Structural change and change advocacy: a study in becoming a software engineering organization

Most organizations desire higher-quality, lower-cost IS projects. To achieve this goal, many organizations are moving to formal project management and software engineering practices. Two tools that are used to formalize processes and practices are structured development and maintenance methodologies (SDMM), and the Software Engineering Institute´s Capability Maturity Model (SEI CMM). While SDMMs and the CMM are excellent tools to instill project discipline in IS organizations, they are not silver bullets. A great deal of cultural and structural change must first occur. Other changes include reward systems, online shared services and knowledge reuse. This longitudinal study examines one 500-person IS organization over a four-year time period. The results of this study confirm previous literature on change advocacy, and yield rich insight into how to change a typical ad-hoc IS organization into a software engineering organization.