The state of systems development methodologies use within the systems development organisations in South Africa

Abstract

The adoption of the most appropriate systems development methodology (SDM) for a systems developmentproject is one of the most critical decisions in systems development practice. An appropriate SDM for a sys-tems development project is adopted to avoid a misfit of a systems development methodology to the systemsdevelopment project contextual settings. An SDM misfit is caused by an SDM whose basic assumptions havebeen violated by the targeted systems development project contextual settings. A misfit may increase theeffort required for an SDM in use to fit the systems development project contextual settings. The study aimsto investigate the contingent use of SDMs as an approach to minimise SDM misfit in a systems developmentproject. The purpose of the article is to present insights on the contingent use of SDMs derived from a surveyof 155 organisations involved in systems development. The results show that both plan-driven and agile SDMclass instances are in use and that hybrid SDMs characterise most SDM implementations. The findings haveimplications for both research and practice as they unify the use of the two SDM classes under the contingentuse of SDMs approach.