Formalization in Practice*

Formalizations are used in systems development to support the description of artifacts and to shape and regulate developer behavior. The limits to applying formalizations in these two ways are discussed based on examples from systems development practice. It is argued that formalizations, for example in the form of methods, are valuable in some situations, but inappropriate in others. The alternative to uncritically using formalizations is that systems developers reflect on the situations in which they find themselves and manage based on a combination of formal and informal approaches.