Effects-Driven IT Development: A new main reference and a revised status of my research within this research program has been published as a journal article and book chapter respectively (2.14 and 6.14)
2.14: Hertzum, M., and J. Simonsen (2011): ”Effects-Driven IT Development: Specifying and Measuring Usage Effects”, Scandinavian Journal of Information Systems, Vol. 23 , No. 1, pp. 1-26.
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Abstract. For customers information technology (IT) is a means to an end. This tight association between IT systems and their use is, however, often absent during their development and implementation, resulting in systems that may fail to produce desired ends. Effects-driven IT development aims to avoid the chasm between development and implementation through a sustained focus on the effects to be achieved by users through their adoption and use of a system. This involves iteratively (a) specifying the purpose of the system in terms of effects, (b) developing an IT system and associated organizational change that realize the specified effects, and (c) measuring the absence or presence of the specified effects during pilot use of the system while also remaining alert to the emergence of beneficial but hitherto unspecified effects. In this paper we explore effects-driven IT development and discuss the possibilities and challenges involved in making it an instrument for managing IT projects. Two main challenges are that effects must be measured while development is still ongoing, making pilot implementations a central activity, and that vendor and customer must extend their collaboration, particularly concerning organizational implementation. Empirically, the paper is based on three cases from the Danish healthcare sector.
6.14: Hertzum, M., and J. Simonsen (2011): “Effects-Driven IT Development: Status 2004-2011,” in M. Hertzum, and C. Jørgensen: Balancing Sourcing and Innovation in Information Systems Development, Tapir Academic Publishers, Trondheim, NO, pp. 165-192
Abstract: Information technology (IT) is a means to an end, yet many IT projects assign primacy to technical development and attend comparatively less to the organizational change effort that is required to attain a good fit between organization and IT system. This entails a risk of not capturing the benefits of the deployed system. Effects-driven IT development aims to counter this risk by providing an instrument for managing IT projects through a sustained focus on the effects desired from the use of the IT system. A sustained focus on effects entails that the specification, realization, and assessment of effects become central systems-development activities. In this chapter, we describe the six empirical projects we have conducted in our work on effects-driven IT development during the period 2004–2011 and we discuss the experiences gained so far. The empirical projects indicate that the desired effects can be specified and measured, though we have mixed experiences with ensuring that effects are measured. An effects hierarchy has been devised and appears suitable for working with effects at different levels of abstraction. A key challenge with which we still have insufficient experience concerns how a partnership with close relations between a customer and a vendor can be established. Finally, we have yet to address whether and how to incorporate an effects-driven approach in the contractual regulation of IT projects.