COMMUNITY SOURCE AS A NEW APPROACH TO ENTERPRISE APPLICATION DEVELOPMENT: EXPLORATION OF TECHNOLOGICAL AND MANAGERIAL ISSUES

Abstract

Community-based open source (community source) has emerged as a new approach of developing enterprise software systems that requires participation and investments from partner institutions. This new approach provides the opportunity for institutions to pool resources together to achieve objectives that are hard to reach individually. In my dissertation, community-based development of enterprise applications is examined in a real world project called Kuali through the following three perspectives: technology perspective, economic perspective and management perspective. Under the technology perspective, the main research question is "how do service-oriented architectures enable technology flexibility in community source?" The Kuali case provides the initial context for understanding the basic concepts and insights surrounding the technological issues in community source. Under the economic perspective, the main research question is "why are institutions interested in investing in community source?" The case study and analytical modeling are used to better understand the decision-making process in community source. Under the management perspective, two main research questions are studied. The first research question is "what are the factors affecting the project success in community source development?" The case study, the surveys and the interviews are conducted to test the community source project success model. The second research question is "what are the motivations for outsourcing software development in community source?" Based on the results of our interview analysis, we propose a research framework for community source outsourcing. In the long term, I would like to develop a generic framework for describing the process of acquiring application software via either commercial, open source, or home grown approach. My research will concentrate on comparing these three application development approaches with a special focus on community source. The main contribution of my dissertation is to provide guideline for strategic planning and decision making in an institution. The finding in this dissertation research will provide significant insights on the selection of various software development approaches that are useful for both researchers and practitioners.