| After years of experience with building systems, the information systems (IS)
community is still challenged by systems delivery, that is, planning the implementation
project, determining system features and requirements, sourcing and
deploying the software, and managing its evolution. High-quality systems are
still elusive. Yet organizations invest heftily in IS to support their business operations
and realize corporate priorities, either in search of competitive advantage
or as a competitive necessity. One of the major paradoxes of our era is the
disparity between the many innovations that have been enabled by information
technology (IT) and the failure of the IS community, comprising developers,
managers, and users, to exploit these advances to consistently produce highquality
IS that provide value to organizations. This phenomenon, which is highlighted
by Brynjolfssen (1993), Gibbs (1994), and others, has been dubbed “the
software crisis.”
The effects of the software crisis are demonstrated in the number of projects
that are abandoned before completion (The Standish Group, 2003), deployed
with poor quality, consuming inordinate maintenance resources (Banker et al.,
1998), or remain unused after implementation (Markus & Keil, 1994). The IS
community has rightly focused on how to reverse the trend of low-quality systems,
especially as IS become more central to the accomplishment of organizational
mission. The quality drive in IS delivery is reminiscent of the intensified
focus on quality in the manufacturing and service areas, and the IS discipline
has built on many of the concepts articulated by Deming and others. |
