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This paper challenges the often-perceived view that the systems development process is almost exclusively technical and predominantly rational. This prevalent position is often coupled with a view of information systems methodology as providing common standards of practice and documentation. Whilst the authors are aware of other challenges to this prevailing paradigm this paper investigates the information systems development process from the viewpoints of those directly involved. The authors used Grounded Theory procedures to elicit a local empirical model of the information systems development process to discover what happens in practice.

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In this paper we argue that for systems developers who intervene in organizationally dependent phases of information systems development, such as requirements determination, then the engagement with social actors may be considered to be an interpretive research act. The argument is illustrated by action case studies in which one of the authors intervened in two situations with an explicit sociological perspective and analysis methods more usually associated with qualitative social science research. We argue that this places an onus on systems developers to be both explicit in their assumptions and critically re¯ective in their thinking.0268± 3962

Grounded theory has been gaining ground in Information Systems as a research method in recent years. Grounded theory has been increasingly used and discussed in IS literature spanning the past decade. This development mirrors the establishment and wide adoption of qualitative research in information systems which has led to a diversity of approaches in qualitative analysis, among them grounded theory. The panel examines different applications of grounded theory in information systems, and addresses a number of issues that stem from the use of grounded theory in information systems research.