IT Value of Software Development: A Multi-Theoretic Perspective

Introduction

The field of software development has undergone significant changes in recent years. A hypercompetitive business environment characterized by change and uncertainty has prompted the software community to evolve new ways of building software. The emerging methodologies follow an evolutionary delivery model (Gilb, 1987) that allows developers to adapt to changing requirements. This is counter to the traditional plan-driven approach that uses a linear process in accomplishing the tasks involved in software development. In such an approach, an enormous amount of time and effort are spent in gathering requirements and evolving specifications with a view to preparing for all foreseeable changes during the lifecycle of the product. In contrast, emerging approaches such as agile methodologies rely on short iterative cycles with continuous stakeholder feedback and frequent planning to cope with and leverage change (Nerur, Mahapatra, and Mangalaraj, 2005).

Agile methodologies have attracted a lot of attention in the recent past. This new approach differs considerably from traditional software development in many ways. Foremost, there is an increased emphasis on self-organizing teams that enjoy greater latitude in goal-setting and decision-making with regard to setting priorities, deadlines, etc. Team members are encouraged to play multiple roles, such as developer, architect and analyst. A shared understanding and vision of the evolving product is facilitated by practices such as joint code ownership, role rotation and reflection workshops. This is in contrast to specialized roles assigned to developers in traditional methodologies. In the agile approach, specifications evolve through constant dialogue and feedback between developers and customers, while in the traditional approach, extensive specifications gathered upfront from customers guide the development process. Thus, there is a perceptible shift from a hierarchical, process driven, and command-and-control based approach to one that emphasizes people-orientation, collaboration, and leadership (Highsmith, 2003).

The changes in methodologies highlight the underlying transformation of software development from a technical enterprise to a more socio-technical endeavor. The lack of theory-driven empirical work in software development may be attributed to the emphasis that was placed on technical aspects of software development. Theoretical grounding of empirical research is still not considered an essential requirement, especially in the software engineering domain. Though there is some evidence of increasing awareness of theoretical issues (Hannay, Sjoberg, and Dyba, 2007; Nerur and Balijepally, 2007), the dominant thinking is predicated on the primacy of common sense reasoning over generalizable theory (Lindblom, 1987). While use of theory is taken for granted in various business disciplines, including several areas of IS research, software development research is still grappling with the issue of whether theory should be used (Hannay et al., 2007). The current social “makeover” of software development provides us with the context and the opportunity to refocus empirical research in software development towards theory building and testing. The centrality and importance accorded to teams and collaboration among team members by emerging methodologies affords an opportunity to draw on the extensive body of knowledge in organizational and management theory.