Web Specifications: Rhetoric vs Reality

There is an increasing awareness within both the research literature and commercial practice that Web systems have a number of unique characteristics. Many organisations are responding to this by identifying modified processes that purport to address these unique characteristics. There is, however, the potential to utilise these processes as a marketing tool (indicating organisational capabilities) rather than actually adopting them as an integral part of the development. We explore the results from a comprehensive set of industry interviews and surveys. In particular, we look at the extent to which the claims in the marketing material from Web development organisations are reflected in their actual practice. The results indicate that in many cases, the claimed processes exist in only a superficial form, guiding the broad structure of the process but not being “owned” by individual developers and therefore often failing to provide guidance for the details of the development approaches.