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Paper Number
ICIS2025-1943
Paper Type
Complete
Abstract
Agile information systems development (ISD) processes in organizational digitalization increasingly extend beyond delivering software products to being directly accountable and responsive to organizational improvement. In contrast to traditional product-oriented ISD, these efforts face not only uncertainties related to evolving product requirements but also deeper uncertainties about complex organizational problems and the often unpredictable effects of organizational interventions. This calls for distinct ways of sensing and responding. Yet, our conceptual language to articulate these differences remains underdeveloped. This paper contributes to the ISD agility literature by distinguishing between product-oriented and system-oriented agility, and examines key forms of sensing and responding in system-oriented agility: representational and actual sensing, and intervention-altering and frame-altering responses. We show how these forms of sensing and responding play out in an ISD initiative aimed at improving a hospital office service and discuss the characteristics, strengths, and limitations of each form.
Recommended Citation
Li, Magnus, "System-Oriented ISD Agility: Sensing and Responding beyond Product Qualities" (2025). ICIS 2025 Proceedings. 9.
https://aisel.aisnet.org/icis2025/isdesign/isdesign/9
System-Oriented ISD Agility: Sensing and Responding beyond Product Qualities
Agile information systems development (ISD) processes in organizational digitalization increasingly extend beyond delivering software products to being directly accountable and responsive to organizational improvement. In contrast to traditional product-oriented ISD, these efforts face not only uncertainties related to evolving product requirements but also deeper uncertainties about complex organizational problems and the often unpredictable effects of organizational interventions. This calls for distinct ways of sensing and responding. Yet, our conceptual language to articulate these differences remains underdeveloped. This paper contributes to the ISD agility literature by distinguishing between product-oriented and system-oriented agility, and examines key forms of sensing and responding in system-oriented agility: representational and actual sensing, and intervention-altering and frame-altering responses. We show how these forms of sensing and responding play out in an ISD initiative aimed at improving a hospital office service and discuss the characteristics, strengths, and limitations of each form.
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