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Situational Method Engineering pp 53–68Cite as

Method Engineering as a Social Practice

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Abstract

Formalised systems development methods are used in systems development as a means to express and communicate knowledge about the systems/software development process (Ågerfalk and Fitzgerald 2006). Since methods are social constructs, they embed various assumptions about people and systems development as a social practice (Introna and Whitley 1997; Russo and Stolterman 2000). Essentially, methods encapsulate knowledge of good design practice so that developers can be more effective, efficient and confident in their work. Nonetheless, it is a well-known fact that many software organisations do not use methods (Iivari and Maansaari 1998; Nandhakumar and Avison 1999) and, when methods are used, they are not used straight out of the box but are tailored to suit the particular development situation (Fitzgerald et al. 2003). This tension between the method ‘as documented’ and the method ‘in use’ has been described as a ‘method usage tension’ between ‘method-in-concept’ and ‘method-in-action’ (Lings and Lundell 2004).

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Ethnomethodologists refer to this property of human behaviour as ‘accountability’ (Garfinkel 1967; Dourish 2001; Eriksén 2002); people require an account of the truth or usefulness of something in order to accept it as valid. According to ethnomethodologist Harold Garfinkel (1967), actions that are accountable are ‘visibly-rational-and-reportable-for-all-practical-purposes’.

  2. 2.

    According to sociologist Max Weber, social action is that human behaviour to which the actor attaches meaning and which takes into account the behaviour of others, and thereby is oriented in its course (Weber 1978).

  3. 3.

    Max Weber introduced the notion of an ‘ideal type’ as an analytic abstraction. Ideal types do not exist as such in real life, but are created so as to facilitate discussion. We use the term here to emphasise that a formalised method, expressed in a method description, never exists as such as a method-in-action. Rather, the method-in-action is an appropriation of an ideal typical formalised method to a particular context. At the same time, a formalised method is usually an ideal type created as an abstraction of existing ‘good practice’ (Ågerfalk and Åhlgren 1999).

  4. 4.

    Versatile Information and Business Analysis.

  5. 5.

    Material actions are actions that produce material results, such as painting a wall, while communicative actions result in social obligations, such as a promise to paint a wall in the future. The latter thus corresponds to what Searle (1969) termed ‘speech act’.

  6. 6.

    Issue Based Information Systems.

  7. 7.

    REpresentation and MAintenance of Process knowledge.

  8. 8.

    We acknowledge contributions of Dr. Fredrik Karlsson to this section.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Software, University of Technology, Sydney, Broadway, New South Wales, Australia

    Brian Henderson-Sellers

  2. CUI, Battelle - bâtiment A, University of Geneva, Carouge, Switzerland

    Jolita Ralyté

  3. Dept. of Informatics and Media, Uppsala University, Uppsala, Sweden

    Pär J. Ågerfalk

  4. Aalto University, Aalto, Finland

    Matti Rossi

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  1. Brian Henderson-Sellers
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  2. Jolita Ralyté
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  3. Pär J. Ågerfalk
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  4. Matti Rossi
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Henderson-Sellers, B., Ralyté, J., Ågerfalk, P.J., Rossi, M. (2014). Method Engineering as a Social Practice. In: Situational Method Engineering. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-41467-1_3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-41467-1_3

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