The ISD process as a 'live routine'

The objective of this exploratory study is to view an ISD process as an organisational routine in an effort to identify the inefficiencies in the process. To meet this objective we present the findings from a sixteen month case study of an ISD organisation, examining the ISD process the starting point of which is the requirements elicitation (RE) phase. A variety of data gathering techniques are used across two phases of data collection. The case data is organised as a narrative network (NN) of the organisational routine (ISD process) allowing us to understand the ISD process as a collection of functional events/narrative fragments, generated by the enactment of the organisational routine. The NN is showing itself to be a very powerful device to appreciate the knock-on impacts of vague and incomplete requirements (poor requirements elicitation) on downstream ISD process ’patterns of action’. In the findings of this research we generate an ‘ostensive’ rule that defines a valid sequence of action in the ISD process. As a case study, the methods and results provide a means of comparison to additional cases of ISD organisations.

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