Longitudinal use of method rationale in method configuration: an exploratory study

Organizations that implement a company-wide method to standardize the way that systems development is carried out still have a need to adapt this method to specific projects. When adapting this method the end results should align with the basic philosophy of the original method. To this end, goal-driven situational method engineering has been proposed. However, there are no longitudinal studies on systems developers’ use of such approaches and their intentions to balance their need of adaptation with the basic philosophy of the original method. This paper explores how goal-driven method configuration has been used by two project teams in six successive systems development projects, with the intention to balance the goals and values of a specific method with the systems developers’ need for method adaptation. We do that through the use of method rationality resonance theory. Through content examples of method configurations, we report on (a) lessons learned from the project teams’ work on balancing the goals of the company-wide method with their needs and (b) theoretical development of the method rationality resonance theory.