Past MIS research has indicated a mixed relationship between user participation and user satisfaction with system development projects, suggesting that user participation is not equally effective in all situations. This has led researchers to investigate the contexts within which user participation can be used to improve user satisfaction. This study builds on this past body of research by examining the relationship between specific user participative behaviors and user satisfaction in different contextual situations in order to identify the most successful participative behaviors. To do this, data were collected from 151 independent system development projects in eight different organizations. The context of development was described by two factors--task complexity and system complexity. As suggested in the literature, the combination of these two contextual factors determine the need for user participation. The relationship between specific participative behaviors and user satisfaction was then examined where the need for participation was high and those results were compared with situations with a lower need for participation. Not all participative behaviors were equally effective in all situations. Depending on the level of task complexity and system complexity, some user participative behaviors resulted in improved user satisfaction, while others had no relationship with satisfaction. The results add to earlier studies by identifying those specific user participative behaviors most beneficial under different contexts. The implications apply to both practitioners involved in the development of systems and academicians seeking to explain where and how user participation should be used. Strategies based on the results are suggested for the most appropriate involvement for users during system development.
Changes in the knowledge and skill requirements of information systems (IS) positions were examined by analyzing the content of advertisements for IS professionals placed in four major newspapers over the 20-year period 1970-1990. Three types of jobs were examined: programmers, systems analysts, and IS managers. The analysis of the frequency of phrases in these advertisements suggests that job ads for programmers have changed very little-technical requirements remain high, and business and systems knowledge requirements remain relatively low (although the frequency of mention of business requirements has increased somewhat). IS management positions are also relatively stable (as reflected in the makeup of job ads) from the standpoint that business knowledge requirements have remained high, with technical and systems requirements specified less frequently. The greatest transition in specified job requirements over this 20-year period has occurred for systems analysts. Although this is perhaps not surprising, the nature of this transition is. Contrary to expectations, the relative frequency and proportion of stated technical knowledge requirements in ads have increased dramatically, while the relative frequency of business and systems knowledge requirements has actually decreased slightly. These results raise questions concerning the implicit understanding by academics and practitioners alike of the need for business knowledge on the part of systems analysts and other IS professionals. Various interpretations of these findings are provided, and the implications for both education and recruitment are discussed.
User participation has been widely touted by the MIS community as a means to improve user satisfaction within systems development. This claim, however, has not been consistently substantiated in the empirical literature. In seeking to explain such equivocal results, the effects of four contingency factors-task complexity, system complexity, user influence, and user- developer communication-on the relationship between user participation and user satisfaction were investigated. As suggested in the literature, this research tests hypotheses that these specific contingency factors should aid in identifying situations where user participation would have a strong relationship with satisfaction. Analysis of 151 independent systems development projects in eight different organizations indicated that user participation has a direct relationship with user satisfaction. In addition, the four contingency factors were found to play key roles on this relationship. Task complexity and system complexity proved to be pure moderators. That is, the strength of the participation-satisfaction relationship depended on the level of these factors. In projects where there was a high level of task complexity or system complexity, the relationship between user participation and user satisfaction was significantly stronger than in projects where task complexity or system complexity was low. User influence and user-developer communication were shown to be independent predictors of user satisfaction. That is, user influence, or user-developer communication, was positively related to user satisfaction regardless of the level of participation. The results help explain the relationship between user participation and user satisfaction by suggesting the nature of the relationship under different sets of conditions. The implications are relevant to systems developers and to academicians seeking to explain how, when, why, and where user participation is needed.
In a field study of thirty-two business application systems, the relationship between the time spent in various phases of the development life cycle and the outcome of the development was examined. Results indicate that systems which spent more time in the analysis phase required less time to code, resulted in greater user satisfaction, and were developed in agreement with established budgets and deadlines. These results suggest preferred strategies for the development of application systems and have implications for their successful management and control.