Organizational obstacles to interface design and development: two participant-observer studies
ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction (TOCHI)
Expertise and Innovation: Information Technology Strategies in the Financial Services Sector
Expertise and Innovation: Information Technology Strategies in the Financial Services Sector
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This case study follows the twists and turns in a corporate intranet application project within a large UK bank. It reveals decision-making-from the project's inception through to its development and testing-to be a highly politicized process as various players sought to use the project as a vehicle for pushing forward their own particular agendas. A key consequence of this was that usability issues-if they were considered at all at this time - often took second place to the needs of political deal making. That these deals were critical to gaining approval for the project seems undeniable, but they also jeopardized the prospects of achieving a usable application, often leaving usability staff to "pick up the pieces".The case study illustrates the often highly political character of organizational IT projects, and demonstrates the importance for usability experts of getting involved at the earlier, formative stages of the project life cycle, when many of the decisions that will map out a project's organizational and technical trajectories are actually made. Though it is unlikely to challenge radically the political character of project decision-making processes, it would at least enable usability experts to become players. As other IT professionals have found out before them, to have responsibility without power is an unenviable position in which to find oneself in any organization (Fincham et al., 1994). Names have been changed throughout.