Taxonomic dimensions for studying situational method development

Abstract

This paper is concerned with fragmented literature on situational method development, which is one of fundamental topics related to information systems development (ISD) methods. As the topic has attracted many scholars from various and possibly complementary schools of thought, different interpretations and understandings of key notions related to method development are present. In this paper, we regard such understandings as both challenges and opportunities for studying this topic. Upon the extensive review of relevant research, this paper shows how this literature fragmentation has resulted in and what needs to be done to make sense of the various understandings for studying situational ISD methods. For the latter, we propose the use of a number of taxonomic dimensions. We argue that these dimensions can help to ease the conduct of literature review and to position disparate research endeavors concerning situational method development properly. In particular, we discuss three basic studies to demonstrate how the taxonomic dimensions can be useful in studying the subject matter. © 2007 International Federation for Information Processing.