Coping with Requirements Uncertainty: An Interpretive Case Study

Information systems development projects (ISDPs) often face requirements uncertainty. Thus, coping with this issue is an important project management task in ISDPs. In order to gain insights into which different requirements uncertainty situations exist and how to cope with them, we conducted a longitudinal interpretive case study. We investigated the requirements analysis of an ISDP in an international insurance company for 17 months. Thereby, we identified eight distinct requirements uncertainty situation types, observed ten requirements engineering (RE) techniques applied in practice and their impact on requirements uncertainty situation types, and finally derived recommendations for applying RE techniques in requirements uncertainty situations based on our observations. We combine these findings and contribute to RE literature by making a first step towards a framework for coping with requirements uncertainty in ISDPs. We believe that RE researchers as well as practitioners in ISDPs can make use of this article’s insights

Towards Mindful Case Study Research in IS: A Critical Analysis of the Past Ten Years

Case study research (CSR) has gained strong acceptance in information systems (IS) research in the recent decades. This article examines how CSR has been used in IS research practice. Contrasting the currently used CSR approaches to methodological prescriptions can lead to recommendations for researchers applying this research strategy as well as to advances in the methodological literature. Our study design comprises two steps. First, we identified case studies published in six major IS journals from 2001 to 2010. Second, we critically examined CSR practices in the identified studies. We observed a dualism, as CSR currently consists of a positivist and an equally strong interpretive research stream. Case studies with other philosophical underpinnings were rarely found. We describe the CSR practice and contrast it to the methodological prescriptions. Thereby, we clearly point out the shortcomings, aiming to initiate a debate on how our community should further develop its use of CSR to become more mindful. This study is the first broad examination of CSR in IS (focusing on more than just the positivist research stream) and thus contributes to the methodological literature by providing recommendations for improvements