Designing TRiDS: Treatments for Risks in Design Science

Authors

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.3127/ajis.v23i0.1847

Keywords:

Design Science Research, DSR, Risk Management, Risk Treatment

Abstract

Design Science Research (DSR) has many risks. Researchers inexperienced in DSR, especially early career researchers (ECRs) and research students (e.g. PhD students) risk inefficient projects (with delays, rework, etc.) at best and research project failure at worst if they do not manage and treat DSR risks in a proactive manner. The DSR literature, such as the Risk Management Framework for Design Science Research (RMF4DSR), provides advice for identifying risks, but provides few suggestions for specific treatments for the kinds of risks that potentially plague DSR. This paper describes the development of a new purposeful artefact (TRiDS: Treatments for Risks in Design Science) to address this lack of suggestions for treatment of DSR risks. The paper describes how the purposeful artefact was developed (following a DSR methodology), what literature it draws upon to inspire its various components, the functional requirements identified for TRiDS, and how TRiDS is structured and why. The paper also documents the TRiDS purposeful artefact in detail, including four main components: (1) an extended set of risk checklists (extended from RMF4DSR), (2) a set of 47 specific suggestions for treating known risks in DSR, (3) a classification of the treatments identified into 14 different categories, and (4) a look-up table for identifying candidate treatments based on a risk in the extended risk checklists. The treatment suggestions and guidance in TRiDS serve as a supplement to RMF4DSR by helping DSR researchers to identify treatments appropriate for a particular DSR project (or program) and thereby to improve DSR project efficiency and the probability of DSR project success.

Author Biographies

John R Venable, Curtin University

John Venable is Associate Professor and Discipline Lead Business Information Systems in the School of Management  and Co-Director of the Curtin Business School Not-for-Profit Research Initiative (a group of staff who conduct research on the NfP sector and NfP organisational practices and issues), both at Curtin University, Perth, Western Australia, where he also served as Director of Research and Head of School of the former School of Information Systems. He has held academic positions in Information Systems and Computer Science in the USA, Denmark, New Zealand, and Australia. He has published in international conferences and journals including The European Journal of Information Systems, Journal of Information Technology, Information & Management, The Information Systems Journal, Information Technology & People, Communications of the Association for Information Systems, The Scandinavian Journal of Information Systems, The Journal of Community Informatics, Wirtschaftsinformatik, and The Electronic Journal of Business Research Methods. Concerning Design Science Research (DSR), Dr Venable has published over 50 refereed papers about or using DSR, co-chaired the 11th International Conference on Design Science Research in Information Systems and Technology (DESRIST 2016), co-organised the 2010 IFIP Working Groups 8.2 and 8.6 Joint International Working Conference on “Human Benefit through the Diffusion of Information Systems Design Science Research”, and co-edited a special issue of Information Technology and People on “Design and Diffusion of Systems for Human Benefit”. His other research interests include IS development and planning methods and practice; organisational, IS and data modelling; ontologies; problem solving methods; qualitative and critical research; research methods; organisational culture and change management; knowledge management and organisational learning; Group Support Systems and collaborative work; digital library systems; and the application and management of IS and IT to support not-for-profit organisations.

Jan vom Brocke, University of Liechtenstein

Jan vom Brocke is a professor for Information Systems at the University of Liechtenstein. He is the Hilti Endowed Chair of Business Process Management, Director of the Institute of Information Systems, and Vice-President Research and Innovation of the University.

Jan has published more than 400 papers in, among others, Management Information Systems Quarterly (MISQ), Journal of Management Information Systems (JMIS), Journal of Information Technology (JIT), European Journal of Information System (EJIS), Information Systems Journal (ISJ), Communications of the ACM (CACM) as well as practitioner journals such as Management Information Systems Quarterly Executive (MISQe) and MIT Sloan Management Review (SMR).

He is author and editor of 34 books, including the International Handbook on Business Process Management (with M. Rosemann), BPM. Driving Innovation in a Digital World (with T. Schmiedel) and BPM Cases. Digital Innovation and Business Transformation in Practice (with J. Mending). His research has attracted over 30 Million EUR in funding and has been awarded with over 20 international awards. 

Robert Winter, University of St Gallen

Robert Winter is Professor of Business Informatics at the University of St. Gallen (HSG) and Director of the Institute for Business Informatics at the HSG. He was the founding director of the Executive Master of Business Engineering at the HSG and the academic director of the PhD program in Management at the HSG School of Management. 

In addition to basic research on the methodology of design-oriented research, he works mainly in the areas of enterprise architecture management and control of large (transformation and IT) projects.
He is the author or publisher of more than 20 books and more than 300 scientific publications in German and English. He is and has also been active in the editorial community of several leading scientific journals, e.g. European Journal of Information Systems (EJIS) or Business & Information Systems Engineering.

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Published

2019-07-08

How to Cite

Venable, J. R., vom Brocke, J., & Winter, R. (2019). Designing TRiDS: Treatments for Risks in Design Science. Australasian Journal of Information Systems, 23. https://doi.org/10.3127/ajis.v23i0.1847

Issue

Vol. 23 (2019)

Section

Selected Papers from the Australasian Conference on Information Systems (ACIS)

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