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IDENTIFYING THE DRIVERS OF ISD METHOD EMERGENCE 65

Table 5.2

Content of Change

Multimedia case Web case
Similarities Stable vision of product purpose Stable vision of product purpose
Product and process subject to ongoing Product and process subject to ongoing
reinvention and configuration reinvention and configuration
Differences Reinventions and configurations of content Reinventions and configurations of content
driven by perceived gap between the driven by perceived gap between the
planned and the actual process planned and the actual product

consisting of IS developers with long formal educations, were undertaken as joint university–
company collaborations on EU and TCS contracts, respectively, and in both cases, the formal
contacts contained situation-specific formalized methods. However, already the different outlines
of the planned methods viewed as the involved actors’ expressions of the expected indicate that
the emergent methods would unfold differently: in the Multimedia case the formalized method
was a phased and sequential process, while in the Web case a prototype-driven development
process was chosen.
In this section, we analyze the elements and interactions that contributed to method emergence
in the Multimedia and Web projects. The aim is to explain why the emergent methods unfolded
differently. In the following, a systematic cross-case comparison is provided, structured according
to the key concepts of content, process, and context.

Content

What characterized the planned and the actual product and process of change in the two cases?
In both projects the initial vision of the information systems’ purpose as stated in the formal EU
and TCS contracts remained relatively stable throughout the development process. Nevertheless,
in both cases the application and the process did not emerge as planned. Instead, the narrative
descriptions of the two unfolding methods show that in both cases the product and process were
subject to ongoing reinventions and reconfigurations (see Table 5.2).
However, the two projects differ in terms of the events that the involved actors considered
“unexpected” and either problematic or opportune as compared with the expectations manifested
as the planned product and process. Thus, with regard to the Multimedia case we propose that the
perceived problems and applied solutions primarily concerned the gap between the planned and
the actual process, that is, process deviations, iterations, methodical breaches, organization, and
specialization. In contrast, we suggest that the involved actors’ conceptualization of challenges
and coping mechanisms in the Web case largely concerned the gap between the envisioned and
the actual product, that is, technical obstacles, and continuous definition and revision of systems
architecture and prototype content.

Process

How do political and cultural aspects help to explain how changes to the content took place in
the two cases? In both the Multimedia and Web cases, the social process was facilitated by a