Stakeholder Involvement and Team Working in Systems Development Practice

Abstract

It is a given that information Systems (IS) play a central role in the construction, adaptation and renewal of an organizations IS infrastructure (Beynon-Davies and Williams 2003). Hence, system development approaches are of significant importance to organizations considering or implementing IS development or business process reengineering. A considerable number of software system developments these days are large and complex in structure, and incorporate the concept of computer-supported co-operative work (CSCW). Grudin (1991) believes that CSCW has become significantly important since its introduction in 1984 by Paul Cashman and Irene Greif, and indeed, that collaborative computing is already affecting us because it changes the ways in which we work. Resultant changes reflect how people now-a-days work in team settings and supported by a range of technology. For example people may work in small teams but they form part of larger work environments within an organization where interfaces and systems have to accommodate multi-stakeholder communities despite conflicting goals (Grudin 1991). This has created formidable challenges for developers who need to fully comprehend organizational activity in order to design collaborative business processes to respond to the dynamic environments. Furthermore, the collaborative work processes relevant to the diversity of stakeholders involved are positioned in relation to an organizations structure, culture and policies together with the existing technologies. As a consequence integrated enterprise systems and collaborative computing have emerged to accommodate the current rapidly changing, distributed and global business environments (Hevner et al. 2004).