Growing systems in an emergent organization

requirements are largely imaginary. A third obsolescent goal relates to the central value of abstract requirements determination. Stable systems thinking presumes that a stable set of abstract requirements awaits discovery by talented analysts. The abstractions are useful for raising the requirements process out of the turmoil of day-to-day activities. Emergent systems thinking assumes that the day-today turmoil is central to IS requirements, and in reality requirements are always in motion, unfrozen, and negotiable. Any distinctions between IS requirements and post-acceptance (future) enhancements are artificial IS project devices that excuse the delivery of an obsolescent IS. The diminishment of the requirements goal relates to the obsolescence of large-scale analysis and user satisfaction goals because the major analytic target (abstract requirements) is unsuitable for emergent organizations. A labor-intensive review of the current situation is little more than a history lesson in the past organizational states, and future requirements are abstractions of obscure user guesswork about future organizational states. Even if analysis is lifted from its dependence on user guesswork, the unpredictable directions of selfreferencing emergence make concise analysis of the distant future improbable. Complete and unambiguous specifications are ineffectual. A fourth obsolescent goal in ISD is a complete and unambiguous specification. Stable systems thinking presumes that the organization will “hold still” long enough for specification and implementation. This goal has always been difficult, and the concept of the frozen specification has been discredited. Achievement of this goal burdens ISD with parallel analysis, specification and implementation rework as the organization emerges out from under the planned IS. This burden also contributes to the problems of abstract analysis and user dissatisfaction by increasing the front-end expense of ISD projects and increasing the complexity of user-analyst interactions. New system projects denote ISD failure. The fifth obsolescent ISD goal is the importance of new-systems project planning. This goal is a hangover from the early ISD projects that replaced manual IS with computer-based IS. This replacementmentality created a new-systems project orientation in ISD that presumes every IS has a limited lifespan. Emergent IS thinking accepts that every system must evolve continuously, and that all systems must be adapted regularly to their changing environment. A new ISD project arises only from the utter failure of an existing computer-based IS. Under stable systems assumptions, the high value placed on new ISD over maintenance paradoxically implied a high value on the ultimate failure of every IS. (The low value placed on maintenance is most evident in the university training for IS careers. Typically, only new ISD is taught.) ISD GOALS FOR EMERGENT ORGANIZATIONS The preceding list of obsolescent ISD goals under assumptions of emergent organizations implies that an alternative goal set arises from the alternative assumption set. We will consider four distinct goals that arise from emergent assumptions. This alternative goal-set is implied by the assumption set. (See figure 2) And, in the 382 Truex, Baskerville, and Klein new goal set the first, second and last items stand in contrast to the first, second and fifth items from the revoked set of traditional ISD goals. And the new third goal an implied response to the revocation of third and fourth items in the old goal set. Always analysis . Under emergent assumptions, the analysis of IS applications must be continuous. Since the organization is emerging, the fundamental IS must be continuously changing and adapting. In order to implement this adaptation, requirements and specifications are constantly renegotiated. Analysis activities are no longer captured within the early stages of a system lifecycle. Instead, these activities are an ongoing service of the organizational ISD group. It is important to realize that this ongoing service must not be cyclical ( i.e., periods of analysis followed by periods of implementation), but is generally a constant ISD activity in parallel with systems operation and maintenance. The results of this ongoing analysis are continuously fed into the maintenance activities. Because of organizational emergence, the underlying ISD service continuously monitors and reappraises the IS support for every business process and organizational activity. Under this goal, analysis is not a component of an ISD project, but an ongoing ISD organizational maintenance activity. Dynamic requirements negotiations . Because the organization is emerging around the users, IS requirements can never be fully specified because users are always in conflict with them. Thus user satisfaction is improbable. Ind ed, under this assumption, a setting where users are fully satisfied would be an alarming anomaly. Requirements are no longer determined as part of a project, but become a negotiated outcome of the changing characteristics of an emergent organization and the available resources for enhancing or altering the existing IS. An emergent ISD goal is not user Figure 2. Mapping old assumptions to new perspectives Growing Systems in an Emergent Organization 383 satisfaction, but a “healthy” degree of conflict between users and their IS. As requirements conflicts rise, increased negotiation and IS enhancement activities are prescribed. As requirements conflicts fall, ISD activities are decreased. The conflict, negotiation and enhancement are continuous service activities provided to support ongoing business processes. These activities are not necessarily associated with any ISD project. Incomplete and usefully ambiguous specifications. If abstract requirements are largely imaginary, and unambiguous specifications are ineffectual, analysts must come to terms with ambiguity. Because the requirements are in motion, specifications must be kept in a state where these can be easily adapted for enhancing or modifying the existing system. The goal is a set of specifications each of which is open-ended and easily modified. Complete and unambiguous specifications are only possible for organizations that are totally stable, and waste valuable resources in an emergent setting. System enhancement and modification activities begin to be undertaken even though the specifications are incomplete and ambiguous. These activities “succeed” because they are themselves never completed (the organization is likely to emerge out from under the planned enhancements or modifications). Traditionally, the IS is a consequence of the specification. Under the emergent view, the specification is just as equally a consequence of the IS emergence. This parallel emergence leads to both an IS and an ISD process that are incomplete and usefully ambiguous. These last two characteristics represent an excellent foundation for further organizational emergence. Continuous redevelopment. Under emergent assumptions, this goal supplants the current ISD project mentality under which all systems terminate at their obsolescence point. The goal of ISD is to preserve all existing IS applications by continuously enhancing and modifying these to match organizational requirements. The goal of ISD is to prevent system obsolescence and thereby eliminate system termination (and the implied new ISD project). The national railroad system provides a metaphor to illustrate how this ISD approach operates. Today’s railroad systems no longer resemble the railroads of a century ago. The engines, carriages, tracks, stations and signaling have all been replaced with modern elements. There has not typically been a nationwide development project to replace the entire railroad system. Instead, the railroad system has emerged to match the needs of the nation and the limits of the technology. This emergence is a consequence of continuous enhancements: some new tracks added in some areas, new rolling stock when needed, etc. The net effect is an adaptive railroad system. Continuous redevelopment implies that information systems are continuously enhanced and modified such that they are never totally outdated and irreparable. There are two interesting implications of continuous redevelopment. The first implication arises from the viewpoint of lifecycle termination as an anomaly. When an IS becomes too expensive to maintain and must be replaced, there is an implied failure on the part of ISD management. ISD management failed to keep the IS maintained in a state that permitted its further redevelopment. In other words, the IS was allowed to decay beyond its economic rescue point. In an emergent setting, the decayed IS probably imposed a long period of rising stable-systems drag that limited the organizational ability to emerge. Had the system been continuously redeveloped, the drag would have been reduced and the system life span extended indefinitely. In most traditional ISD organizations, the resources that might be used for continuous 384 Truex, Baskerville, and Klein redevelopment are paradoxically occupied with system replacement projects. The second interesting implication regards legacy systems and the infamous year-2000 problem. These two interconnected problems have risen in importance over the last decade. To a degree, both of these result from the preservation of the 1960s and 1970s ISD project mentality into the 1980s and 1990s era. The new systems projects consumed the resources that might have otherwise been applied in gradually redeveloping, enhancing and modifying these old systems. Under continuous redevelopment, these systems, like the national railroad system, could not be legacy systems. Over the 1980s and 1990s, these legacy systems should have evolved, but didn’t. Today’s ISD managers are now confronted with (and blamed for) the failures of their predecessors. Adaptability orientation. The