Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
What Methodology Attributes Are Critical for Potential
Users? Understanding the Effect of Human Needs
Kunal Mohan and Frederik Ahlemann
EBS Business School, Söhnleinstraße 8D, 65201 Wiesbaden
kunal.mohan@ebs.edu, frederik.ahlemann@ebs.edu
Abstract.
Despite the overwhelming advantages of using IS development and
management (ISDM) methodologies, organisations are rarely able to motivate
their staff to use them. The resulting lack of methodology usage by individuals
fails to deliver the expected advantages of better quality, control, less time, and
less effort in IS development projects. We analyse the technical as well as
non-technical aspects of an individual's use of ISDM methodologies, in order to
enable organisations to engineer those that meet the needs of actual users and
are actually used by them in a productive manner. We construct a conceptual
model, based upon which, we posit that: technical methodology attributes such
as relative advantage, complexity, compatibility, demonstrability, visibility,
triability, and reinventability influence an individual's methodology usage be-
haviour. We also propose that the strengths of these relationships depend on
non-technical, deeply rooted psychological needs of the people.
Keywords:
Methodology acceptance, IS development, method engineering.
1 Introduction
In the search for ways to arrive at replicable, pragmatic, cost-effective, and timely
solutions to real-world problems in systematic and predictable ways, organisations
either adopt or customise and adaptively apply methodologies, which consist of tested
bodies of methods, rules, and procedures. Despite the overwhelming advantages of
using any methodology, only a handful of organisations are actually able to make
their staff use such methodologies [18]. A software development project survey
conducted by Russo et al. [41] shows that only 6% of organisations claim that their
methodologies are always used as specified. Eva and Guilford [15] find that only 17%
of respondents, in their survey of 152 organisations, claim to use a methodology in its
entirety. Organisational theorists have long recognised that individual behavioural
resistance against new methodology use is because they might not share the goals of
the organisations in which they work and that exert pressure on them to use new
methodologies [46]. The roots of this problem of methodology acceptance, which our
research addresses, lies - among other factors - in the failure to understand individual
attitudes towards a methodology's use, which ultimately leads to the development and
implementation of a methodology that might be considered unsuitable and might be
rejected by users [31].
