Antecedents to systems development: beliefs of information systems specialists and users

This research project was undertaken to investigate an area of information systems development that had received sparse attention: users' and IS specialists' beliefs that may influence their interaction during the information requirements determination process. A general User/IS Specialist Interaction Framework was presented that postulates that the interaction between users and IS specialists during information systems development can be conceptualized as a set of behaviors. These behaviors are derived from: (1) users' and IS specialists' beliefs toward these behaviors; and (2) extemal factors that moderate the intended behaviors. In essence, the beliefs and extemal factors are antecedents to user/IS specialist interaction during development. Based on these propositions, a set of research questions directed at discovering the beliefs of users and IS specialists and the differences between these beliefs toward the information requirements determination process was developed. A two-stage empirical study was conducted to address these questions.

The results of this work can be summarized as follows. First, it appears that users as a group, despite differences in experience, training, etc., do have a common set of beliefs toward the critical productivity factors influencing the information requirements determination process. Second, it appears that IS specialists as a group, despite differences in experience, training, and methods used, also have a common set of beliefs toward the critical productivity factors influencing information requirements determination. Third, the empirical evidence suggests that overall users and IS specialists disagree with regard to the relative level of importance of the critical productivity factors identified. Fourth, it appears that the beliefs of users toward the relative importance of several of the critical productivity factors for information requirements determination are significantly related to their level of involvement with the developed system. Fifth, it does not appear that the beliefs of users toward the relative importance of critical productivity factors for infomiation requirements determination are necessarily significantly related to their level of satisfaction with the developed system.