Supporting Engineering of Information Systems in Emergent Organizations

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Abstract:

Research related to information systems development has roughly followed two diverse paths. The first, pursued by the software engineering community, is aimed at creating techniques for the efficient engineering of IT artifacts. The second, pursued by communities such as IFIP 8.2, attempts to understand and anticipate the impact of IT on organizations or upon one another by incorporating social science theories. The two views are in conflict because the former treats information systems merely as reflections of requirements, whereas the latter views them as agents of change. As a result, the two streams have suffered from increasing emphasis on minutiae and are, at worst, in danger of losing their relevance. Recent research in emergent systems development and developers’ engagement in problem and design spaces suggest a possible approach to integrating the two streams. In particular, we argue that novel R-forms (representation techniques) can proactively facilitate the engineering of information systems in emergent organizations. Using insights from research in both streams, we develop a set of requirements that can guide the development of new R-forms that may take into account both the engineering of the IT artifact as well as the emergent nature of organizational context in which the IT artifact will be deployed.

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