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IDENTIFYING THE DRIVERS OF ISD METHOD EMERGENCE 67
Context

How do social relations, social infrastructure, and the history of previous structures, commitments,
and procedures help to explain why the social processes emerged as they did? In the Multimedia
project, the social context was shaped by long-term social relations between the overall project
manager, the local project manager, and the principal designer, a former student of the local project
manager, and the social infrastructure was characterized by the involvement and easy accessibility
of these three influential actors. However, already from project initiation there was some rivalry
between the two project managers, which led to a slightly competitive atmosphere and ultimately
to the shift in task and power distribution. The overall project manager explains:

In the early stages of the project, the two project managers based on a certain personal rivalry
had, despite the defined information strategy and the existing treatment document, different,
but not clearly, articulated levels of ambitions with regard to the MMIS. (Kautz, 2004)

Historically, the overall project manager and the IT consultancy team members in general
had experience with EU projects, ISD, and SPI, but not with multimedia development. The local
Danish project manager had previously developed and tested his own methodical approach in
a number of educational projects, was an expert in SPI and an experienced teacher in the fields
of ISD and multimedia. The principal designer had experience with MMIS development and
knowledge about ISD, but little acquaintance with SPI. The local project manager and the prin-
cipal designer advocated and facilitated the introduction of additional templates and standards
as a means for coping with differences in the project team members’ knowledge, work practices,
levels of detail, expectations, and ambitions, while the overall project manager was attentive
toward the monitoring and reporting of project plans, progress, finances, and resources. Together,
the three influential actors’ different backgrounds and different emphasis during development
(i.e., EU reporting requirements, formalized method development, multimedia development)
as well as their relationship to each other help to explain why the development process was
driven by conflicts, power issues, and a strong methodical process orientation manifested in a
focus on written documents.
In the Web case, the social context was shaped by long-term trust-based social relations be-
tween company management and the academic supervisor due to, among other things, a previous
two-year project within the TCS program. This meant that there was a shared understanding of
the project vision, the appropriate development approach, the information technology to be used,
and the required project organization specified by the TSC. The social atmosphere is illustrated
in the following citations.

Between management and project team: “Once a month is a technical meeting, which I
receive the minutes of . . . I can contribute at the broader level and just reassure myself that
the project is going well, but because they are a particularly good team, they are getting on
with it and I’m happy with that.” (The Web case, company chairman, interview, November
2002)

Within project team: “The tone and atmosphere was very friendly and cozy. It is a small team
and there seems to be close collaboration, even though there is a physical distance between
[the market research company] and the University.” (The Web case, involved researcher’s
personal project diary, entry: March 5, 2002)