Making Digital Infrastructures More Generative Through Platformization and Platform- driven Software Development: An Explorative Case Study

Digital innovation platforms are particularly known for their generativity producing and reproducing flexible solutions for multiple user groups and attracting third-party developers. Consequently, as a concept, generativity often relates to the consumer market as its focal unit of analysis. In contrast, this paper takes a public sector organization as a unit of analysis, investigating the potential for developing more generative digital infrastructures through processes of platformization and platform-driven software development practices. We define platformization as the transition from silo-based organization to platform-based organization, where the dismantling of monolithic legacy systems enables new ways of organizing the development and maintenance of software development. By decoupling systems, organizations can recouple their organization to overcome the limitations of traditional silo-based organization. Our contribution is twofold. First, we contribute by describing platformization as a sociotechnical process that consist of changes to both infrastructure and organization, where the dismantling of monolithic applications enables new ways of organizing the development and maintenance of software. Second, we contribute by theorizing how platformization processes can produce increased generativity for the IT organization and its digital infrastructure

Agile requirements work in a digital transformation project: Managing diverse and dispersed user needs

Successful requirements engineering is vital to the success of software projects. Agile software development seeks to limit the risk of misunderstanding requirements by emphasizing evolutionary delivery and more end-user involvement. But what happens when features are not accepted because the customers cannot agree among themselves? In this paper we report on an ongoing study where a software development company is creating a software system from scratch for a complex, diverse, and dispersed customer organization. We describe our ongoing study in which we follow a feature of the software system from idea to implementation. We attempt to explain our observations through three theoretical lenses: User participation and involvement, power relations in complex organizations, and balancing of local and global needs in system development

Using digital platforms to promote a service-oriented logic in public sector organizations: A case study

A growing number of scholars and practitioners have recognized that value is defined and co-created by citizens, and that citizens must be involved in the service delivery process to improve the quality and efficacy of public services. Central to such a service-dominant logic, is that public sector organizations cannot manufacture value for citizens, they can only make a value proposition which the citizen might choose to use. Hence, value must be co-created. However, this entails accommodating co-creation practices with millions of users. Currently, co-creation is often limited to involving a carefully selected set of users in crafting requirements early, and/or measuring user satisfaction upon service launch. There is an empirical blind spot in the current literature in terms of how to shape service delivery in a way that is capable of effectively capturing emergent and process-oriented value co-creation across large user groups. Through a longitudinal case study of the IT department at the Norwegian Labor and Welfare Administration (NAV), providing services to millions of users, this paper explores how digital platforms are used to transform value co-creation into a process of continuous improvement. We find that adopting a process-oriented approach for co-creation within public sector organizations requires structural changes, including sourcing strategy and governance structure. We also show the importance of digital platforms in increasing the efficiency of co-creation. We discuss how these structural changes were done, and the role of digital platforms in achieving these changes

Using digital platforms to promote value co-creation: A case study of a public sector organization

This thesis explores how digital platforms can improve value co-creation in large public sector organizations characterized by large, interconnected information systems. This research is based on a two-year longitudinal case study of the Norwegian Labour and Welfare Administration (NAV). This thesis is especially focused on the way in which digital platforms enable collaboration and co-creation across time and space. This thesis has three goals. First, it investigates the role of agile development in the context of value co-creation in public sector organizations. Second, it explores how the inertia of existing systems and practices affect an organization’s ability to co-create value. Third, it analyses the way in which digital platforms can be used to overcome the challenges of existing systems and practices, enabling co-creation at scope and scale. Theoretically, this thesis aims to contribute primarily to the field of information systems and secondarily to the field of software engineering. By developing a framework based on service-dominant logic, these two fields are connected, and insight is provided into the relationships between agile development practices, digital platforms, and the organizational context in which development practices and platforms exist. This thesis contributes in at least three distinct ways. First, this thesis contributes to the software engineering literature by conceptualizing agile development as the activities and processes that underlie resource integration. Second, this thesis contributes theoretically to the information systems literature by proposing platformization as a strategy for reintroducing and maintaining flexibility in existing infrastructures. Third, this thesis contributes empirically to the information systems literature by proposing digital platforms as a means for scaling value co-creation across time and space in public sector organizations

Platformizing the Organization through Decoupling and Recoupling: A longitudinal case study of a government agency

Digital platforms are known for their ability to produce and reproduce flexible solutions for multiple user groups and for attracting third-party developers. Consequently, the unit of analysis for digital platforms is often the consumer market. In contrast, in this paper, we investigate how platformization has the potential to increase digital innovation within organizations through a transformation of legacy systems and the organizational structure. Empirically, we draw on a longitudinal case study of a Norwegian government agency following their platformization process over two years. In advancing a sociotechnical perspective on platformization, we offer three distinct contributions. First, we contribute by theorizing how existing legacy systems are discontinued in processes of decoupling. Second, we capture how this enables novel recombination of knowledge and skills in the recoupling processes, which, in turn, facilitates new ways of working and organizing. Third, we theorize on how decoupling and recoupling processes interact, thus facilitating increased levels of platformization