Agile IS Development Success: A Communication-based Model

系统工程、软件工程和相关学科提供了对信息系统开发(ISD)有很大影响的开发能力(技术、方法、途径和范例)。几十年来，研究人员已经对ISD进行了调查，但研究的必要性仍然很明显，因为各种研究仍然指出ISD出现的反复出现的问题，如成本或时间超支、推出的功能比承诺的少，或者完全失败。传统的ISD方法，如顺序和迭代方法，促进了正式的沟通，如项目计划、规范文档或模型，以协调开发活动。然而，在当今频繁变化的开发环境中，正式的通信机制很难做出足够快的反应。因此，Scrum或极限编程等灵活的ISD方法在行业中变得越来越流行，并吸引了研究界的注意。敏捷的ISD方法被认为是在需求快速变化的环境中开发软件和软件密集型信息系统(IS)的有效方法。尽管关于敏捷ISD的知识体系在不断增长，但我们仍然缺乏对支撑敏捷原则和实践的基本流程的详细了解。敏捷ISD最基本的方面之一是沟通，因为敏捷ISD项目团队强烈依赖非正式的沟通机制，例如频繁的面对面对话。在这项研究中，我们旨在调查敏捷实践如何影响ISD项目团队的沟通过程，以扩展我们对敏捷ISD理论基础的了解。具体地说，我们提出所谓的社交敏捷实践对敏捷ISD团队的沟通非正式性和频率具有积极影响。这反过来又增进了团队成员之间的相互了解和更好的关系，从而在项目绩效和用户满意度方面取得了更高的ISD成功。作为一个理论框架，我们构建了ISD成功的统一模型，并从组织传播的认知-情感模型和媒介自然性理论中扩展了该模型。在此基础上，首先，必须为研究模型的结构制定适当的测量量表。随后，必须进行预试和中试，以获得所开发量表的可靠性的初步迹象。随后对研究模型进行了大规模的实证检验。

Systems engineering, software engineering, and related disciplines offer development capabilities (techniques, methods, approaches, and paradigms) that have a strong impact on information systems development (ISD). Researchers have investigated ISD over many decades but the research necessity remains obvious, as various studies still point to recurring problems arising in ISD, such as cost or time overruns, rollouts with fewer features than promised, or total failures. Traditional ISD methodologies such as sequential and iterative approaches promote formal communication such as project plans, specification documents, or models to coordinate the development activities. However, it is hard for formal mechanisms of communication to react quickly enough in today's frequently changing development environments. As a consequence, agile ISD methodologies such as Scrum or Extreme Programming have become increasingly popular in industry and have attracted the attention of the research community. Agile ISD methodologies are considered an effective way for developing software and software-intensive information systems (IS) in environments characterized by rapidly changing requirements. Although the body of knowledge on agile ISD is constantly growing, we still lack a detailed understanding of the fundamental processes underpinning agile principles and practices. One of the most fundamental aspects of agile ISD is communication because agile ISD project teams rely intensively on informal communication mechanisms such as frequent face-to-face conversations. In this research, we aim to investigate how agile practices affect the communication processes of ISD project teams in order to extend our knowledge on the theoretical underpinnings of agile ISD. Specifically, we propose that so-called social agile practices have positive effects on the communication informality and frequency of agile ISD teams. This in turn leads to higher mutual understanding and better relationships among team members, resulting in higher ISD success in terms of project performance and user satisfaction. As a theoretical framework, we build on the unified model of ISD success and extend it with context-specific insights from the cognitive-affective model of organizational communication and media naturalness theory. Based on this, first, appropriate measurement scales for the constructs of the research model have to be developed. Subsequently, a pretest and pilot test has to be conducted in order to obtain first indications of the reliability of the developed scales. This is followed by a large-scale empirical test of the research model.