The impact of values on information systems development.

The continuing occurrence of information systems development (ISD) failure persists as a strong motivator for both industrial and academic research to identify factors and develop methodologies which are more likely to lead to ISD project success.While good technical design is fundamental to the successful implementation of information systems, it is well understood that social and behavioural factors also have an important impact on the design and development process. It is proposed here that values held by individuals - enduring beliefs about what is worthwhile that influence behaviour - are important in relation to the chances of success for corporate ISD projects. It is further proposed that values implicitly determine the underlying philosophy of corporate approaches to ISD and also inform definitions of success. However, it is also recognised that greater specificity is required to more clearly understand the impact of these factors on ISD projects. Obtaining a clearer understanding of this should lead to greater success in developing methodologies or approaches which recognise and utilise values in the processes involved in the development of information systems. This research has addressed the need to provide greater specificity of these factors by investigating the process of systems development as undertaken in a large financial institution. The approach employed was exploratory and descriptive, including techniques such as survey, interviews and observation to examine the impact of personal and corporate values in ISD projects. The results of the investigation are based on an interpretive case study of a team of systems developers who were using a traditional structured systems methodology to help analyse and design the merging of a standalone database with a corporate information system. The research has employed a qualitative approach, using the interpretive skills of the researcher to provide the essential detailed descriptions and explanations of how social and behavioural factors affected the project at the micro-level.The significance of the contribution of this research is the level of detailed explanation it provides about the impact that the social, economic, political and theoretical values of individuals have on an ISD project taking place within a corporate setting. In particular, it demonstrates the significance of the role of the IT project manager in relation to managing the interface between the competing demands of corporate, personal and project team values and highlights the importance of social values in doing this. The thesis proposes that by paying greater regard to social values, for example altruism, which engenders trust and honesty, the project manager will ensure greater congruence between corporate and personal values, thus creating favourable conditions for project success.