Challenging the “IS” in ISD: From Software to Sociotechnical Systems Design and Development

Information Systems Development (ISD) literature generally assumes software to be the object of design and development in ISD processes and thereby equates the term “Information System” (IS), with “Information Technology” (IT). An alternative interpretation of ISD is that it involves the design and development of IS as sociotechnical systems. In this conceptual paper, we suggest that ISD researchers can leverage the unique sociotechnical focus of the IS field to contribute to developing a notion of ISD that sees sociotechnical systems, rather than software, as its object of design and development. We discuss how moving to sociotechnical systems as the object of design and development has several important consequences for how we understand the ISD process and propose some questions and three avenues for further ISD research.