Challenging Front-end-of-Innovation in Information Systems

The objective of the information system (IS) development project is to develop and modify systems that satisfy customers' and users' needs on schedule and within a budget. The early activities in information systems development, i.e. the front end of innovation in information systems, are recognized as critical and important steps; poor execution of these activities is an almost certain guarantee for a failure of the final IS product. However, there are many problems related to the early phases of IS development, and therefore this research paper presents a conceptual model for categorizing the problems in the front end of innovation in IS. Based on this conceptual model, we suggest that the activities in the early phases of information system development currently used in organizations do no work in large scale. In the directions for future research we discuss the need for new approaches in the front end of innovation in information systems.

[1]  Richard Baskerville,et al.  Agile requirements engineering practices and challenges: an empirical study , 2007, Inf. Syst. J..

[2]  Nicholas Berente,et al.  Emerging principles for requirements processes in organizational contexts , 2008, Ingénierie des Systèmes d Inf..

[3]  Glenn J. Browne,et al.  Improving requirements elicitation: an empirical investigation of procedural prompts , 2007, Inf. Syst. J..

[4]  Nicholas Berente,et al.  Requirements in the 21st Century: Current Practice and Emerging Trends , 2008, Perspectives Workshop: Science of Design: High-Impact Requirements for Software-Intensive Systems.

[5]  Leszek A. Maciaszek.  Requirements analysis and system design: developing information systems with UML , 2001 .

[6]  Linda V. Knight,et al.  Project Risk Differences between Virtual and Co-Located Teams , 2010, J. Comput. Inf. Syst..

[7]  Jørn Johansen,et al.  ImprovAbilityTM guidelines for low-maturity organizations , 2008, Softw. Process. Improv. Pract..

[8]  Johan P. Olsen,et al.  Ambiguity and choice in organizations , 1976 .

[9]  Bill Curtis,et al.  A field study of the software design process for large systems , 1988, CACM.

[10]  Robert Balzer,et al.  A 15 Year Perspective on Automatic Programming , 1985, IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering.

[11]  Elizabeth J. Davidson,et al.  Technology Frames and Framing: A Socio-Cognitive Investigation of Requirements Determination , 2002, MIS Q..

[12]  NiaziMahmood,et al.  A measurement framework for assessing the maturity of requirements engineering process , 2008 .

[13]  Wanda J. Orlikowski,et al.  Metaphors of virtuality: shaping an emergent reality , 2001, Inf. Organ..

[14]  Janis A. Bubenko,et al.  Requirements Engineering and Technology Transfer: Obstacles, Incentives and Improvement Agenda , 2002, Requirements Engineering.

[15]  Kalle Lyytinen,et al.  Large-Scale Requirements Analysis Revisited: The need for Understanding the Political Ecology of Requirements Engineering , 2002, Requirements Engineering.

[16]  Samuli Kortelainen,et al.  Utilizing front-end-of-innovation concepts in software development , 2009, Ind. Manag. Data Syst..

[17]  Michael L. Begeman,et al.  gIBIS: a hypertext tool for exploratory policy discussion , 1988, CSCW '88.

[18]  Mohamed E. Fayad,et al.  Software Engineering in the Small , 2000 .

[19]  Steve Woolgar,et al.  The Machine at Work: Technology, Work and Organization , 1997 .

[20]  Benjamin L. Kovitz,et al.  Practical Software Requirements: A Manual of Content and Style , 1998 .

[21]  Jeffrey Davidson,et al.  Providing Clarity and A Common Language to the “Fuzzy Front End” , 2001 .

[22]  Björn Regnell,et al.  Requirements engineering challenges in market-driven software development - An interview study with practitioners , 2007, Inf. Softw. Technol..

[23]  Steve McConnell,et al.  Rapid Development: Taming Wild Software Schedules , 1996 .

[24]  Anna Kyrki.  Offshore Sourcing in Software Development: Case Studies of Finnish-Russian Cooperation , 2008 .

[25]  David Wilemon,et al.  Strategic issues in managing innovation’s fuzzy front‐end , 2002 .

[26]  JaatunMartin Gilje,et al.  Agile Software Development , 2002, Comput. Sci. Educ..

[27]  Galal H. Galal-Edeen,et al.  Requirements engineering: A good practice , 2000, Eur. J. Inf. Syst..

[28]  E. Davidson,et al.  Examining project history narratives: an analytic approach , 1997 .

[29]  Pivi Ovaska.  Information Systems Development in Theory and Practice: Coordination, Methods and Processes , 2009 .

[30]  Joe Saur.  Effective requirements practices , 2002, SOEN.

[31]  Armin Eberlein.  Agile Requirements Definition: A View from Requirements Engineering , 2002 .

[32]  Frank Maurer,et al.  Requirements engineering and agile software development , 2003, WET ICE 2003. Proceedings. Twelfth IEEE International Workshops on Enabling Technologies: Infrastructure for Collaborative Enterprises, 2003..

[33]  Dean Leffingwell,et al.  Managing software requirements: a unified approach , 1999 .

[34]  David C. Sutton.  Linguistic Problems with Requirements and Knowledge Elicitation , 2000, Requirements Engineering.

[35]  Steve Easterbrook,et al.  Communication Problems in Requirements Engineering: A Field Study , 1996 .

[36]  Kuldeep Kumar,et al.  Informal and Formal Requirements Specification Languages: Bridging the Gap , 1991, IEEE Trans. Software Eng..

[37]  Kyo Chul Kang,et al.  Issues in Requirements Elicitation , 1992 .

[38]  Petri Kettunen,et al.  Adopting key lessons from agile manufacturing to agile software product development—A comparative study , 2009 .

[39]  Tomi Männistö,et al.  Requirements Engineering as a Driver for Innovations , 2007, 15th IEEE International Requirements Engineering Conference (RE 2007).

[40]  A. Cucchiarelli,et al.  Overcoming communication obstacles in user-analyst interaction for functional requirements elicitation , 1998, SOEN.

[41]  Ian Sommerville,et al.  Requirements Engineering: Processes and Techniques , 1998 .

[42]  Didar Zowghi,et al.  Requirements Engineering challenges in multi-site software development organizations , 2004 .

[43]  Alton Yeow-Kuan Chua,et al.  Exhuming it Projects from Their Graves: An Analysis of Eight Failure Cases and Their Risk Factors , 2009, J. Comput. Inf. Syst..

[44]  M. Lynne Markus,et al.  Power, politics, and MIS implementation , 1987, CACM.

[45]  Pekka Abrahamsson,et al.  Agile Software Development Methods: Review and Analysis , 2017, ArXiv.

[46]  Khaled El Emam,et al.  A Replicated Survey of IT Software Project Failures , 2008, IEEE Software.

[47]  S. Lauesen.  Software Requirements Styles and Techniques , 2001 .

[48]  Vasant Dhar,et al.  Supporting Systems Development by Capturing Deliberations During Requirements Engineering , 1992, IEEE Trans. Software Eng..

[49]  Robert L. Glass.  The mystery of formal methods disuse , 2004, CACM.

[50]  A. Berztiss,et al.  Requirements Engineering , 2002, J. Object Technol..

[51]  Christoph Wecht,et al.  Extreme customer innovation in the front-end: learning from a new software paradigm , 2006, Int. J. Technol. Manag..