|
In large software product firms, we use many processes for managing the design, development, and marketing of new products. Among those in common use are software process improvement methods promoted by the Software Engineering Institute (SEI), Cooper’s (1996) Stage-Gate process for product and portfolio management, and professional project management practices endorsed by the Project Management Institute (PMI, 2000). Designers on software projects often find themselves negotiating the demands of multiple processes within which to fit their own practice of user-centered experience or graphical interface design. Design and product managers often find a larger set of processes guiding and constraining their direction and decisions within the multifunctional teams required for software products. This exploratory study shows how design and management practices negotiate conflicts with these institutional processes from a perspective of values.
A qualitative empirical study of software product design was conducted at four large professional-market information technology companies, inquiring into typical project conflicts, and identifying the conflicts emerging from personal and professional values. Focusing on innovation projects (entirely new software products for an existing customer base), the study explored the experience of lead designers and senior product managers, where critical incidents of organizational or professional conflict affected team interaction and project completion.
This research investigated values conflicts in innovation from 10 case studies of software development projects in these organizations. A grounded theory methodology approached the study initially from an open, inductive stance, which progressively analyzed and developed the findings, and then constructed a theoretical framework to describe findings and propose explanations. A constructivist perspective to organizational analysis was taken, based on the view that social interaction in a cultural context creates organizations and technical artifacts. The intention of this approach was to frame findings within the context of organizational knowledge and its appropriation of control. This approach is viewed as structurational, based on the theory that organizations are socially co-constructed by actors and their institutional contexts over time, as communication and group processes recursively develop group structures that produce group outcomes.
The research progressed over three phases. First, a values framework was developed from the literature to guide the protocol for individual and organizational values inquiry, based on seven frequently cited representative case studies. Second, values conflicts within participants’ projects were studied through analysis of their case projects and the results of a post-interview survey. Third, as the factor of formal management processes emerged from the values inquiry, further investigation studied the influence of processes on project and design practice in the case organizations. This paper discusses the analysis and findings from the second research phase of values in software projects.
|
 Email this page to a colleague |
