lection, triangulation through multiple sources of evidence, and maintenance of a chain of evidence.
17, 27
The data-collection effort included
semi-structured interviews with Kuali
participants, direct observation of
project events, milestone review presentations, minutes of meetings, and
formal project documentation. We
coded interview transcripts, observa-tional field notes, and documentary
evidence using NVivo, a qualitative
data-analysis tool. We conducted data
collection and analysis in line with
grounded theory methodology, including adherence to the principles
of constant comparison and open,
axial, and selective coding.
10, 22
Data collection. We began to look
into Kuali in 2005, conducting formal
interviews during three different periods of time in which respondents were
encouraged to discuss their Kuali participation in an open-ended fashion.
We asked them to share their project
experience, reflecting on their activities, problems encountered, lessons
learned, how they or others interacted,
steps taken to resolve problems, and
general perceptions of the benefits and
challenges of the community source
development experience. We further
asked for their perceptions of project success and project control. Most
questions were open-ended and nondirective. In each interview session, we
allowed for flexibility to focus on particular questions, factual information,
and evaluative comments while skipping others based on a respondent’s
personal experience and expertise.
In addition to these largely un-
structured impressions, we probed
specific topics about the Kuali ini-
tiative. These more formal inquiry
elements varied somewhat across
interview periods. We conducted the
first phase of interviewing in Novem-
ber 2008 with questions focusing
largely on development issues from
Kuali projects. We asked respondents
about their role in a project, the tasks
in which they were involved, and the
deliverables for which they were re-
sponsible. We conducted the second
round of interviews in November
2011, with greater emphasis on Kuali
deployment issues. We conducted
the third round in May and July 2012
with questions focusing on perceived
participating institutions, each di-
recting its own human resources,
creates a common collaborative in-
frastructure all participants can le-
verage.
25 Community source thus
creates a formal virtual organization
to which partnering institutions con-
tribute resources toward developing
custom software solutions in differ-
ent locations at different times.
13
Despite drawing on the strengths of
both commercial and open source
models, community source remains a
complex endeavor, as the community
must balance the diverse, sometimes
conflicting, requirements of the vari-
ous development partners.
12
The community source model represents a promising area for research,
as it offers a novel approach to enterprise software development with
the potential to disrupt the domination of commercial software vendors
in enterprise applications. Here, we
describe the experience of a prominent community source project in
higher education, the Kuali Initiative
( http://www.kuali.org), illustrating the
strengths of the community source
model and calling attention to the
challenges faced in such efforts. We
focus on understanding what motivates institutions to join such a project and how it holds together in pursuit of collective action.
Research Overview
In this research, we adopt a longitudinal case study methodology,
27 as it
enables investigation of a contemporary phenomenon within its natural
setting11, 27 and is especially appropriate for novel research domains (such
as community source development
where theory and research are still in
their formative stages6). In addition,
the longitudinal case study methodology is considered appropriate
for addressing how, why, and what
questions5, 17 while fostering a deeper
contextual understanding of the domain.
27 Finally, the longitudinal nature of our study allowed us to observe
development and deployment as project events unfold, instead of relying
on retrospective accounts.
5
We conducted our case inquiries
in accordance with prevailing case-study field procedures, including a
case-study protocol prior to data col-
Kuali pools
institutional
resources to
develop an open
source platform,
dramatically
reducing the cost
for any single
institution.