Categorizing Post-Deployment IT Changes: An Empirical Investigation

Abstract

Although it has been widely recognized that postdeployment changes of information technology (IT) are unavoidable, little attention has been paid to the management of post-deployment IT changes. This study intends to advance our knowledge in this area. It first introduces a general framework for technology change in use, developed in an organizational study. Then, through tracking the post-deployment changes of a large workflow application, this study develops an enhanced and expanded categorization of post-deployment IT changes. The findings suggest that even custom-developed software can be plagued by misfit and that a learning-in-working perspective should be added to understand and resolve the misfit between IT and the organization. For future study, the findings of this study suggest that more efforts should be directed toward the issues of balancing system stability and volatility and continuous post-deployment communication between IT management and users.