Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

The enabling role of Web services in information system development practices: a grounded theory study

  • Original Article
  • Published:
Information Systems and e-Business Management Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

This study presents a grounded theory analysis of a case study in the banking industry with a view to showing the enabling role of “Web services” technology in information system development practices. The grounded theory analysis of the Cashier Management System development project at the Central Europe Bank (a pseudonym) shows that Web services technology is a key technological enabler for more agile forms of IS development, characterized by incremental analysis, requirements revision, requirements emerging in use and incremental implementation. In particular, an initial in-depth analysis phase, conducted in a traditional way, is then followed, during system development, by several iterative phases of requirements revision/addition, in fulfilment of emerging or previously unplanned user needs discovered along the way. Such system development practices, enabled by the Web services technology and influenced by a variety of contextual factors, cover a middle ground between methodical and amethodical development processes.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Fig. 1
Fig. 2
Fig. 3
Fig. 4
Fig. 5
Fig. 6
Fig. 7
Fig. 8
Fig. 9
Fig. 10

Similar content being viewed by others

Notes

  1. Web services is not the only technical solution available to this aim: standards like EDIFACT, COM and many others are actually available. For a discussion, see for example K. Turowski, Spezifikation und Standardisierung von Fachkomponenten Wirtschaftstinformatik 43(3), 2001, pp 269–281. The use of the WWW infrastructure for inter-application communication is also not entirely new, as it can be viewed as an evolution of B2B applications like e-marketplaces (Rossignoli C. The contribution of transaction cost theory and other network-oriented techniques to digital markets, Information Systems and E-Business Management 2007, doi:10.1007/s10257-007-0063-z; Rossignoli C and Mola L. E.M.P. As Enabler Of New Organisational Architectures: An Italian Case Study, Proceedings of the Bled eCommerce Conference, 2004).

  2. In this paper the terms “traditional” and “classical” ISD practices will be used interchangeably. For an extensive definition and discussion, see Baskerville R, Levine L, Balasubramanian R, Pries-Heje J and Slaughter S. “Is Internet-Speed Software Development Different?” IEEE Software (20:6), Nov–Dec 2003, pp 70–77.

  3. This issue is made more complex by the indeterminacy of factors like: (1) The wide range of ISD methods and initiatives now available; (2) The non-existence of a unique definition of “classical” ISD principles; (3) the ambiguity and generality of expressions like “web system development”.

  4. Continuous redevelopment shows affinities, but is distinct from the logic of “cultivation”, as inherited by the program of social studies launched by Claudio Ciborra. This logic is discussed in the context of the public administration in De Marco M and Sorrentino M, Sowing the seeds of IS cultivation in public service organisations. Journal of Information Technology, 22(2), 2007, pp 184–191.

  5. The use of case study methodology in social sciences was thoroughly discussed also in Eisenhardt KM “Building Theories From Case Study Research.” The Academy of Management Review 14(4), October 1989, pp 532–550, raising the issue if better grounding theories on a single case (more in-depth and focused on qualitative and contextual aspects—“better stories”) or on several cases, (more shallow and focused on theoretical sampling -“better constructs”) (Gibb Dyer W Jr and Wilkins A “Better Stories Not Better Constructs to Generate Better Theory: A Rejoinder to Eisenhardt.” The Academy of Management Review 16(3) 1991, pp 613–619); (Eisenhardt KM “Better Stories and Better Constructs: The Case for Rigor and Comparative Logic.” The Academy of Management Review 16(3) 1991, pp 620–627).

  6. In addition, to better understand the technical and organizational complexity of the project, the researchers could take advantage of the strong technical background and the right “feeling” for promising investigative directions of the project manager, who actively participated in theory generation and actually co-authored other reports and papers produced by this research.

  7. One could wonder whether theoretical concepts were actually emerging from data (and not imported from pre-existing theories) in this study, as it should be according to the GT methodology. In facts, data collection was based on a pre-existing questionnaire and informing theory was initially used to motivate the exploration and later to discuss the findings. Actually, as shown in the next section, the open questionnaire was intended just to launch the descriptive exploration, it was very broad and open to any kind of free interpretation and contribution; on the other side, existing literature was used with care during the final discussion, according to the indications given by Strauss and Corbin themselves: “When an investigator has finished his or her data collection and analysis and is in the writing stage, the literature can be used to confirm findings and, just the reverse, findings can be used to illustrate when the literature is incorrect, is overly simplistic, or only partially explains the phenomena” (Strauss AL and Corbin J Basics of qualitative research: techniques and procedures for developing grounded theory (2nd edn) Sage Publications, Thousand Oaks, 1998, pp 52–53).

  8. Indeed, besides the three networks of concepts related to the core categories, the researchers built several additional networks, along with their mutual relationships. The three categories evidenced here were selected as the most significant and investigated in more detail.

  9. From a memo written during interviews: “In SmartCo just one person (Marco) is the company holder, the company CEO and the project leader. The organizational aspects of the project (i.e. coordination mechanisms, task assignment, centralization, specialization, formalization, control, evaluation, hierarchy …) are strictly connected with SmartCo characteristics, like dimension, market approach, business model (custom solutions), nature of the company (originally similar to a one-man company)”.

  10. The team leader was present during this interview and he intervened for better specifying his role.

  11. “In conceptualizing, we are abstracting. Data are broken down into discrete incidents, ideas, events and acts and are the given a name that represents and stands for these. The name may be one placed on the objects by the analyst because of the imagery or meaning they evoke when examined comparatively and in context, or the name may be taken from the words of respondent themselves. The latter are often referred to as “in vivo codes” (Glaser and Strauss 1967)” (Strauss AL and Corbin J Basics of qualitative research: techniques and procedures for developing grounded theory (2nd edn) Sage Publications, Thousand Oaks, 1998 p 105).

  12. The word “insemination” is quite peculiar: it is actually an “in vivo” term, reflecting the Italian expression “inseminazione” actually used by the interviewees.

  13. In particular, “…a contract lists the global constraints that the component will maintain (the invariant). For each operation within the component, a contract also lists the constraints that must be met by the client (the pre-condition), and that the component promises to establish in return (the post-condition). The pre-condition, the invariant and the post-conditions constitute the specification of a component’s behaviour” (Crnkovic I, Hnich B, Jonsson T and Kiziltan Z “Specification, Implementation, and Deployment of Components,” Communications of the ACM 45(10) 2002, p. 37).

  14. i.e. By everyone in the team except the system architect and one junior developer who had lower visibility on system analysis during the project.

  15. The book is very pragmatic and targeted to “perplexed software and management professionals” (p. XX, preface) more than to academic researchers; though, it is founded on deep and extensive empirical evidence, and also very well connected with existing literature on the topic.

  16. “For example, a plan-driven project with 15% Level 2 and 3 people and 40% Level 1B people would initially use >15% Level 2 and 3 people to plan the project, but reduce the number thereafter. An agile project would have everybody working full-time, and the 15% Level 2s and 3s would be swamped trying to mentor the 40% Level 1Bs and the remaining Level 1As while trying to get their own work done as well” (Boehm B and Turner R Balancing Agility and Discipline: A Guide for the Perplexed. Addison-Wesley, Boston, 2004, p 57).

References

  • Alonso G, Kuno H, Casati F, Machiraju V (2003) Web services: concepts, architectures and applications. Springer, Berlin

    Google Scholar 

  • Arsanjani A, Hailpern B, Martin J, Peri T (2003) Web services: promises and compromises. ACM Queue 1:48–58

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Baskerville R, Pries-Heje J (2001) Racing the e-bomb: how the Internet is redefining information system development methodology. In: Russo L, Fitzgerald B, DeGross J (eds) Realigning research and practice in IS development: the social and organisational perspective. Kluwer, New York, pp 49–68

    Google Scholar 

  • Baskerville R, Pries-Heje J (2002) Information system development @ Internet speed: a new paradigm in the making! In: Tenth European conference on information systems. Gdansk, Poland, pp 282–291

    Google Scholar 

  • Baskerville R, Pries-Heje J (2004) Short cycle time system development. Inf Syst J 14(3):237–264

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Baskerville R, Levine L, Balasubramanian R, Pries-Heje J, Slaughter S (2003) Is Internet-speed software development different? IEEE Softw 20(6):70–77

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Bello M, Sorrentino M, Virili F (2002) Web services and emergent organizations. Opportunities and challenges for IS development. In: Tenth European conference on information systems. Gdansk, Poland, pp 439–449

    Google Scholar 

  • Boehm B, Turner R (2004) Balancing agility and discipline: a guide for the perplexed. Addison-Wesley, Boston

    Google Scholar 

  • Booth D, Haas H, McCabe F, Newcomer E, Champion M, Ferris C, Orchard D (eds) (2004) Web services architecture—W3C working group note. http://www.w3.org/TR/ws-arch/. Cited 11 Feb 2004

  • Cockburn A (2002) Agile software development. Addison-Wesley, Boston

    Google Scholar 

  • Crnkovic I, Hnich B, Jonsson T, Kiziltan Z (2002) Specification, implementation, and deployment of components. Commun ACM 45(10):35–40

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Crozier M, Friedberg H (1977) L’acteur et le système. Editions de Seuil, Paris

    Google Scholar 

  • de Geus A, Senge P (1997) The living company. Harvard Business School Press, Boston

    Google Scholar 

  • De Marco M, Sorrentino M (2007) Sowing the seeds of IS cultivation in public service organisations. J Inf Technol 22(2):184–191

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Eisenhardt KM (1989) Building theories from case study research. Acad Manage Rev 14(4):532–550

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Eisenhardt KM (1991) Better stories and better constructs: the case for rigor and comparative logic. Acad Manage Rev 16(3):620–627

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Erl T, Haas H, Karmarkar A, Liu K, Orchard D, Tost A, Walmsley P, Yalcinalp LU (2008) Web service contract design and versioning for SOA. Prentice Hall PTR, Indianapolis

    Google Scholar 

  • Gibb Dyer W, Wilkins A Jr (1991) Better stories not better constructs to generate better theory: a rejoinder to Eisenhardt. Acad Manage Rev 16(3):613–619

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Glass R (2003) A mugwump’s-eye view of web work: choosing a point of entry into a contemporary software development debate. Commun ACM 46(8):21–23

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Iyer B, Freedman J, Gaynor M, Wyner G (2003) Web services: enabling dynamic business networks. Commun Assoc Inf Syst 11:525–554

    Google Scholar 

  • Kautz K, Nørbjerg J (2003) Persistent problems in information system development: the case of the World Wide Web. In: Eleventh European conference on information systems, Naples, Italy

  • Lee A, Baskerville R (2003) Generalizing generalizability in information systems research. Inf Syst Res 14(3):221–243

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Levi K, Arsanjani A (2002) A goal-driven approach to enterprise component identification and specification. Commun ACM 45(10):45–52

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Little T (2005) Context-adaptive agility: managing complexity and uncertainty. IEEE Softw 22(3):28–35

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Lyytinen K, Rose G, Welke R (1998) The brave new world of development in the internetworking computing architecture (interNCA): or how distributed computing platforms will change system development. Inf Syst J 8:241–253

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Markus ML, Robey D (1988) Information technology and organizational change: causal structure in theory and research. Manage Sci 34(5):583–599

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Meyer B (1992) Applying design by contract. Computer 25(10):40–51

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Muhr T, Friese S (2004) User’s manual for ATLAS.ti 5.0, 2nd edn. Scientific Software Development, Berlin

    Google Scholar 

  • Orlikowski W (1993) CASE tools as organizational change: investigating incremental and radical changes in system development. MIS Q 17(3):309–340

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Papazoglou MP, Georgakopoulos D (2003) Service oriented computing: introduction. Commun ACM 46(10):25–28

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Perrone V (1998) Does trust matter? Exploring the effects of interorganizational and interpersonal trust on performance. Organ Sci 9(2):141–159

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Peters T (1991) Thriving on chaos. HarperCollins, New York

    Google Scholar 

  • Rogers S (2005) World Wide Web services software 2005–2009 forecast: let the races begin. Doc #33418. IDC, Framingham, pp 1–26

    Google Scholar 

  • Rossignoli C (2007) The contribution of transaction cost theory and other network-oriented techniques to digital markets. Inf Syst e-Bus Manage. doi:10.1007/s10257-007-0063-z

  • Rossignoli C, Mola L (2004) E.M.P. as enabler of new organisational architectures: an Italian case study. In: Proceedings of the 17th Bled eCommerce conference, Bled, Slovenia, 21–23 June 2004

  • Sommerville I (2000) Software engineering, 6th edn. Addison-Wesley, New York

    Google Scholar 

  • Sorrentino M, Virili F (2005) Web services system development: a grounded theory study. In: Proceedings of the 18th Bled eCommerce conference, Bled, Slovenia, 6–8 June 2005

  • Strauss AL, Corbin J (1998) Basics of qualitative research: techniques and procedures for developing grounded theory, 2nd edn. Sage Publications, Thousand Oaks

    Google Scholar 

  • Thompson JD (1967) Organizations in action. McGraw-Hill, New York

    Google Scholar 

  • Truex DP, Baskerville R, Klein H (1999) Growing systems in emergent organizations. Commun ACM 42(8):117–123

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Truex D, Baskerville R, Travis J (2000) Amethodical system development: the deferred meaning of system development methods. Account Manage Inf Technol 10:53–79

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Virili F, Sorrentino M (2004) Making stable systems grow with Web services: a case study. In: Proceedings of the IFIP WG 8.2 Organizations and Society in Information Systems (OASIS) Workshop, Seattle

  • Yin R (1994) Case study research. Design and methods. Sage Publications, Thousand Oaks

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgements

We are grateful to Richard Baskerville and Duane Truex for their interest, encouragement and stimulation, and particularly to Jan Pries-Heje for his substantial help and direction. Richard and Jan initially introduced us to grounded theory analysis tools and techniques, and let us use their questionnaires for interviews as a model; later on, Jan read and commented early drafts of the paper, managing to find some time for discussion on different occasions. We would like to warmly thank Marco Cavallari, from TeamLab inc. Most of the ideas and concepts presented here were actually originated and shaped during passionate discussions with him. Francesco would like to acknowledge support from DIAM (Dipartimento Impresa, Ambiente e Management, Università degli Studi di Cassino), expressing his gratitude to Prof. Andrea Pontiggia, in general and also in particular, for suggesting the use of the Cmap Tools software. Thanks also to Giacomo Di Gennaro for his friendly contribution on early drafts revision and Elena Beccalli for her lovely and competent support.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Dipartimento Impresa Ambiente e Management, Università degli Studi di Cassino, Via S. Angelo, 03043, Cassino, Italy

    Francesco Virili

  2. Dipartimento di Scienze Economiche, Aziendali e Statistiche, Università degli Studi di Milano, Via Conservatorio 7, 20122, Milan, Italy

    Maddalena Sorrentino

Authors
  1. Francesco Virili
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Maddalena Sorrentino
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Francesco Virili or Maddalena Sorrentino.

Additional information

This paper is the outcome of a joint effort from the two authors, who worked in close collaboration. This version is to be attributed to Maddalena Sorrentino for the last section, and to Francesco Virili for the rest of the paper, but Maddalena gave a substantial contribution in all the phases of research, elaboration and presentation of intermediate results. The initial idea originating this contribution was first proposed as an ECIS research in progress (Bello, Sorrentino and Virili 2002), to evolve at later stages and for different workshops, including (Virili and Sorrentino 2004) and (Sorrentino and Virili 2005).

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Virili, F., Sorrentino, M. The enabling role of Web services in information system development practices: a grounded theory study. Inf Syst E-Bus Manage 8, 207–233 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10257-008-0097-x

Download citation

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10257-008-0097-x

Keywords

Search

Navigation