The High Speed Balancing Game: How Software Companies Cope with Internet Speed

This paper compares and contrasts the practices in developing application software for the Internet in 2000 and 2002. We identify key organizational and technical factors that facilitated or impeded implementation of Internet applications. The identification is done through a grounded theory analysis of data collected from ten companies. A comparison of the 2000 and 2002 data shows how major factors, such as market environment and lack of experience emerged to change the software process and the attitude toward © Scandinavian Journal of Information Systems, 2004, 16:11–54 quality. The comparative study shows how the interrelationship between the core factors of speed and quality, together with the other major factors, unfolded in a decision process wrought with trade-offs and balancing decisions at multiple levels in the software organization. These trade-offs and balancing decisions – a high speed balancing game – are taking place at three different levels: the market, the portfolio, and the project. Balancing game theory extends existing theories about software development trade-off decisions, providing new insights into how such trade-off decisions are translated into software practices. The paper includes a comparative analysis of the findings