Measurements, feedback and empowerment: Critical systems theory as a basis for software process improvement

While organizations in software industry want to portray themselves as professional in terms of following standards and methods, they may also have needs for improvising and short-cutting when necessary. Such dilemmas of dual logics are sometimes internally resolved by evolving a false belief of what is done (practice) being in correspondence to what is said (standards), regardless of what an empirical investigation might show, something that can have poor business implications and also poor social implications. Particularly focusing on this latter point, the meta-methodology of total systems interventions (TSI) has been used for integrating critical systems theory with total quality management, improving social conditions in parallel with improving business processes. Although TSI is not designed for liberating organizations where nobody see themselves in need of liberation, the hypothesis of this paper is that it is possible to design quality management systems as “conflict machines”, causing sufficient social tension for more or less automatically changing “fake quality” into “real quality”. The hypothesis is investigated by applying design research in a Scandinavian public sector organization. The findings consist of statistical and interpretative evidence for the success of the approach, making a contribution to how TSI can be applied in the software industry.