Lessons from an Action Research Project

When an organization mindfully adopts an IT innovation there is a better chance that the innovation will meet the organization’s requirements (Swanson et al., 2004; Butler et al., 2006). Agile development principles (such as valuing individuals and interactions over processes and tools, and responding to change over following a plan) and practices (such as communicating frequently with users, and developing and releasing functionalities in short iterations) have the potential to increase organizational mindfulness during the development and adoption of an IT innovation. Action research in an organizational setting was used to study 1) the application of agile development principles and practices in developing an IT innovation and 2) whether the application of agile principles and practices could enable the organization to mindfully adopt that innovation. The lessons learned from the action research project are discussed using specific examples.