Selecting the right method for the right project

The development of information systems is constantly changing. As a background of the change, there is almost a traditional problem about the high failure rates of information systems development (ISD) projects, but it is no longer the only change-driving force. The role of information systems and their strategic significance has increased considerably due digitalization. This has happened also in the areas of business, which have not been traditionally thought as IT-oriented. Furthermore, the new agile development methods have forced ISD clients to take more responsibility for ISD than before. In practice, this means that completely outsourcing ISD is not as sensible nor as simple as before. ISD clients who acquire information systems must be aware of the different ISD methods and be able to compare and choose the most suitable for the business situation and the objectives in question. ISD method selection is rarely studied, and the majority of publications concentrate on different selection criteria relating to the ISD method choice without a clear selection model. Only a few ISD method selection models were found in the literature. Furthermore, the earlier ISD method selection models are restricted by two factors: firstly, the recommendations behind the prior ISD selection models do not correspond to today’s thoughts about the ISD methods; secondly, prior ISD selection models concentrate only on the properties of the ISD pro-jects, and attention is not really given to the business environment or the business to be developed. In a situation like this, it was considered necessary to develop and study an ISD selection framework which takes the business development and business environment into account as well. Furthermore, it was seen as necessary to study both the customer and supplier practices related to the ISD method choice. The objective was to understand the present situation and estimate how the developed ISD selection framework could be utilized in the future. The study was carried out in several stages. Firstly, two unsuccessful ISD projects were studied in the case study, and it was found that the ISD method used in the projects did not correspond to the properties of the business environment in either case. After that, a contingency theory–motivated ISD selection framework was developed, and a systematic literature review was conducted to study earlier ISD method selection criteria and compare them with the developed ISD method selection framework. In the next stage, expert interviews were done. Altogether, 31 ISD experts working on the borderline between the IS sup-plier and client were interviewed and asked their opinions on existing ISD method selection practices by both the client and the supplier. Furthermore, the experts were asked for their opinions on the recommendations of earlier ISD method selection models and on the developed ISD method selection framework. As a result of the study, it can be stated that the developed ISD method framework covers both the previous ISD method selection criteria, which mainly concentrates on ISD project factors, and the business environment factors. Whereas the majority of the interviewed experts considered the developed ISD method selection framework useful, the recommendations of earlier ISD method selection models were regarded as outdated. Furthermore, it was noticed that in IS client organizations, there was almost no discussion about the ISD methods, and in the supplier organizations, the discussion was very rare. Any systematic projectspecific ISD method selection practice had not been perceived in either organizations. Supplier organizations can justify their reasons for favouring a certain ISD method with the bounded rationality, whereas the operation of customer companies doing (or not doing) the ISD method selection seems to be filling the features of functional stupidity. In the future, it is important to study how to plant the ISD method selection as part of the starting stage of the ISD project. In addition, the developed ISD method selection framework should be tested in the practice.Tietojärjestelmien kehittäminen on jatkuvassa murroksessa. Muutoksen taustalla on jo perinteiseksi muodostunut ongelma tietojärjestelmäprojektien epäonnistumisesta, mutta se ei ole enää ainoa syy. Digitalisaation myötä tietojärjestelmien rooli ja strateginen merkitys on kasvanut huomattavasti myös sellaisilla liiketoiminta-alueilla, joita ei ole ajateltu IT-orientoituneina. Lisäksi uudet ketterät tietojärjestelmien kehittämismenetelmät osallistavat tietojärjestelmäprojektien asiakkaat, jotka joutuvat entistä vastuullisempaan asemaan. Käytännössä tämä kaikki merkitsee sitä, että tietojärjestelmien kehittämisen täydellinen ulkoistaminen ei enää ole yhtä mielekästä, eikä myös yhtä yksinkertaista kuin ennen. Tässä tilanteessa myös tietojärjestelmiä hankkivan asiakkaan pitää tietää erilaisista kehittämismenetelmistä ja kyetä vertailemaan ja valitsemaan kyseiseen liiketoimintatilanteeseen ja tavoitteisiin parhaiten sopiva kehittämismenetelmä. Tietojärjestelmien kehittämismenetelmien valintaa on tutkittu vähän ja suurin osa löydetyistä julkaisuista keskittyy listaamaan erilaisia menetelmävalintaan liittyviä kriteerejä. Varsinaisia tietojärjestelmien kehitysmenetelmien valintamalleja on esitetty vain muutamia. Aiempien valintamallien käyttökelpoisuutta rajoittaa kaksi tekijää: ensinnäkin mallien taustalla olevat olettamukset eivät välttämättä täsmää tämän päivän ajatuksiin kehittämismenetelmistä, ja toisekseen valintamallit keskittyvät tietojärjestelmien kehittämisprojektien ominaisuuksiin, kehitettävää liiketoimintaa tai liiketoimintaympäristöä ei aikaisemmissa valintamalleissa juurikaan huomioida. Tilanteen ollessa tämä kehitimme ja tutkimme tietojärjestelmän kehittämismenetelmien valintamallia, joka ottaa huomioon myös samaan aikaan tapahtuvan liiketoiminnan kehittämisen ja liiketoimintaympäristön. Lisäksi tutkimme tietojärjestelmän kehittämismenetelmien valintaan liittyviä käytäntöjä sekä asiakkaan että toimittajan näkökulmasta. Tavoitteena oli ymmärtää menetelmävalinnan nykytilannetta ja arvioida miten valintamallia voisi jatkossa hyödyntää. Tutkimus toteutettiin useammassa vaiheessa. Ensimmäiseksi tapaustutkimuksin tutkittiin kahta epäonnistunutta tietojärjestelmäkehitysprojektia, ja havaittiin että kummassakaan tapauksessa valittu tietojärjestelmän kehittämismalli ei vastannut liiketoimintaympäristön tarpeita. Sen jälkeen kehitimme kontingenssiteoreettisen tietojärjestelmän kehitysmenetelmän valintamallin, jota verrattiin systemaattisella kirjallisuuskatsauksella löydettyihin aikeisempiin valintasuosituksiin. Vertailun jälkeen haastateltiin 31 asiantuntijaa. Haastatteluilla selvitettiin nykyisiä tietojärjestelmän kehitysmenetelmien valintaan liittyviä käytäntöjä, niin tietojärjestelmäasiakkaan kuin toimittajan näkökulmasta. Lisäksi asiantuntijoilta kysyttiin heidän mielipidettään aiempien valintamallien taustalla olevista väittämistä sekä nyt kehitetystä valintamallista. Tulos on, että ehdottamamme kontingessimalli kattaa sekä aiemmat, projektinominaisuuksiin keskittyvät valintakriteerit, että myös liiketoimintaympäristön epävarmuuteen liittyvät tekijät. Suurin osa haastatelluista asiantuntijoista (23 vastaajaa 31 haastatellusta) piti ehdotettua valintamallia käyttökelpoisena. Aiempien valintamallien taustalla olevat väittämät koettiin ajastaan jälkeen jääneiksi. Lisäksi havaittiin, että asiakasyrityksissä keskustelua tietojärjestelmän kehittämismenetelmistä ei käytännössä ollut juuri lainkaan, eikä myöskään suurimmassa osassa toimittajayrityksiä. Mitään säännöllistä projektikohtaista valintakäytäntöä ei kummissakaan yrityksissä oltu havaittu. Haastateltujen asiantuntijoiden mukaan kehittämisprojekteissa kuitenkin pääsääntöisesti käytetään jotain tietojärjestelmän kehittämismenetelmää, ja syyt menetelmän käyttöön vaihtelevat. Toimittajayritysten syyt tietyn menetelmän suosimiseen ovat pääosin perusteltavissa rajoitetulla rationaalisuudella (bounded rationality), kun taas asiakasyritysten toiminta menetelmän valinnassa näyttää täyttävän toiminnallisen typeryyden (functional stupidity) tunnuspiirteet. Jotta kehitetystä mallista tulee asiakasyrityksille hyödyllinen käytännön työkalu, on seuraavaksi syytä tutkia miten tietojärjestelmän kehittämismenetelmän valinta saadaan osaksi projektin käynnistämisvaiheen tehtäviä. Tärkeää on myös testata nyt esitetyn kontingenssimallin toimivuutta käytännön tilanteissa

A Contingency Theory Motivated Framework to Select Information System Development Methods

Several change-driven (agile) information systems development (ISD) methods have been launched during the recent years. In addition to agile ISD methods it is still possible to succeed also with plan-driven ISD methods. To facilitate ISD method selections that maximize the probability of ISD project success we crafted and evaluated an ISD method selection framework based on the idea of matching the properties of ISD methods and the characteristics of the business contexts where ISD methods are used. We conducted a systematic literature search to evaluate whether the proposed framework is also able to capture the findings of prior ISD method selection research and to guide future empirical research. From over 1000 potential articles we identified 42 articles that address ISD method selection. We discovered that the proposed framework was able to explain the findings of prior research

Fit to Context Matters – Selecting and Using Information Systems Development Methods to Develop Business in Digitalization Contexts

We ponder the relations of software, information systems (IS) and business development methods in the development of digital businesses and in the digitalization of extant businesses. We present our published IS development method (ISDM) framework and its development. The framework is used as the background to reason the relations between the three development layers of digitalization: software, IS and business. We then propose six highly potential areas of future research. In addition, we answer to two research questions also paving the way to future research: is the matching of IS and business development a reasonable proposition, and is the finding of extant literature true, according to which ISDMs are used limitedly in IS development work. We organized two workshops with 21 (14+7) participants to answer these questions. We detected yes and mixed answers. We contribute to research with the empirical findings and the proposed research areas

On Solving the Business Requirements Engineering Problems of Information Systems Development Projects – Lessons from Three Projects

Information systems development (ISD) often fails. Requirements engineering (RE) problems rank high in ISD project failure statistics. RE is often regarded as the link between business (processes) (BP) and IS. Thus, in RE, the BP and IS requirements need to be synchronized. We conducted three case studies to investigate RE problems and the reasons for them, especially to contemplate how to synchronize business process and IS development requirements in plan-driven (waterfall) and change-driven (agile) projects. Investigated cases indicate that the ontological and epistemological matching of IS and BP requirements engineering methods improves requirements quality

The Usefulness of the Recommendations Regarding the Information System Development Method Selection during the Era of Digitalization

The business criticality of information systems (IS) and their development (ISD) appear to have increased recently. Backsourcing, cosourcing and multisourcing of ISD are some of the consequences. They, in turn, extend the need for understanding how to select information systems development methods (ISDM). In this research, we first condensed the knowledge base of ISDM selection research into nine recommendations. We then interviewed 28 ISDM experts and asked them to evaluate how useful the extant ISDM selection recommendations of prior research are to IS user organizations. We discovered that most recommendations were perceived outdated and only limitedly useful. We finally contemplated that paying more attention to how ISDMs are used in business development contexts is a means to increase the usefulness of ISDM selection recommendations

HOW TO ADDRESS MASTER DATA COMPLEXITY IN IN-FORMATION SYSTEMS DEVELOPMENT – A FEDERATIVE APPROACH

We investigated the failure of an IS project within a global industrial company. The challenges in the complexity of product master data were one of the failure reasons. We detected a research gap in how to handle master data complexity in IS development, especially in data storage integrations. The tradi-tional approach is to define so-called golden records, “single versions of truth”, for each record, and then harmonize and cleanse data so that only or mainly golden record values will be used. We offer federative approach as an alternative to the golden record approach. According to this approach data interoperability is achieved by identifying shared attributes, by federating data on the basis of shared attributes’ metadata, and by developing IS functionalities to process the metadata and their cross-references. We compare the ontological stances of the approaches theoretically and with figures. We present the results of a case, where the federative approach was probed. Our study contributes to re-search by showing how to link data management to IS development to address the complexity of mas-ter data in data interoperability projects, by comparing the golden record and the federative ap-proaches, and by showing how the federative approach can be used in real-life contexts

Proceedings of the 54th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences 2021

We ponder the relations of software, information systems (IS) and business development methods in the development of digital businesses and in the digitalization of extant businesses. We present our published IS development method (ISDM) framework and its development. The framework is used as the background to reason the relations between the three development layers of digitalization: software, IS and business. We then propose six highly potential areas of future research. In addition, we answer to two research questions also paving the way to future research: is the matching of IS and business development context a reasonable proposition, and is the finding of extant literature true, according to which ISDMs are used limitedly in IS development work. We organized two workshops with 21 (14+7) participants to answer these questions. We detected yes and mixed answers. We contribute to research with the empirical findings and the proposed research areas.</p

Context-Aware Digitalization – Adapting solution development to the organizational context of SMEs

In the context of digital transformation, it is mandatory for most organizations to conduct information systems development (ISD) projects as part of their digitalization and business development journey. One reason that many ISD projects fail is lack of knowledge about which ISD method (ISDM) is most suitable for the project at hand and how to adapt it to reflect the respective business development context. These problems especially occur in small and medium enterprises (SMEs), as they often lack specific methodological skills and project governance experience – so they cannot even manage ISD consultancies that promise to support them in their digital transformation. In this conceptual paper, we present the design of a method for selecting and using ISDM for SMEs. It considers both the context dependency and missing project governance skills of SMEs. The main components of the proposed method link the knowledge areas of business development and ISD: business context evaluation, ISDM selection and ISDM management

Personalizing the Learning Process With Wihi

Societies are changing rapidly because of automation and digitalization, but local and global business environments are also becoming more volatile. Changing societies also place requirements on education: the number of atypical learners is growing all the time, and lifelong careers have been changed to lifelong learning. Traditional education approaches do not support part-time learners or lifelong learning; personalizing the learning process for every student separately is too laborious. In this paper, we study a flexible, personalized learning approach and an information system (Wihi) to support it. Wihi is a thesis management tool for students to plan and schedule their theses and for the thesis supervisor to centrally monitor the progress of different theses. In addition, it allows curriculum management to follow the whole thesis situation. Although Wihi was developed for a specific need, the personalized learning assumptions behind it are also applicable in other education cases