Joint application design (JAD) in practice

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Abstract

Joint application design (JAD) is an intuitively appealing systems development method that encompasses approaches for enhancing user participation, expediting development, and improving the quality of specifications. Although the JAD method has been widely acclaimed, little is actually known about its effectiveness in practice. This paper reports findings of a field study at three organizations in which JAD practices were examined to assess how practice influenced outcomes of JAD use. Findings suggest that the organizations realized modest improvements in systems development outcomes by using the JAD method. JAD use was most effective in small, clearly focused projects and less effective in large, complex projects. Findings also suggest that practices for using JAD at the research sites reduced its potential effectiveness by limiting user participation, focusing workshop exercises on developers' analytical models and terminology, and applying the JAD method prematurely in large projects. Adaptations of the JAD method in practice stemmed from unresolved conflicts between assumptions underlying the espoused JAD method and the status quo IS development approach at each organization. Implications for the effectiveness of the JAD method as a software process improvement are considered.

Introduction

Joint application design (JAD) is a generic term which describes a variety of proprietary and custom-developed methods for conducting workshops in which users and technical developers work together on information system (IS) project planning, requirements definition, user interface design, or other activities. A key feature of JAD is the use of a session leader trained in group dynamic techniques to facilitate the workshop sessions. Steps for setting workshop objectives, identifying participants, and selecting analytical tasks and documentation are also specified. (See Carmel et al. (1993)for an overview of the JAD method and Wood and Silver (1995)for a practitioner guide.) Well-known systems development methodologies such as Information Engineering (Martin, 1990) and Rapid Application Design (Andrews, 1991) prescribe the use of JAD workshops in conjunction with other analytical methods to improve and expedite system specification activities. JAD methods have been heralded by consultants (Andrews, 1991; Rush, 1985) and enthusiastically endorsed by organizations reporting improvements in system quality, IS productivity, development time, or user commitment resulting from JAD use (Aiosa, 1989; Bradley, 1989; Duncan, 1990; Kettelkut, 1997; Keyes, 1989).

Despite these testimonials, we know little about the efficacy of a joint user/developer workshop approach in systems specification activities or the potential of the JAD method to improve systems development outcomes. One industry study indicated that JAD, when used in combination with other software process improvement techniques, may contribute to software error prevention (Jones, 1991), but the specific contributions of the JAD method to this type of improvement are unclear. Academic researchers have examined the effects of using groupware technology in JAD workshops (Carmel et al., 1995; Liou and Chen, 1993), but thus far research has not addressed fundamental questions about the efficacy of the JAD method as a software process improvement. In particular, research has not examined the role that practice may play in realizing benefits from JAD use, yet the JAD method has been applied to a variety of system specification activities from simple meeting facilitation to highly structured workshops (Kettelkut, 1997; Wood and Silver, 1995).

Such a variation in practice clearly may have implications for the effectiveness of the JAD method. There is often a gap between the way a systems development method is portrayed in scientific and technical literature and its application in an organizational context (Bansler and Bødker, 1993). Gaps between espoused methods and practice result not only from misunderstanding or lack of training but also from organizational constraints on how a method may feasibly be applied. Thus, when evaluating a method's effectiveness, it is important to consider how the method is actually applied in practice and whether organizational constraints on practice limit its benefits. In the case of the JAD method, such systematic field research on JAD practices is lacking. Thus, the goals of this exploratory research project were to investigate how the JAD method has been applied in practice, to examine organizational constraints on practice that may affect outcomes of JAD use, and to consider the effectiveness of JAD as a software process improvement given organizational constraints on practice. This paper reports the findings of a field study of JAD practices in three business organizations and discusses the relationship between JAD-as-practiced and reported benefits of JAD use. Implications of these findings for the effectiveness of the JAD method as a software process improvement are also considered.

Section snippets

Field study methodology

The research study was conducted at three business organizations, each having more than three years experience using a JAD method. The research sites were selected as a convenience sample drawn from a group of about 15 companies participating in a regional JAD facilitators user group. Each research site was a medium- to large-sized financial services company in the northeast United States, with four to eight thousand employees in the headquarters office. The three organizations had adopted a

Findings and analysis

Three areas of JAD practice at the research sites were identified that reflected organizational constraints on use of the JAD method or that affected outcomes of JAD use. These findings are discussed in the following sections and relationships between JAD-as-practiced and reported benefits of JAD use are considered.

Discussion

The findings of this exploratory study suggest that the three research sites realized modest improvements in systems development processes and outcomes by using the JAD method. Informants reported improvements in requirements definition, IS efficiency, mutual learning between IS and users, and so on in 10–30% of the projects examined. Systems development outcomes stemmed in large part from conducting specification activities in the JAD workshop setting. That is, IS personnel spent less time

Conclusions

JAD is an intuitively appealing system specification method that encompasses approaches for enhancing user participation, expediting development activities, and improving the quality of systems specifications. The JAD method has been widely acclaimed, but little is actually known about its effectiveness in practice. In this field study, JAD practices at three organizations were examined to determine how the espoused JAD method has been applied in practice and to assess how JAD practices

Dr. Elizabeth Davidson is an assistant professor in the Department of Decision Sciences at the College of Business Administration at the University of Hawaii, Manoa. Dr. Davidson worked for fifteen years as a systems developer and project manager at several Fortune 500 firms before earning her Ph.D. in Management from the Sloan School of Management at MIT. Her research and teaching interests include information systems development and software process improvement in organizations, clinical

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