Tool Support for Design Science Research—Towards a Software Ecosystem: A Report from a DESRIST 2017 Workshop

The information systems (IS) field contains a rich body of knowledge on approaches, methods, and frameworks that supports researchers in conducting design science research (DSR). It also contains some consensus about the key elements of DSR projects—such as problem identification, design, implementation, evaluation, and abstraction of design knowledge. Still, we lack any commonly accepted tools that address the needs of DSR scholars who seek to structure, manage, and present their projects. Indeed, DSR endeavors, which are often complex and multi-faceted in nature and involve various stakeholders (e.g., researchers, developers, practitioners, and others), require the support that such tools provide. Thus, to investigate the tools that DSR scholars actually need to effectively and efficiently perform their work, we conducted an open workshop with DSR scholars at the 2017 DESRIST conference in Karlsruhe, Germany, to debate 1) the general requirement categories of DSR tool support and 2) the more specific requirements. This paper reports on the results from this workshop. Specifically, we identify nine categories of requirements that fall into the three broad phases (pre-design, design, and post design) and that contribute to a software ecosystem for supporting DSR endeavors.