The Evolving Object of Software Development

Abstract

This paper contributes to an ongoing debate on the effects of bureaucratic rationalization on relatively non-routine, knowledge-work activities. It focuses on the Software Engineering Institute’s Capability Maturity Model (CMM®) for software development. In particular, it explores how the CMM affects the object of software developers’ work and thereby affects organization structure. Empirical evidence is drawn from interviews in four units of a large software consulting firm. First, using contingency theory, I address the technical dimensions of the development object. Here CMM implementation reduced task uncertainty and helped master task complexity and interdependence. Second, using institutional theory, I broaden the focus to include the symbolic dimensions of the object. Adherence to the CMM involved the sampled organizations in efforts to ensure certification, and these symbolic conformance tasks interacted in both disruptive and productive ways with technical improvement tasks. Finally, using cultural-historical activity theory, I deepen the focus to include the social-structural dimensions of the object. Through these lenses, the software development task appears as basically contradictory, aiming simultaneously at use value, in the form of great code, and at exchange value, in the form of high fees and profits: the CMM deepened rather than resolved this contradiction. The form of organization associated with these mutations of the object of work is a form of bureaucracy that is simultaneously mock, coercive, and enabling.