Supporting joint application development with electronic meeting systems: A field study.

Abstract

JAD (Joint Application Development) is a meeting-centered methodology used to address the problem of getting users involved in the systems development process. Industry has used the JAD approach to develop systems for over a decade, predominantly for in-house software applications. Electronic Meeting Systems (EMS) are networked software systems that support meetings through a variety of software tools. The combination of the two--JAD and EMS--creates Electronic JAD (E-JAD). A field study was conducted to investigate whether applying EMS to JAD benefits the systems development process. The field study compared five traditional JAD sessions to six E-JAD sessions. All E-JAD sessions made use of the University of Arizona GroupSystems EMS. All sessions involved actual software development efforts conducted in a half dozen organizations and were all held in a face-to-face setting. There was some evidence that the E-JAD approach was beneficial as compared to traditional JAD techniques on the variables of efficiency and equalizing participation and influence. Traditional JAD sessions showed benefits over E-JAD in handling conflicts (particularly in resolving conflicts) and in enforcing a higher degree of structure. Neither of the approaches dominated on all criteria, hence an examination of E-JAD's weaknesses identifies two key areas for improvement: fit of GroupSystems tools to tasks (with discussion of divergence and convergence), and greater involvement of the session facilitator. Other constructs analyzed and discussed are: completeness, creativity, satisfaction, IS-user bonding, user expectations, users' mental models, JAD costs, group size, and planning activities.