The role of international standards to corroborate artefact development and evaluation: Experiences from a design science research project in process assessment

Abstract

International standards were used to corroborate artefact development and evaluation in a Design Science Research (DSR) project within the context of Process Assessments in IT Service Management (ITSM). While there have been significant research efforts towards extending DSR guidelines and the development and revisions of the standards, reports of the application of International Standards to validate DSR artefacts are scant. DSR, akin to any academic research, is required to demonstrate rigour and relevance with the use of theories and prior knowledge. Moreover, DSR presents an artefact as a solution to a class of problems and reports how the artefact is developed and evaluated. Our DSR project demonstrated that concerns about the quality of artefacts can be addressed and thereby the utility and validity of the artefact can be verified with the use of International Standards. Using three International Standards, process assessment ISO/IEC 15504-33000 series, IT Service Management ISO/IEC 20000, and System and Software Quality Models ISO/IEC 25010, this paper presents an account of a real-life DSR project that demonstrates the significant role of International Standards to guide DSR researchers during artefact design, development and evaluation.