Evaluating contingency approaches to information systems design

The search for contingency approaches to information systems design (ISD) began in the early 1980s when it was recognised that there is no single best methodology for all ISD projects and when there existed heterogeneous methodologies to select from. Twenty years later, there is now in the IS field not one, but three contingency approaches: ‘contingency at the outset’, ‘contingency with a fixed pattern’, and ‘contingency along development dynamics’. While the variety of contingency approaches provides IS developers and users with richer insights and greater flexibility to tackle diverse, complex and uncertain ISD situations, to realise the promises and potential benefits of these approaches demands further research on at least three questions: the question of ‘which contingency approach’, the question of rigor, and the question of cultures. r 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.