A final aspect of the research method concerns my role as a researcher. A researcher’s position resides somewhere along a continuum from an “independent observer” with a descriptive position to an “action researcher” who is actively engaged in a change process (Wareham and Sahay 1999). In my PhD research, I mostly assumed the role of an independent observer. Being a novice researcher and new to the domain of public welfare services, it took almost two years before I gained sufficient insight and confidence to engage in a meaningful analysis of the case. My contribution to the organization thus laid in my role as an active listener and my provision of a safe space for venting frustrations and concerns with the transformation.
My background resembled that of the informants, both in terms of education and work experience. I had worked both as a project manager and a software developer and could effortlessly understand and engage in their problems and concerns. This reduced, and to a large extent eliminated, the distance between us. Social networking tools such as LinkedIn revealed that I shared numerous connections with most of the informants, which induced trust and facilitated the process of gaining access to the organization. A sense of mutual trust and understanding was therefore imperative for gathering insights that went beyond the official narrative. Being able to move freely among the different sites in the IT department, send and receive e-mails from a NAV account, and book meeting rooms in the company calendar also strengthened my sense of being an “insider”
and my ability to build trust with the informants.
To verify my observations and interpretations, I discussed them with members of the organization throughout my fieldwork. More formal feedback was also given through workshops and academic papers. Figure 8 gives an example of the illustrations drawn on the white board during one of these workshops. The process of presenting and discussing my findings helped to uncover misunderstandings and provide additional details regarding the narrative. For instance, some informants suggested additional events and decisions that could be added to the timeline. This process also resulted in a greater awareness of different opposing opinions and views, thus illustrating the principles of multiple interpretations and suspicion by Klein and Myers (1999).
Figure 8 - White board drawings from a presentation of the key findings given to the informants
5 Results
Enclosed in this thesis are the following five papers:
Paper 1. Vestues, Kathrine; Bjørnson, Finn Olav. (2016). Agile requirements work in a digital transformation project: Managing diverse and dispersed user needs. Paper presented at the International Research Workshop on IT Project Management (IRWITPM)
Paper 2. Dingsøyr, Torgeir; Mikalsen, Marius; Solem, Anniken; Vestues, Katherine. (2018) Learning in the Large: An Exploratory Study of Retrospectives in Large-Scale Agile Development. Agile Processes in Software Engineering and Extreme Programming, 19th International Conference, XP 2018, Proceedings.
Paper 3. Rolland, Knut; Vestues, Kathrine. Inertia and change in transformation of the IT-function in large organizations: A path theory lens. Accepted to NOKOBIT 2020
Paper 4. Vestues, Kathrine; Rolland, Knut, Platformizing the Organization through Decoupling and Recoupling: A longitudinal Case Study of a Government Agency, (2021) Initially submitted to the Scandinavian Conference of Information Systems (2019) and later fast-tracked and accepted to the Scandinavian Journal of Information Systems (2021).
Paper 5. Vestues, Kathrine; Mikalsen, Marius, Eric Monteiro (2021), Using digital platforms to promote a service-oriented logic in public sector organizations: A case study, Accepted to the 54th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences. Nominated for the “Best paper award” in the “Digital Government” track.
In addition, three papers were published during my PhD work that were not included in this thesis.
A Vestues, Kathrine. (2016). Planned Research: Scaling Agile Practices in Software Development. Paper presented at the XP2016 Doctoral consortium.
B Bjørnson, Finn Olav; Vestues, Kathrine; Rolland, Knut-Helge. (2017) Coordination in the large: a research design. XP2017 Proceedings of the XP2017 Scientific Workshops, Cologne, Germany — May 22 - 26, 2017 C Vestues, Kathrine. Rolland, Knut Helge. (2019). Making digital
infrastructures more generative. Paper presented at the Tenth Scandinavian Conference on Information Systems (SCIS2019), Nokia, Finland.
Paper A was written during the first months of my PhD work and thus presents an early version of the research design. Paper B, which was written in collaboration with one of the researchers in Agile 2.0, addresses the challenges of co-creation in large-scale projects but is based on fieldwork conducted by other members of the SINTEF research group. Paper C is based on the preliminary findings of the NAV case. The insights gained through the writing of this paper thus fed into the later papers. Paper D was presented at the Scandinavian Conference on Information Systems in 2019. This paper was fast-tracked to the Scandinavian Journal of Information Systems and later published as a journal article (Paper 4).
These papers were written throughout the duration of my PhD project and reflect the theoretical development of the work, as presented in section 0. The first two papers (Papers 1 and 2) discuss the challenges associated with agile development in large-scale settings. Both papers were published in software engineering outlets and were intended to contribute to the software engineering field. The third paper (Paper 3) discusses the role of inertia in digital transformations and uses NAV as an empirical setting. The last two papers (Papers 4 and 5) employ service-dominant logic as a theoretical lens, discussing how digital platforms and platformization contribute to the co-creation of value. Papers 3, 4, and 5 are directed towards the information systems community. In addition, Paper 5 contributes to the digital government literature by explicitly discussing its findings in the public sector context. Table 6 presents a summary of the papers included in this thesis, the fields where they were published or submitted, their empirical and theoretical grounding, and their contributions.
Table 6. Overview of the empirical and theoretical grounding and contribution of each paper included in the thesis.
Paper Empirical case Theoretical lens Contribution Paper 1
[SE]
Marine case Scaling of agile development requirements engineering in a large-scale context.
• Empirically grounded study on agile practices in a large-scale context.
• Explores the challenges involved in learning across teams.
Paper 3
• Theorizes how existing legacy systems are discontinued in processes of decoupling.
• Portrays how the decoupling of legacy systems enables novel
• Theorizes how decoupling and recoupling processes interact
In the following section, I describe the results of each of the articles listed above in light of the general case framing and theoretical perspectives described in chapter 2. The papers are presented in chronological order.