Traveling of Requirements in the Development of Packaged Software: An Investigation of Work Design and Uncertainty

.......................................................................................................................... 1 1 INTRODUCTION ........................................................................................................... 2 1.1 Research Domain ................................................................................................................. 2 1.2 Research Questions .............................................................................................................. 4 1.3 Summary of Dissertation ..................................................................................................... 6 2 UNCERTAINTY .............................................................................................................. 9 2.1 Uncertainty in Information Systems and Organization Research ...................................... 9 2.2 Uncertainty in Software Development ............................................................................... 12 2.3 Uncertainty in Software Requirements .............................................................................. 15 2.4 Uncertainty and Risk .......................................................................................................... 17 3 PACKAGED SOFTWARE ............................................................................................. 21 3.1 What is Packaged Software? ............................................................................................... 21 3.2 Research Opportunity ........................................................................................................ 26 3.3 Contrasting “Packaged” and “Custom” Software .............................................................. 27 4 REQUIREMENTS MANAGEMENT ............................................................................ 31 4.1 Requirements in the SE Literature .................................................................................... 32 4.2 Requirements in the IS Literature ..................................................................................... 34 4.3 Contrasting IS and SE Requirements Literature .............................................................. 37 5 WORK DESIGN AND UNCERTAINTY ....................................................................... 44 5.1 Work Design ....................................................................................................................... 44 5.2 Contingency Theory ........................................................................................................... 46 5.3 Horizontal and Vertical Work Design ............................................................................... 47 5.4 Work Design and Information Systems ............................................................................. 51 Traveling of Requirements in the Development of Packaged Software T. Gregory | Dissertation ix TABLES AND FIGURES 6 TRAVELING OF IDEAS ............................................................................................... 54 6.1 The “Traveling” Metaphor ................................................................................................. 54 6.2 Conceptualizing Traveling .................................................................................................. 57 7 RESEARCH METHODOLOGY .................................................................................... 59 7.1 Qualitative Case Study ....................................................................................................... 59 7.2 Research Setting ................................................................................................................. 61 7.3 Data Collection .................................................................................................................. 65 7.4 Coding Structure ................................................................................................................ 68 7.5 Data Analysis Strategy ....................................................................................................... 69 8 TRAVELING OF REQUIREMENTS ............................................................................ 72 8.1 Types of Traveling .............................................................................................................. 72 8.2 The Expected Journey ........................................................................................................ 73 8.3 Localized Traveling ............................................................................................................ 79 8.4 Cross-Layer Traveling ........................................................................................................ 88 8.5 Cross-Cycle Traveling ........................................................................................................ 92 9 DISCUSSION ................................................................................................................ 96 9.1 Traveling ............................................................................................................................ 96 9.2 Work Design ....................................................................................................................... 99 9.3 Recurrent Development of Packaged Software ................................................................ 105 9.4 Engaged Scholarship ......................................................................................................... 107 9.5 Contributions .................................................................................................................... 114 9.6 Limitations ........................................................................................................................ 118 9.7 Conclusion ....................................................................................................................... 120 10 REFERENCES ............................................................................................................ 122 Appendix A: ISD Requirements Construction Classics .................................................. 128 Traveling of Requirements in the Development of Packaged Software T. Gregory | Dissertation x STYLEREF "Heading 1" TABLES AND FIGURES TABLES AND FIGURES List of Tables Table 1-1: Contributions to Knowledge .......................................................................... 4 Table 3-1: Differences Between Packaged and Custom Software .................................. 22 Table 4–1: Contrasting Streams of Requirements Literature ..................................... 37 Table 7–1: Overview of NPD Stages at GridCo ............................................................ 62 Table 7–2: Summary of Data Sources ......................................................................... 65 Table 7–3: Framework for Analyzing Traveling of Requirements ............................. 68 Table 8–1: Initial Estimation Ranges .......................................................................... 78 List of Figures Figure 3–1: Product Software as described by Xu and Brinkkemper (2007) ............. 22 Figure 4–1: Parallel Model of the Requirements Process .......................................... 38 Figure 5–1: Conceptualizing Work Design Problems ................................................. 48 Figure 8–1: Work Design ............................................................................................. 73 Figure 8–2: Local Traveling of Requirements ............................................................. 79 Figure 8–3: Cross-Layer Traveling of Requirements ................................................. 88 Figure 8–4: Cross-Cycle Traveling of Requirements .................................................. 92 Figure 9–1: Coordination Through the Local Hub Assembly at GridCo .................. 102 Figure 9–2: Manipulating the Triple Constraints of Project Management .............. 108 Figure 9–3: Differences in Constraint Management in Software and Hardware .... 109 Traveling of Requirements in the Development of Packaged Software T. Gregory | Dissertation xi ABBREVIATIONS ABBREVIATIONS List of Abbreviations (in Alphabetical Order) C&C Command and control system, specifically the C&C software product developed by GridCo CBS COTS-Based System CEPRIN Center for Process Innovation (at Georgia State University) COTS Commercial Off-The-Shelf (Software) CRM Customer relationship management, a type of large software package EJIS European Journal of Information Systems ERP Enterprise resource planning, a type of large software package FW Firmware; low-level, embedded software HW Hardware IEEE Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, a professional association IRB Institutional Review Board IS Information Systems ISD Information Systems Development IT Information Technology MoU Memorandum of Understanding NPD New Product Development PMBOK Project Management Body of Knowledge SE Software engineering SW Software; in the case of GridCo, generally a reference to the C&C SW SWEBOK Software Engineering Body of Knowledge (an IEEE standard) TCE Transaction Cost Economics