An estimation of the decision models of senior IS managers when evaluating the external quality of organizational software

  • Authors:

  • Bonnie Brinton Anderson;Akhilesh Bajaj;Wilpen Gorr

  • Affiliations:

  • The H. John Heinz III School of Public Policy and Management, 2105 C Hamburg Hall, Carnegie Mellon University, 5000 Forbes Avenue, Pittsburgh, PA;The H. John Heinz III School of Public Policy and Management, 2105 C Hamburg Hall, Carnegie Mellon University, 5000 Forbes Avenue, Pittsburgh, PA;The H. John Heinz III School of Public Policy and Management, 2105 C Hamburg Hall, Carnegie Mellon University, 5000 Forbes Avenue, Pittsburgh, PA

  • Venue:
  • Journal of Systems and Software
  • Year:
  • 2002

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Abstract

The increased usage of software in large corporations, coupled with the explosion in software availability has made it important to evaluate software quality (SQ) from the point of view of its consumers. In this study, we focus on the external quality (quality from the point of view of the consumer) of off-the-shelf software used in large corporations. We refine external software quality into four factors. Next, we utilize conjoint analysis (CA) to study the relative values of these factors in the decision models of senior IS managers, when evaluating software for use by their organization. Our results indicate that software used in large corporations today has evolved, so that, contrary to earlier studies that indicate learnability and features as important, it is now the reliability of the software that is the primary factor in IS managers' decision models. The findings have implications for IS theory, and provide guidelines for resource allocation for software developers, IS managers, researchers in the area of software reliability and designers of IS curricula.