19th European Conference on Information Systems Helsinki, Finland, June 9-11

Innovating on a Dime: Design Science for Small Teams

Max Rohde and David Sundaram
m.rohde@auckland.ac.nz d.sundaram@auckland.ac.nz

Department of Information Systems and Operations Management

Citation on http://www.citeulike.org/user/mxro/article/9236661 or Rohde, M. E., & Sundaram, D. (2011). Innovating on a dime: Design science for small teams. In European Conference on Information Systems . URL http://aisel.aisnet.org/ecis2011/224/

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Agenda

I. II. III. IV.

Context and Motivation Challenges in IS and DS Research Key Elements of a Small Team Approach to DS Research Experiences and Lessons Learned

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Context and Motivation

Ten years of work as software tester, ERP programmer and project manager. How can I document and share my experiences with my team and for my own reference? IT works well for structured information but is often a poor tool for work with unstructured information and knowledge.

RESEARCH + IMPACT + SOFTWARE DESIGN

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Challenges for Research

Research aspires to discover the yet unknown
Many discoveries are made in a serendipitous manner (Beveridge, 1980; Rosenman, 2002) Every step in the research process can be affected by sudden insights of the researcher (Brogaard, 1999) so how can a rigorous methodology be developed for an inherently unpredictable process?

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Specific Response

Small and Flexible Teams engaged in Traceable Research Work.

..small teams said to perform better with uncertain tasks (Boehm & Turner, 2003; Highsmith, 2009; Brooks, 2010)

DS literature usually does not discuss team size. Many prime examples of DS research have been conducted by large teams with significant budget.

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Challenges for Research with Practical Impact

Academic Body of Knowledge

Practitioners Body of Knowledge

(Straub & Ang, 2008; Baskerville & Myers, 2009)

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Specific Response

Theory-driven Generalizble Industrial-Strength

Artifacts

.. as one way to disseminatate theoretical findings in practical contexts.

Usually DS literature emphasizes to evaluate artifacts in an organizational context and not to create artifacts useful independent from the context of a particular research project.
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Challenges for Software Design in IS

Social World
over 95% of the articles published in top management research outlets do not take into account the role of technology in organizational life (Orlikowski & Scott, 2008)

Glass, Ramesh, & Vessey (2004) reported that 0.3% of CS journal articles discuss organsational concepts.

Technological World

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Specific Response

Coherence between theoretical frameworks and technological implementation details.

Usually DS research employs theories to inform the design of the artifact. However, often the focus lies on uncovering new design theory rather than to reflect existing theory in the artifact.
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Summary of Small Team DSR Approach

Challenge Possible Response Key Element

Research is unpredictable, yet knowledge emerges from following a rigorous process. Academic findings difficult to disseminate in practical contexts.
Both social and technological issues need to be addressed in IS research.

Small and flexible teams (Boehm & Turner, 2003; Highsmith, 2009; Brooks, 2010) engaged in traceable research work. Develop theory-driven, generalizable, industrial-strength artefacts.
Develop technological artefacts in coherence with social theories.

Traceability

IndustrialStrength

Coherence

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Traceability of Research Process

Elements of a DS research process based on (Nunamaker, Chen & Purdin, 1991) Going further with traceability. Element Observation Mechanisms and Tools Record of sighted materials (Internet bookmarks, literature sources, emails, ) Adherence to established standards for data collection and analysis Work-in-progress publications Chronological archive of electronic and handwritten notes Project blog Working papers Versioning System (Subversion, git, ) Module System (Maven, OSGi, ) Automated test Test protocols Continuous integration Source code analysis
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Theory Building

Systems Development Experimentation

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Track Writing, Publications and Reviews

Design Notes

Track Source Code

Track Literature Review

Project Blog

Developing Industrial-Strength Artifacts

There is no one definition of industry-standard software.
Possible Sources Standards Organisations Industry-Oriented Publications Examples ISO, W3C, IETF, IEEE, 97 Things Every Programmer Should Know, Henney, 2010 Effective Java (2nd Edition), Bloch, 2008 Restful Web Services, Richardson & Ruby, 2007 Read/Write Web, WebWorkerDaily, GigaOM, stackoverflow.com, quora.com, Google I/O, QCon,

Blogs Discussion Boards Conferences (and videos thereof)

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Industry Publications

Blogs

Videos/ Conferences
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Coherence between Social Theories and Software Artifact

Social Theories Design Principles Frameworks Social Design Requirements Architectures Technological Requirements Technological Artefacts Evaluation Realign and Interpret

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Coherence Example

Unit tests

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Some Lessons Learned

Creating an industry-standard, generalizable artefact is very hard work: Focus on a limited number of key features but make these really work. The Internet offers a great number of channels to solicit feedback from practitioners: Publish results early and use a combination of channels. Trying to identify Design Rationales is often difficult. Design research is a very versatile processes subject to many internal and external influences: Consider explicit and tacit contextual factors in the research process.
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Summary

We propose one possible particularization of DSR alinged to some key challenges arising in the context of a research project.

This approach focusses on disseminating, refining, and testing existing theory rather than the discovery of new theory.
It is just one way of doing DSR, not THE way.

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Intrinsic Limitations

Best suited for problems which centre on the implementation of novel software solutions Focus on problems which are detached from a particular organizational context

High demands on the researches which need to command of both social and technological issues.

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Future Research

It could be explored in how far also a larger team of researchers could develop industry-standard artifacts in a traceable and coherent way.

It could be explored further in how far the direct interaction of the research with the technological artifact is instrumental in the alignment with social theories.
We will further explore the described approach in a number of research projects.
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Thank You!

Questions and Suggestions?

Special thanks to the reviewers and editors of ECIS. We gratefully acknowledge the support by the University of Auckland Council, the University of Auckland Business School, the Faculty Research and Development Fund (UoA) and the Department of Information Systems and Operations Management (UoA).
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Contribution to Knowledge

Social Theories

IndustrialStrength Artefact
Practitioners Body of Knowledge

Academic Body of Knowledge

Testing, Refining and Disseminating Theory, not Discovering New Theory.

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