense and respond to changes that emerge during the development project. In other words, ISD teams must effectively manage their abilities to not only routinely deliver software applications that meet defined requirements but also sense and respond to changes emerging during the project. The extant literature has not studied the distinction and relationship between ISD team delivery capability and agility. This study empirically examines the differential effects of ISD team delivery capability and agility on ISD project outcomes. Survey data collected from professionals working on 160 software development projects were used to test the research model and hypotheses. The results suggest that ISD delivery capability positively affects agility, agility positively impacts change-response outcome, and agility mediates the relationship between delivery capability and change-response outcome.

Navigating role identity tensions — IT project managers’ identity work in agile information systems development

ABSTRACT While the management of traditional, plan-based information systems development (ISD) projects lies with the information technology project manager (ITPM), this role is challenged in agile ISD team settings, characterised by self-managed and autonomous teams. Driven by the potential for individual, project, and organisational benefits through a deeper comprehension of these challenges, our study draws upon role identity theories to uncover identity tensions that this role creates and ways in which ITPMs engage in identity work to resolve these tensions. We conducted an in-depth, qualitative study involving interviews with ITPMs operating within agile ISD teams embedded in traditionally-managed organisations. A central contribution of our paper lies in the development of a theoretical model that unpacks how ITPMs navigate identity work tensions by engaging in specific identity work activities. By revealing the interplay between ITPMs’ role identity tensions, identity work activities, and contextual factors, our study moves beyond purely descriptive accounts and offers a nuanced understanding of the emotional and behavioural dimensions of ITPMs in their liminal position. Additionally, our work underscores the pivotal role of ITPMs as boundary spanners, bridging the gap between traditional and agile governance structures to drive digital transformation. For practitioners, we provide agile ISD team design recommendations.

The interplay of team-level leader-member exchange and artificial intelligence on information systems development team performance: a mediated moderation perspective

The interplay of team-level leader-member exchange and artificial intelligence on information systems development team performance: a mediated moderation perspective

Emergence of creativity in IS development teams: A socio-technical systems perspective

Despite the crucial role of creativity in the dynamic and intricate practice of Information Systems Development (ISD), our understanding of its emergence in ISD teams is limited. Prior research has focused on isolated interventions into the people, structure, task, and technology components of ISD practices. However, the synergistic interactions between these components are often overlooked, resulting in interventions that may be ineffective or counterproductive. Drawing on Leavitt’s Socio-Technical Systems (STS) theory, this paper explores creativity as a synergistic outcome of interactions within and between the people, structure, task, and technology components. Our qualitative study at a multinational banking software provider reveals that creativity emerged from within-component interactions when innovators and facilitators in ISD teams interact empathetically during idea generation and evaluation, visualize ideas using technologies for representation and collaboration, and align their creative styles with the organization's formal and informal structures. Additionally, we found that interactions between the STS components in ISD team practices created stimulating environments for creativity to emerge. Our study advances an STS perspective on the emergence of creativity in ISD teams, emphasizing synergistic interactions between people, structure, task, and technology rather than isolated interventions. Practically, our findings provide insights into how IS professionals can nurture creativity by fostering empathetic leadership, aligning creative styles with organizational structures, and balancing tensions between control and drift.

Conceptualizing Information Systems Development as an Organizational Routine

Research acknowledges that information systems development (ISD) teams experiment with, overlook, or adapt the methods that they purportedly use. Given this, one stream of research adopts a perspective focused on prescriptions based on the idea of a method. Another stream of research adopts a perspective anchored in the view that human agency plays a critical role in the unfolding of ISD projects. We suggest that our understanding of ISD can be enriched by mobilizing both perspectives. Specifically, we propose a conceptualization of ISD as an organizational routine based on the ontology developed by Feldman and Pentland. We build on the elements of this ontology- (1) the idea of a routine (the ostensive aspect) and (2) its enactment (the performative aspect) as the two mutually constitutive aspects of organizational routines; and (3) the role of artifacts as mediators of the relationship between actors and the ostensive and performative aspects of organizational routines - to develop theoretical arguments explaining the benefits of applying this ontology to the ISD phenomenon. Extending the contextual boundaries of Feldman and Pentland's ontology, we propose research avenues that have the potential to contribute to our understanding of this core phenomenon of the IS discipline.

Equality Does Not Make You Happy: Effects of Differentiated Leader-Member Exchange and Team-Member Exchange on Developer Satisfaction in Agile Development Teams

Prior work on leadership in information systems development (ISD) teams has assumed that all developers are treated equally by their team leader and ignored the possibility that differentiated leader-member exchange (LMX) may be an important instrument for team leaders to influence self-organizing, agile ISD teams. We conducted a concurrent mixed methods inquiry to understand how LMX differentiation is associated with developer satisfaction in agile ISD teams and through which team processes agile ISD teams address LMX differentiation. We ran a multilevel, multistage survey of 1,894 software developers in 217 teams and an embedded case study of five ISD teams drawing on qualitative data from 40 interviews of developers and team leaders. Two focus groups (one with 10 developers and one with 10 team leaders) helped to substantiate the meta-inferences from the quantitative and qualitative studies. The results showed that LMX differentiation was positively associated with developer satisfaction, especially in teams with high-quality team-member exchange (TMX). We identify three team processes (i.e., collectivization of resources, visible appreciation of privileges, and freeing up leader capacities) that are enacted through agile ISD practices and allow ISD teams to leverage benefits from LMX differentiation for all their members.

Too Drained from Being Agile? The Self-Regulatory Effects of the Use of Agile ISD Practices and their Consequences on Turnover Intention

While much is known about the beneficial effects of agile information systems development (ISD), scholars have largely neglected to address its potential downsides. Specifically, research on this topic has thus far overlooked the ambivalent implications of the specific demands placed on developers working in agile ISD teams, including potentially depleting effects. Drawing on ego depletion theory and the associated literature, we provide a more balanced view and introduce self-regulatory resource depletion triggered by using agile ISD practices—encompassing software development (SD) and project management (PM) practices—as a theoretical perspective on why agile developers experience different levels of work-related fatigue that lead to stronger or weaker turnover intentions. Furthermore, we propose that due to the specific way in which agile ISD methods organize ISD project work, developers’ perceived workload influences the intensity by which agile ISD practices affect self-regulatory resources and developers’ feelings of fatigue. We examined our research model using a multimethod approach including quantitative and qualitative data. We found that the use of agile SD practices enhances developers’ self-regulatory resources and reduces fatigue and turnover intention. Our results also show that perceived workload strengthens the energizing effects of the use of agile SD practices and reveals a depleting effect of the use of agile PM practices, with countervailing implications for turnover intention. This study contributes to agile ISD literature by drawing a more nuanced and balanced picture with both resource-enhancing and resource-draining effects of the use of agile ISD practices. Finally, we give managerial advice regarding factors to consider when designing and managing agile ISD projects.

Examining the effect of absorptive capacity in information system development project team in Taiwan

ABSTRACT Information system development (ISD) is knowledge-intensive and contains a series of problem-solving activities. Insufficient knowledge stock is a major risk factor in ISD and results in low performance by undermining problem-solving competence. By taking an absorptive capacity perspective, this study proposes that potential absorptive capacity can directly increasing available knowledge on project performance. This study further uses the mediated moderating concept and proposes that realised absorptive capacity benefits project performance indirectly on problem-solving competence. Survey data collected from 194 ISD teams were used to validate these assumptions. The results indicated that ISD project teams can enrich knowledge stock by offering training, accessing external resources, and selecting the right members. Moreover, interrelating knowledge of individual team members can benefit project performance on problem-solving competence.

Understanding business analytics continuance in agile information system development projects: an expectation-confirmation perspective

PurposeThis paper seeks to examine how expectations from business analytics (BA) by members of agile information systems development (ISD) teams affect their perceptions and continuous use of BA in ISD projects.Design/methodology/approachData was collected from 153 respondents working in agile ISD projects and analysed using partial least squares structural equation modelling techniques (PLS-SEM).FindingsPerceived usefulness and technological compatibility are the most salient factors that affect BA continuance intention in agile ISD projects. The proposed model explains 48.4% of the variance for BA continuance intention, 50.6% of the variance in satisfaction, 36.7% of the variance in perceived usefulness and 31.9% of the variance in technological compatibility.Research limitations/implicationsFirst, this study advances understanding of the factors that affect the continuous use of BA in agile ISD projects; second, it contextualizes the expectation-confirmation model by integrating technological compatibility in the context of agile ISD projects.Originality/valueThis is the first study to investigate BA continuance intention from an employee perspective in the context of agile ISD projects.

The Multiplex Nature of the Customer Representative Role in Agile Information Systems Development

It is well acknowledged that close collaboration with the customer serves as the lynchpin to ensuring that agile information systems development (ISD) teams produce the right software within mutually agreed targets. In several agile ISD methods, this emphasis on close collaboration is enacted through the role of a designated customer representative (CR). The agile ISD literature has recognized the behaviors in this role to be inherently complementary and contradicting in nature, presenting a challenge to whoever occupies the role and hampering their ability to add value to the project. How do CRs manage these challenges and why do they do so in a particular manner? Unfortunately, there has been little theory to answer these questions. In this research, we explore and theorize about this phenomenon by leveraging role multiplexity as a theoretical lens in making sense of the behavior of CRs in agile ISD. Results suggest that the CR role is multiplex, exhibiting multiple manifestations with different orientations. We develop a theoretical model that articulates the instantiation of these role manifestations and the mechanisms that enable the CR role to remain intact while managing these challenges. The theoretical model highlights the CR role in agile ISD as being dynamic and multi-oriented.

Technical Systems Development Risk Factors: The Role of Empowering Leadership in Lowering Developers’ Stress

The success of information systems development (ISD) projects depends on the developers who deliver them. However, developers face many challenges in bringing an ISD project to successful completion. These projects are often large and highly complex, with volatile targets, creating a stressful environment for developers. Although prior literature has considered how technical ISD risk factors, such as project size, complexity, and target volatility, affect team- and project-level outcomes, their effects on developers have received limited attention. This gap in the literature is problematic for two reasons: (1) the interplay between developers and project characteristics are unaccounted for, resulting in an incomplete picture of ISD; and (2) developer stress has been shown to reduce team performance. In this research, we examine the role of empowering leadership in reducing developer stress in ISD. We develop a multilevel model of the effect of empowering leadership on the relationship between technical ISD risk factors and developers’ role perceptions, and explore the consequences for developers’ stress. The model was tested in a field study of 350 developers in 73 ISD teams from a large U.S.-based firm. Results showed that empowering leadership ameliorated the negative effects of project size and target volatility on role ambiguity as well as the negative effects of project size, complexity, and target volatility on role conflict and stress. We also found that empowering leadership reduced role ambiguity, role conflict, and stress directly, and that role ambiguity and role conflict increased stress. Project size, complexity, and target volatility were found to increase empowering leadership behaviors. We conclude that empowering leadership can be an effective means of helping developers cope with technical ISD risk factors and discuss the implications of our findings for research and practice. The online appendix is available at https://doi.org/10.1287/isre.2017.0716 .

Exploring the interaction between vertical and shared leadership in information systems development projects

Leadership is a critical issue in the management of information systems development (ISD) projects. Recently, the importance of shared leadership (SL) has been emphasized alongside traditional vertical leadership (VL). Based on role theory, this study investigates the interactions between VL and SL within ISD project teamwork. We first propose value diversity reduces system quality by preventing a project team from adopting SL strategies. We further hypothesize that interventions by the formally assigned leader will ease the negative impact of value diversity on SL, and provide remedies when the effectiveness of SL is low. We tested these concepts using data collected from 90 ISD teams, and the results aligned well with our expectations (1) that SL partially mediates the negative impact of value diversity on system quality, and (2) that effective VL can both mitigate the adverse impacts of value diversity on SL, and stabilize teamwork when SL is absent.

Mobile Collaboration Support for Virtual Teams

Organizations increasingly depend on virtual teams in which geographically distributed individuals use sophisticated technology to interact and collaborate. With the advancement of mobile and wireless technology, mobile support for collaboration among virtual team members is becoming increasingly important and popular. In this research, we study the values of mobile support for virtual team members. Using the qualitative technique, Value-Focused Thinking approach, proposed by Keeney, we interviewed 30 subjects who were involved in information systems development teams and asked them the values of mobile support for virtual collaboration. This study uses Alter's Work Systems Theory as the conceptual foundation.

Improving IS development teams' performance during requirement analysis in project—The perspectives from shared mental model and emotional intelligence

Numerous studies have investigated factors affecting the project requirement analysis of information system development (ISD) teams from the view of technology, but our research focused on how developers' behaviors affected project team members' requirements analysis work from the emotional intelligence (EI) and shared mental model (SMM) perspectives. Specifically, we separated SMM into task-related SMM and member-related SMM to examine their impacts on ISD teams' performances during requirement analysis phase. Then we chose four scales of EI to research the relationships between them and SMMs. Using the approach of structural equation model, the results indicated that two aspects of SMM both have significant and positive impact on team performance, and EI could be the antecedents of SMM. The results indicate that SMM could enhance the influences of EI on project team performance, so the choice of individual team members and the team building are both significant to ISD teams for better performance in project requirement analysis.

The impact of team knowledge on problem solving competence in information systems development team

Information systems development (ISD) work entails a series of problem solving activities and, therefore, knowing how to enhance problem solving competence is critical for project success. Since ISD is a knowledge intensive task, problem solving competence is largely determined whether the members can effectively utilize knowledge resources located within the team. Based on the transactive memory concept and following traditional wisdom, we hypothesized that knowing the location of knowledge allow better problem-solving competency. We also attempted to extend past studies by showing that problem-solving competency is also a function of knowledge complement and deployment. The study results, based on data collected from 215 team project managers, confirmed our hypotheses that having complement knowledge, allocating knowledge in right position, and knowing the allocation of resources are critical for problem-solving competency. In addition, the critical role of problem solving competence in project performance is reaffirmed.

FACTORS THAT INFLUENCE STUDENT TEAMS IN INFORMATION SYSTEM DEVELOPMENT PROJECT: STUDENT’S PERSPECTIVES

The success of information systems development activities are influenced by technology and human resources. Experience and knowledge of team members is the key to performance improvements in the software development process. So the experience and knowledge are considered to be one of the main capitals in the success of a software development team. However, what if the information system development team are students who may not have experience at all ? Is the information system developed by an un-experienced team always fail ? Therefore, it is necessary to conduct a study to identify the factors that influence the student teams in information systems development project. The study was conducted with the literature study to establish research model. Furthermore, a survey conducted by distributing questionnaires to students of information systems whom are doing an internship in developing information systems. The results of the survey were analyzed quantitatively using Partial Least Square technique to test the proposed research model. The results of this study indicate that the development of information systems conducted by a team of students is significantly influenced by the Customer Relationship and Horizontal Relationship. Capability factor have a significant effect although the effect is small on the student teams.

The Role of Social Agile Practices for Direct and Indirect Communication in Information Systems Development Teams

The Role of Social Agile Practices for Direct and Indirect Communication in Information Systems Development Teams

Disciplined Autonomy and Innovation Effectiveness: The Role of Team Efficacy and Task Volatility

This study examines the effect of disciplined autonomy within information systems development (ISD) work teams on innovation effectiveness. Within self-managed ISD teams, disciplined autonomy is of...

Mitigating the Impact of Member Turnover in Information Systems Development Projects

Team member turnover presents significant risks to the performance of information systems development (ISD) projects. While prior studies have identified various antecedents of turnover with the general objective of reducing its occurrence, turnover cannot be completely prevented in practice. This study examines practices for mitigating the negative impact of turnover when it occurs. Since ISD is knowledge intensive and turnover typically involves knowledge degradation, this study focuses on key practices for reducing such knowledge degradation, i.e., job enlargement, use of electronic knowledge repositories, and succession planning. Our model for explaining the effects of the practices, based on the human capital and organizational forgetting theories, is tested through a survey of 138 project managers of ISD teams experiencing turnover. The results indicate that the use of electronic knowledge repositories and succession planning reduce the negative effect of turnover on the project performance. In contrast, job enlargement does not have a significant mitigating effect. This study contributes to research by looking beyond the antecedents and prevention of turnover to understand how it can be managed effectively. The findings also offer pragmatic suggestions for alleviating the detrimental effects of team member turnover on the ISD project performance.

Knowledge withholding intentions in teams: The roles of normative conformity, affective bonding, rational choice and social cognition

The decision of members in a knowledge-intensive team to withhold their knowledge may threaten the performance of the team. To address the problem of knowledge resource risk in project teams, we maintain that it is important to understand why team members choose to withhold their knowledge, conceptualized as knowledge-withholding intentions. In line with the literature on effort withholding, the research on multifoci relations between justice perceptions and social exchanges, and social cognitive theory, we proposed that the social exchange relationships that individuals form in the workplace, their perceptions of justice, and their knowledge withholding self-efficacy would influence their knowledge-withholding intentions. Through a survey of 227 information system development team workers, we found that all social exchange relationship variables had a significant impact on knowledge-withholding intentions. However, the justice perception variables only indirectly influenced knowledge-withholding intentions through the mediation of social exchange relationships. In addition, one of the task variables, task interdependence, influenced knowledge withholding intentions through the mediation of knowledge withholding self-efficacy. Our results contribute to the knowledge management literature by providing a better understanding of the antecedents of knowledge withholding. We also offer suggestions for future research utilizing the framework of Kidwell and Bennett (1993) to study effort and knowledge withholding.