Published online by Cambridge University Press: 22 September 2009
Applying organisation development techniques to software processes
Our approach is based on intervention techniques from the field of organisation development, which tries to improve the way organisations work in practice. The tradition of organisation development, which spans both management strategy (Mintzberg, 1989) and implementation (Mullins, 1994; Handy, 1993; French and Bell, 1973; Tyson and Jackson, 1992), tends to treat strategy, management and work as iterative processes which are ‘crafted’, informal and sensitive to organisational style and human motivation rather than top-down, scientific or rational. These authors show how selective outside interventions can sometimes be helpful in surfacing issues, identifying problems and stimulating new working practices in firms (French and Bell, 1973). Underpinning this approach is the belief that dealing with soft, informal, human processes is essential to organisational improvement.
The method, described in detail in Hobday and Brady (2000), involved five basic steps, each with more detailed subprocesses and outputs (see Figure B.1). In Step 1 we agreed with management and practitioners the scope, aims, outputs and timing of the exercise, and identified a structured group of interviewees. In Step 2 we collected data on rational processes as contained in toolkits, manuals, flow charts, formal procedures – and from interviews with senior managers on how the process ‘should’ proceed. Process analysts at Dynamics contributed to the questionnaire design and to capturing, diagrammatically, the formal company processes.
Data were then gathered from practitioners on how the process actually proceeded in project Triumph, using a structured questionnaire.
To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.
Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.
Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.