Systems development as a research act

In this paper we argue that for systems developers who intervene in organizationally dependent phases of information systems development, such as requirements determination, then the engagement with social actors may be considered to be an interpretive research act. The argument is illustrated by action case studies in which one of the authors intervened in two situations with an explicit sociological perspective and analysis methods more usually associated with qualitative social science research. We argue that this places an onus on systems developers to be both explicit in their assumptions and critically reflective in their thinking.