r 4 r5o%^ ^ r 0 (0%) 4 » of Generic)

Practice (22 ^ 8(35%) ^ ^ (99%) ^ 50 (43%) 0 of Contract) t% of In-house) (459'o of Generic) (42®/

Specification 1r 4 r5o%^ ^ r0 (0%) .4 - » of Generic)

4 (50%) (17% of Contract) (11% of In-house) (09/

Table 7.9: The Relationship Between Development Paradigm & Strategy

7.7.5 Exploration of links between Strategy and Methodology

The main aim for this comparison is to identify the relationship between the use of a methodology and the strategy followed. The hypothesis here was that the methodology entity was static - interpretation of the methodology being entirely dealt with by the strategy entity (and other determinants enforcing a influence on the strategy entity). Nevertheless, there was an expectation that there would be some evidence of a relationship between the methodologies and choice of strategy. The results of this test are shown in Table 7.10. The expectations were as follows:

For TECHNICAL CATEGORY methodologies, the expectation would be that they would be particularly prevalent in the two most rigorous strategy categorisations. The methodologies listed in this section are listed in the order of their rigour, the list being:

1. SSADM;

2. Information Engineering; 3. Yourdon (SA/SD);

4. Object-Oriented Methodologies.

For SOCIO-TECHNICAL CATEGORY methodologies, the expectation would be that they would be used across a wide spectrum of strategy categorisations. A Systems Approach (SSM, Ethics) etc was the only methodology identified within this section.

Strategy Methodology No. of Projects

Uncertainty

Object-Oriented 7 (47%) 44% of Method. Total None 5 (33%) 14% of Method. Total Information Engineering 2 (13%) 25% of Method. Total Systems Approach 1 (7%) 33% of Method. Total

Evolution

None 15 (63%) 47% of Method. Total Object-Oriented 4 (17%) 25% of Method. Total Information Engineering 2 (8%) 25% of Method. Total

Systems Approach 1 (4%) 33% of Method. Total SSADM 1 (4%) 33% of Method. Total Yourdon 1 (4%) 25% of Method. Total

Practice

None 12 (52%) 33% of Method. Total Object-Oriented 4 (17%) 25% of Method. Total Information Engineering 3 (13%) 37% of Method. Total SSADM 2 (9%) 66% of Method, Total Systems Approach 1 (4%) 33% of Method. Total Yourdon 1 (4%) 25% of Method. Total

Specification

None 4 (50%) 11% of Method. Total Yourdon 2 (25%) 50% of Method. Total Information Engineering 1 (13%) 12% of Method. Total Object-Oriented 1 (13%) 6% of Method. Total

Table 7.10: The Relationship Between Strategy & Methodology

For SOCIAL CATEGORY methodologies, the expectation would be that they would be used in the less rigorous strategy categorisations. Object-Oriented Methodologies, already listed in the technical category, have been included in this section because they have formed the basis of a number of iterative prototyping methods.

The results are illustrated in Table 7.10. The results show that the relationship between a methodology and strategy is a weak one; the only strong relationship was the showing of object-oriented methodologies in the two less rigorous categorisations, illustrating the impact of other determinants on strategy being stronger than any limits (in terms of tools or techniques or process) imposed by a methodology.

7.7.6 Exploration of Links between Strategy and Development Pressures

The hypothesis being tested in this section was that there was a deterministic relationship between the strategy entity and the development pressures entity. Our expected results for this section would be a gradual increase in the level of rigour adopted in the development strategy based on the development experience of the developer and an experienced user population. On the other side of the coin, we expected a movement towards less rigorous approaches with more experienced developers and users with less experience. Specification Practice 2.9 U2 2.6 2.2 2.2 Evolution U1 1.5 Uncertainty D1 D2 D3

Figure 7.9: Relationship Between Strategy and Development Pressures

The results as shown in Figure 7.9 support this hypothesis, with the added curiosity of the inexperienced developers and inexperienced users using a far more rigid development

approach, on average, to those where experienced users had been paired with inexperienced developers. This was a finding that proved difficult to explain.

7.7.7 Exploration of links between Organisation Context and Methodology

The hypothesis being tested in this section was that the organisational context reflected, to some degree, the choice of methodology. The results, as illustrated in Table 7.11 suggest that the results were not much different from those encountered in a comparison between methodology and strategy entities. There are some interesting patterns within the findings.

The most important finding is the pattern between the use of a methodology and communication patterns. 21 out of the 30 projects that claimed no methodology was used were in the informal-implicit-unstable classification. Whilst this may not seem large, considering the large number of projects that fell into this category, the fact that almost half of the projects in this category did not use a methodology is an interesting result in itself as is the fact that the most unstructured of the methodologies, categorising the object-oriented approaches, also accounted for 13 projects in that section out of a total count for the methodology of 16 projects.

I would use this evidence to argue that there is a link between organisational context and methodology usage (or at least the choice of methodology).

7.7.8 Exploration of Links Between Initial Statement of Objectives and Development Paradigm against Methodology

Figure 7.10 shows the results for this search. The hypothesis being tested in this section is that the use of a methodology has an impact on the degree of rigour associated with initial requirements. The results suggest that this is the case, particularly with contract- based developments, which show the greatest disparity between methodology using and non-methodology using projects. The disparity between methodology and non­ methodology projects within an in-house development paradigm proved an interesting measure. This measure could be influenced by the high number of in-house projects

carried out within organic-unstable environments, a factor explored in a later section of this chapter.

Job

Roles Procedure Process

Number of projects

Methodology

Explicit Formal Stable 3 (4.3%)

Information Engineering (I) Yourdon (I)

Proprietary (I) Explicit Formal Unstable I (1.4%)

SSADM (I) Implicit Formal Stable I (1.4%)

SSADM (I) Implicit Formal Unstable 5 (7.1%)

Object-Oriented (2) Systems Approach ( 1 ) Proprietary(I)

None (I) Explicit Informal Stable 4 (5.7%)

Information Engineering (I) Yourdon (I)

Systems Approach ( 1 ) Proprietary (I) Explicit Informal Unstable 5 (7.1%)

Information Engineering (I) None (4)

Implicit Informal Stable 7 (10%)

Object-Oriented (I) Yourdon (2) None (4)

Implicit Informal Unstable 44 (63%)

Object-Oriented (13) Information Engineering (5) SSADM (I)

Proprietary (3) Systems Approach (I) None (21)

Table 7.11: The Relationship between Organisational Context and Methodology

Chosen Solution

Desired

Solution With a Methodology

2.5