Paper title (Paper Title style)


Australasian Journal of Information Systems Kautz, Bjerknes, Fisher & Jensen 
2020, Vol 24, Selected Papers from ACIS 2018 Complex Adaptive System Theory in Contemporary ISD 

 1 

Applying Complex Adaptive Systems Theory to 
Understand Distributed Participatory Design in 
Contemporary, Crowdsourced Information Systems 
Development  
Karlheinz Kautz  
School of Business IT and Logistics,  
RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia  
karlheinz.kautz@rmit.edu.au 

Gro Bjerknes  
Faculty of IT,  
Monash University, Melbourne, Australia  

Julie Fisher  
School of Business IT and Logistics,  
RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia  

Tomas Jensen  
Communication, Knowledge & Change  
(Formerly United Nations Children's Fund),  
Cairns, Australia 

Abstract  

Contemporary information systems development (ISD) takes place in a dynamic environment; 
it is generally acknowledged as a complex activity. It has been proposed that ISD projects 
should be viewed as a complex adaptive system (CAS) and that these projects are better 
understood through the application of CAS. Distributed participatory design (DPD) is an 
approach to contemporary ISD where different, geographically dispersed stakeholders, often 
called the crowd, participate voluntarily and typically unaffiliated with the development 
organisation in the development and design of information systems in distributed design 
teams which are mostly online on Internet, web-based, and social media platforms. Going 
beyond individual methods, techniques, and practices, the objective of this research is twofold 
as we answer the two research questions: how are DPD projects in crowdsourced ISD 
managed and performed in their entirety and how does CAS theory provide plausible 
explanations and contribute to an understanding of contemporary ISD? For this purpose, we 
present a case of DPD in crowdsourced ISD in an intergovernmental, not-for-profit 
environment in the context of a DPD project which engaged Pacific Youth in the development 
of a digital game where we applied CAS theory to better understand and gain insights for ISD 
theory and practice. 

Keywords: Contemporary Information Systems Development, Distributed Participatory 
Design, Complex Adaptive Systems Theory. 

1 Introduction 

Contemporary information systems development (ISD) takes place in a dynamic environment; 
it is generally acknowledged as a complex activity (Truex et al., 1999; Highsmith 2000; Meso 
and Jain 2006, Kautz 2012). Benbya and McKelvey (2006) present an analysis of sources of 



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2020, Vol 24, Selected Papers from ACIS 2018 Complex Adaptive System Theory in Contemporary ISD 

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complexity in contemporary ISD, and recognise as such: changing user requirements, 
organizational needs, and external competitive conditions; increased interdependencies 
among the involved individuals, organizations and technologies; and the rapid evolution of 
IS and IT. They purport that ISD is often viewed as a complex top-down process and lament 
the fact that such a perspective falls short in dealing with the often unexpected contingencies 
of the ISD process. 

As an alternative, they put forward a conception of ISD based on complexity theory (Kauffman 
1993; Holland 1995; Holland 1998) and propose that ISD projects should be viewed as a 
complex adaptive system (CAS) and that these projects are better understood through the 
application of CAS where complexity generally refers to an emergent property of systems that 
are made of large numbers of self-organising agents that interact in a dynamic and non-linear 
fashion. CAS theory studies how a complex system can adapt to its environment and how 
innovative properties of a system emerge from the interactions of its components (Vidgen and 
Wang 2009).  

CAS theory has been extensively applied in management studies, with Benbya and McKelvey 
(2006) and Vidgen and Wang (2009) providing two comprehensive summaries of this 
literature. There are also writings on the topic in the IS domain (Jacucci et al. 2006; Merali and 
McKelvey 2006), as well as specific research on CAS and ISD (Highsmith 2000; Jain and Meso 
2004; Benbya and McKelvey 2006; Meso and Jain 2006; Vidgen and Wang 2006; Vidgen and 
Wang 2009; Kautz and Madsen 2010; Kautz 2012). In ISD, the work has mostly been either 
conceptual or in the area of agile software development. Vidgen and Wang (2009) lament a 
scarcity of empirical research on CAS in the IS field which they relate to the difficulty of 
turning the quite abstract concepts of CAS theory into sufficiently concrete case study research 
and thus call for more research that on a CAS theory background examines closely how 
development practices are actually implemented and performed. With the work presented 
here we provide such an empirical case study of an ISD project. 

Distributed participatory design (DPD) is one form of contemporary ISD. It has its roots in 
participatory design (PD) which is an ISD and design approach whose central tenet is the 
participation of people, users as equal design partners in the co-design of the information 
systems and technologies (IS/IT) that they are supposed to use themselves (Kensing and 
Blomberg 1998; Lukyanenko et al. 2016). It originally developed in the 1970s in Scandinavia 
and focused on user participation in internal organisational settings in the development of 
dedicated, tailor-made IS/IT which were to be used in the workplace. Thus, most studies of 
PD examine the development of a single, customised information system that typically 
supports workflows within a single client organisation (Obendorf et al. 2009). 

Since its beginnings PD has progressed to also consider non-organisational as well as 
community-driven contexts (Lukyanenko et al. 2016). Participation by less formally organised 
communities and the crowd in the development of content producing community-based 
service systems has challenged existing ISD and PD approaches (Öberg et al. 2009; Kazman 
and Chen 2009; DiSalvo et al. 2013; Lukyanenko et al. 2016). The nature of participation in such 
design and development processes is emergent and cannot be fully controlled (Markus and 
Mao 2004). To cope with these new contexts and forms of work and participation – such as 
communities and virtual networks – traditional PD expanded to deal with the diversification 
of stakeholders and with settings where stakeholders are distributed across various 
dimensions of time, space and organisational structures (Obendorf et al. 2009). The concept of 



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2020, Vol 24, Selected Papers from ACIS 2018 Complex Adaptive System Theory in Contemporary ISD 

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distributed participatory design (DPD) refers to the participation of different stakeholders in 
distributed design teams, mostly online, through Internet, web-based, and social media 
platforms where user participation in online projects is primarily voluntary and the 
participants are typically unaffiliated with the development organisation 1(Lukyanenko et al. 
2016). Declaring a dearth of research Clement et al. (2008) as well as DiSalvo and DiSalvo (2014) 
request more studies on how to conduct PD in new environments. Much of the existing 
research on DPD focusses on individual methods, techniques, and practices such as mediated 
feedback, commented case studies, and surveys (Gumm et al. 2006) as well as probe blogs, 
idea, concept, and feature postings, commenting, voting and online testing (Näkki and 
Koskela-Huotari 2012). To go beyond these individual methods, techniques, and practices 
Markus and Mao (2004) ask to extend research on participatory approaches to ISD 
transcending conventional settings, roles and types of participants and contributors.  

Following these calls for more investigations into CAS and DPD the objective of our research 
presented here is therefore twofold and we pose the following questions: how are DPD 
projects in crowdsourced ISD managed and performed in their entirety and how does CAS 
theory provide plausible explanations and contribute to an understanding of contemporary 
ISD? To pursue our research objectives and to answer the research questions, we studied a 
case of DPD in crowdsourced ISD in an unconventional setting in an intergovernmental, not-
for-profit environment in the context of an UNICEF (Pacific)2 initiated DPD project which 
engaged Pacific Youth in the development of a Facebook based digital game which had the 
objective to raise awareness about climate change challenges in that region (Fisher 2012). Thus, 
we validate and confirm existing theory in a new setting and provide practical advice for 
performing contemporary ISD.  

The remainder of the article is structured as follows: The next section introduces our 
theoretical background and analytical framework in more detail. Our research approach is 
explained in section 3 and a case narrative is provided in section 4. Section 5 includes the 
analysis of the DPD and ISD process in the case setting; it also discusses our findings and their 
implications for research and practice. We finish with our conclusions and a summary of our 
contributions in Section 6. 

2 Theoretical Background: CAS Theory  

As stated above CAS theory has been recognized as a valuable approach to understanding 
contemporary ISD. As one of the first authors Highsmith (2000, 2002) reflecting on his 
extensive experience as ISD consultant and practitioner put forward that agile development 
approaches as an instance of ISD draw on CAS theory as their foundation. Subsequently 
several research teams have applied the theory and provided organising principles and 
suggestions for best practice for the ISD process which we in the following briefly review here.  

 
1 In this context, it has been argued that the free/libre/open source software development (FLOSS) 
approach represents a specific form of DPD (Titlestad et al. 2009); however, with its focus on technical 
development of source code by mostly highly tech-savvy software developers and programmers we 
will here not consider this otherwise very interesting strand of work further. 
2 The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) is a United Nations (UN) non-government, non-for-
profit organisation and program that provides humanitarian and development assistance to children 
and mothers in developing countries. For the remainder of this article, we will refer to UNICEF (Pacific 
Islands Countries) as UNICEF (P). 



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2020, Vol 24, Selected Papers from ACIS 2018 Complex Adaptive System Theory in Contemporary ISD 

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Benbya and McKelvey (2006) present some conceptual work, focusing on the co-evolutionary 
aspect of CAS, and put forward seven rather abstract principles of adaptive success, and 
discuss their bearings on ISD problems. Their advice is quite abstract and, in parts, not easy to 
implement.  

Meso and Jain (2006) identify seven principles of CAS which, to some extent, overlap with 
those described by Benbya and McKelvey (2006), but whose meanings are more intuitive and 
easier to grasp. They are the principles of open systems, interactions and relationships, 
transformative feedback loops, emergent behaviour, distributed control, shallow structure, 
and growth and evolution. The authors provide a conceptual argument that they support with 
various examples from the literature. They map the principles to agile development practices, 
and from this mapping derive more concrete, yet generic recommendations for best practices 
for ISD.  

Vidgen and Wang (2009) with a focus on co-evolution and agile development develop a 
framework and summarise the key concepts of CAS in three guiding principles for the 
organization of agile software development as matching co-evolutionary change rate, 
optimizing self-organisation, and synchronising concurrent exploitation and exploration. 
Based on an empirical case, they identify six capabilities as enablers of agility in agile teams 
grounded in CAS, namely, co-evolution of IT team and customer to create business value; 
sustainable working with rhythm; collective mindfulness; sharing and team learning; process 
adaptation and improvement; product innovation. Kautz and Madsen (2010) provide similar 
findings, also basing their research on the objective of understanding agile software 
development. 

Extending this work Kautz (2012) shows how CAS and CAS principles are advantageous for 
comprehending and organising ISD in general, beyond any particular development approach 
chosen for the execution of a project such as agile development. In an empirical account of 
contemporary ISD he identifies a number of practices and provides practical advice to cope 
with complexity in ISD in an adaptive manner. The practices are similar to those depicted by 
Meso and Jain (2006) and Vidgen and Wang (2009), but he argues that rather than being 
enablers for agility, these practices are properties of complex adaptive systems.  

There is however no single and fully shared definition of CAS and no unifying CAS theory, 
therefore our theoretical background is based on Vidgen and Wang’s (2009) literature review 
which takes both the original CAS literature and its applications in managerial, organisational 
and IS studies into account.  

A complex adaptive system consists of a large number of loosely interconnected and 
interacting autonomous parts or agents, each of which behaves according to some set of, 
sometimes rather simple, rules. These rules require agents to adjust their behaviour to that of 
other agents with whom they interact. The resulting system behaviour can be very complex 
(Vidgen and Wang 2009). Interaction is a significant concept in this context, as “the behaviour 
of the system is determined by the nature of these interactions, not by what is contained within 
the components. Since the interactions are rich, dynamic, nonlinear, and are fed back, the 
behaviour of the system as a whole cannot be predicted from the inspection of its components. 
The notion of "emergence" is used to delineate this aspect” (Jain and Meso 2004 citing Cilliers 
2000). CAS theory rests on the idea that order emerges through the interaction of the agents 
(Benbya and McKelvey 2006). Emergence is the property of CAS which creates some greater 
property of the whole, the system behaviour results from the interaction of the parts and the 



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2020, Vol 24, Selected Papers from ACIS 2018 Complex Adaptive System Theory in Contemporary ISD 

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agent behaviours; however, the emergent system behaviour cannot be predicted or fully 
explained from the measured behaviours of the agents (Highsmith 2000). Interaction and 
emergence are closely related, and link together other generally acknowledged properties of 
CAS. Beyond the interconnected autonomous agents, a number of concepts are frequently 
used when discussing CAS. These concepts which we briefly introduce below are self-
organisation, co-evolution, the poise at the edge of chaos, time pacing, and the poise at the 
edge of time. We have described and applied these concepts earlier in a detailed analysis of an 
ISD project which used agile systems development and project management practices (Kautz 
2012). 

Interconnected autonomous agents, human or non-human, have the ability to independently 
intervene and determine what action to take, given their perception of their environment. Yet, 
they are interconnected and interact in such a way that they collectively or individually are 
responsive to change around them, but not overwhelmed by the information flowing to them 
by this connectivity (Mitleton-Kelly 2003).  

Self-organisation is the capacity of interconnected autonomous agents to evolve into an optimal 
organised form without external force. It results from the agents’ interaction in a disciplined 
manner within locally defined and followed rules and, as such, requires a departure from 
command and control management (Volberda and Levin 2003; Vidgen and Wang 2009).  

Co-evolution relates to the fact that a CAS and/or its parts alter their structures and behaviours 
at a sustainable change rate in response to the interactions of its parts and to the interaction 
with other CAS that co-exist in an ecosystem where adaptation by one system affects the other 
systems. This leads to further adaptations and reciprocal change where the systems do not 
evolve individually, but concertedly (Kauffman 1993; Vidgen and Wang 2009).  

Poise at the edge of chaos describes the ability of a CAS to be at the same time stable and unstable, 
to never quite lock into place, yet never quite fall apart. The edge is the place that provides not 
only the stimulation and freedom to experiment and adapt as well as for novelty to appear, 
but it also allows for the sufficient frameworks and structures to avoid disorderly 
disintegration. This gives a competitive advantage: CAS that are driven to the edge of chaos 
out-compete those that are not (Brown and Eisenhardt 1998; Anderson 1999; Stacey 2003; 
McMillian 2004; Vidgen and Wang 2009).  

Time pacing in this context indicates that a CAS creates an internal rhythm that drives the 
momentum of change. Change in a CAS is triggered by the passage of time rather than the 
occurrence of events; this stops them from changing too often or too quickly (Brown and 
Eisenhardt 1998; Vidgen and Wang 2009).  

Poise at the edge of time conceptualizes a CAS’s attribute of simultaneously being rooted in the 
present, yet being aware of the future and its balance as well as synchronization between 
engaging enough exploitation of existing resources and capabilities to ensure current viability 
with engagement of enough exploration of new opportunities to ensure future viability 
(Brown and Eisenhardt 1998; Volberda and Levin 2003; Vidgen and Wang 2009).  

All these core concepts are heavily intertwined and mutually reinforcing (Vidgen and Wang 
2006). Thus, CAS can be characterized through the emergence of co-evolutionary, self-
organised behaviour, structure and order through the interaction of interconnected 
autonomous agents in a time-paced rhythm balanced at the edge of time. At the heart of CAS 



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theory’s relevance for ISD is the concept of emergence which appears in relation to all key 
concepts (Highsmith 2000; Kautz 2012): 

(1) as emergent order resulting from self-organising agent interactions (Kauffman 
1993; Holland 1995), 

(2) as the emergence of team learning as a result of the interaction and capabilities of 
interconnected autonomous agents (Mitleton-Kelly 2003), 

(3) as truly emergent self-organisation in contrast to a premeditated or deliberately 
implemented one by management (Stacey 2003), 

(4) as co-evolutionary emergent behaviour and structure (Benbya and McKelvey 2006) 
or even emergent co-evolution (Kelly 1994),  

(5) as the region of emergent complexity, the edge of chaos (Benbya and McKelvey 
2006),  

(6) as rhythm considered an emergent state of working in the context of time pacing 
(Vidgen and Wang 2009), and 

(7) as emergent balance between exploitation and exploration at the edge of time 
(Bocanet and Ponsiglione 2012). 

3 Research Approach and Method  

Our research follows the interpretive paradigm and as such takes a hermeneutic stance; 
accordingly we perform and secure the validity of our work through the application of an 
established set of principles for conducting and evaluating interpretive studies in information 
systems that suggests that all human understanding is achieved by iterating between 
considering the interdependent meaning of the parts and the whole that they form (Klein and 
Myers 1999). These principles are the fundamental principle of the hermeneutic circle, the 
principle of contextualisation, the principle of interaction between the researchers and the 
subjects, the principle of abstraction and generalisation, the principle of dialogical reasoning, 
the principle of multiple interpretations, the principle of suspicion. This approach covers and 
extends other measures as for example put forward by Venkatesh et al. (2013) to obtain design 
as well as analytical and inferential validity of qualitative research in general. In the following 
will we describe how we have applied the listed principles in this research. 

In line with our hermeneutical perspective, we also applied a hermeneutic approach for 
conducting literature reviews that recognises a literature review as an iterative process of 
developing understanding that is emergent, unpredictable and creative, rather than 
straightforward, orderly and strictly prescribed (Boell and Cecez-Kecmanovic 2014). It has, as 
Baiyere (2017) has put it “the advantage of a terse and pithy presentation of prior research and 
gives room for more conceptual reasoning over the tendency to re-list articles.” This fits well 
with the overarching aim of our research that is to challenge the widely accepted knowledge 
about ISD to advance theory in that area. Alvesson and Sandberg (2011, 2013) have described 
this approach to research as assumption-challenging rather than ‘gap-spotting’ and have 
labelled it as generating research questions through problematisation (Alvesson and Sandberg 
2011). 

Given the limited literature concerning DPD in crowdsourced ISD and how it unfolds, our 
investigation is based on an exploratory, qualitative case study (Creswell 2003) of an ISD 



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project. The project utilised a social media platform and involved a number of different 
organisational units and stakeholder groups including numerous youths as participants. 
While it is often stated that it is not possible to theorise and to generalise from a single case 
study, Walsham (1995) suggests that it is possible to generalise case study findings among 
others in the form of a contribution of rich insight. In contrast to a representative case selection 
we selected a revelatory case which has not been described in the IS literature before; such 
cases are considered to be prototypical of the phenomenon of interest (Gerring 2007) and by 
studying such a case we were able to illuminate key aspects of the phenomenon under 
investigation. On this background we used the key concepts of CAS theory in a new setting 
for our data analysis and followed the principle of abstraction and generalisation. As such, our 
findings exhibit an instance of theorising through idealisation (Ghazawneh and Henfridsson 
2013) which needs to be further validated.  

The roles and length of stay in the field varied for the four authors of this paper. The fourth 
author has been involved in the project as a reflective practitioner (Schön 1983) throughout the 
whole period. As the UNICEF (P) communications specialist and project sponsor, he was 
involved as the overall project co-coordinator at all stages of the project. He shared 
correspondence and provided reflections on the process. As an employee and insider, he 
enhanced the depth and breadth of understanding the case setting that may not be accessible 
to a non-native researcher (Kanuha 2000). The third author also participated during the whole 
project, as an involved, accompanying researcher (Walsham 1995) and academic consultant. 
Initially involved in the establishment of the technical development team and its coordination 
and communication protocol, and although later only occasionally providing advice to the 
project team and otherwise observing the development process she had an impact on the 
design and development of the game.  

Given the background of these authors the purpose of the research presented here was to 
investigate in a less unbiased manner how DPD takes place in practice. Thus, the first and the 
second author acted as outside observers (Walsham 1995) and were included in the reflective 
process. They conducted interviews with the involved researcher and academic consultant 
and independently analysed all available empirical material and as such took the principle of 
interaction between the researchers and the subjects into account. During the analysis the two 
first authors regularly discussed their emerging results with the two others and incorporated 
their feedback. Through this process our study followed the principles of multiple 
interpretations, dialogical reasoning, and suspicion. The combination of intervention, 
interpretation, and collaboration between the three academic researchers and the fourth 
author was chosen to increase the interpretive rigor of our analysis. In line with the research 
topic and the interpretive approach, our understanding of DPD in the game development 
project has come about through an iterative process of interpretation, comparison and 
connecting of prior research and empirical data which is in line with the fundamental principle 
of the hermeneutic circle. Applying the principle of contextualisation in this process as 
described in the introduction we took the social and historical background of the research 
setting into consideration and included it in the critical reflections of our case. 

Given the distributed location of the project participants the extensive email trail between 
them was the main data source. Lee (1994) argues that email communication provides a rich 
understanding of what has occurred. These emails contained status information, reflections 
before, during and after the development and implementation of the game, conceptual 



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feedback, reflections and recollections concerning input into the design of the game, the 
elements of climate change which it was addressing, test results as well as technical feedback. 
The empirical data also comprised social media postings by the four Fiji adolescents who 
served as facilitators between the technical development team and the juvenile Pacific Islander 
crowd and their responses to the request for input. Table 1 includes a list of all participants, 
their roles and their locations; more detail about the different actors, their relationship and 
their locations will be provided in the next section. 

Project documentation such as the UNICEF (P) strategic plan for digital engagement, its 
project description, brief and evaluation as well as a terms of reference document were 
included as valuable data sources as were the field notes by the sponsor and the academic 
consultant. Further empirical data for the study was collected through semi-structured, open-
ended interviews conducted by the academic consultant with the three members of the 
technical development team and by the outside researchers with the academic consultant and 
the project sponsor concerning their role and experiences during the project. The developers 
were interviewed for about 45 minutes in length with the interviews focusing on the issues 
around the DPD process and their reflections on the project. The issues included how they 
undertook the development process, how they managed the interactions with other 
participants, the mechanisms for communication and how they incorporated new ideas and 
change requests. The interviews also explored how the developers generated and refined their 
ideas particularly in relation to the sponsor’s brief and delved into their motivations for 
becoming involved apart from the modest amount they were paid.  

We wished to achieve an interaction between the existing literature and our observations from 
the case setting to explain interrelationships and contribute to theory with new insight from 
practice that might be useful for scholars and practitioners. In case study research identifying 
the boundaries of an investigated case is considered important (Miles et al. 2014). Our analysis 
takes its starting point in September 2010 when the project was conceived and ends in August 
2011. Following with what Miles et al. (2014) describe as data condensation and based on 
Sarker et al. (2006) and our earlier work (Kautz 2009) our first step was to produce a list of the 
involved participants (see table 1), a timeline spanning that period (see figure 1) and a case 
narrative which is included in the following section in a condensed form. The narrative 
provides a progress or sequence of events and serves as a frame of reference for further 
analysis and interpretation of the data (Fincham 2002). The next stage involved revisiting the 
narrative and the empirical data as we then we mapped the data onto the CAS concepts and 
categorised our findings (see section 5) accordingly. Using CAS theory helped us to increase 
our understanding of DPD and ISD practice in the case setting. Before providing a more 
detailed analysis, we next present a narrative account of the investigated project.  

 



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Figure 1. The Timeline of the Game Development Project 

4 A Case Narrative  

We identified the following five phases of the game development project: 1 Initiation of the 
idea and funding; 2 Establishment of the team; 3 Conceptual design of the game; 4 
Development of the consolidated game; 5 Launch of the consolidated game.  

4.1 Phase 1 – Initiation of the idea and funding 

Mid 2010 the communications specialist at UNICEF (P) proposed a project to the organisation. 
He was concerned that although UNICEF (P) had a strong social media presence and was 
regularly communicating with their audience via social media, two-way interaction was very 
limited. His major objective was to ensure that Pacific Islander youth engaged more with 
UNICEF. His vision was to engage youth through encouraging them to participate in a project 
via social media. Given the threats posed to small Pacific Islands from climate change the 
proposal was to develop a game which would also help youth to learn more about how to 
respond to climate change. He put this proposal to the Commonwealth of Learning (COL) in 
Canada, an intergovernmental organisation from the Commonwealth of Nation in November 
2010 (for more information see www.col.org). The COL subsequently provided modest 
funding in early January 2011 for hiring developers. The communications specialist who was 
located on the Pacific Islands immediately approached an Information Systems professor in 
Melbourne, Australia who was known to him with a request to join the project as an involved, 
accompanying researcher in the role of an academic consultant to help establish, manage, and 
support, when need arises, a development team. This led to the second phase. 



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Project Participants Roles Locations 
UNICEF Communications 
Specialist 

Project Sponsor, Project 
Coordinator, Overall Decision 
Maker 

Fiji, Pacific Islands 

Information Systems Professor Involved Researcher as Academic 
Consultant 

Melbourne, Australia 

Three Research Students Developers in the Core 
Development Team 

Hongkong, Melbourne, and 
regional Victoria, Australia 

Four Fiji Adolescents  Social Media Facilitators Fiji, Pacific Islands 
Pacific Islander Youth Requirements Contributors Pacific Islands 
Commonwealth of Learning (COL)  Project Funder through Financial 

Support 
Canada 

UNICEF Staff Expertise Providers, Feedback 
Providers, Functional and 
Technical Testers 

Pacific Islands, New York, USA 

Three Chinese Youth Functional Testers China 
International Climate Experts Expertise Providers Globally Distributed 

Table 1. Project Participants, Roles, and Locations 

4.2 Phase 2 – Establishment of the team  

The academic consultant in January 2011 approached three young research students who 
fulfilled the position requirements; they accepted the invitation and were in the same month 
appointed as the developers for a period of 30 working days with an original project runtime 
from February 1 to April 15, 2011. Two of them were Chinese by birth and one was from 
Bangladesh. One developer was living in Hong Kong, another lived in regional Victoria, 
Australia and the third in Melbourne; the latter two knew each other, but they did not know 
the third developer beforehand, nor did they meet this developer in person during the project. 
The sponsor’s first email to the development team including the academic consultant 
described his vision and what he wanted to achieve, the game was not to be about climate 
change but how people could respond to the impact of climate change. In January 2011, the 
sponsor identified and contacted four adolescents from Fiji to be social media facilitators for 
soliciting and gathering ideas from Pacific Islander youth about the game. The social media 
facilitators posted a photo with a message inviting input on the game and launched this as a 
Facebook album with text encouraging UNICEF (P) Facebook fans to participate and to 
contribute to the design of the game. Initial input and comments came from 16 fans, as well as 
15 fans hitting the ‘like’ button.  

During the same period the academic consultant facilitated a process among the members of 
the core development team and the sponsor who also acted as project co-ordinator where 
protocols for how the development team would operate were agreed. The academic consultant 
played no further significant role in the development process after the communication 
protocols had been agreed, but as stated above provided occasional advice and observed the 
course of the project. The sponsor was happy for the developers to manage the project 
themselves in terms of ideas for the game and how the work was undertaken. The developers’ 
first meeting was a telephone conversation about how they would manage the process given 
they were geographically dispersed. They agreed that they would email each other every 
couple of days to cater for the quite short timeline for finalising the game. They also decided 
to use Skype to talk and instant messaging and chat to communicate. Although there was no 
formal team leader, the student from Bangladesh very quickly took charge of managing how 



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things would work, she kept meeting minutes including the decisions that were taken, the 
next discussion topics and who would be responsible for determining what the tasks would 
be. The tasks were reviewed at each meeting confirming what had been done and establishing 
the next tasks and responsibilities. At the end of each meeting an email summarising progress 
was sent to the sponsor by the informal leader. He reviewed the progress and if he thought 
there was something that needed to be changed or wanted to provide feedback, he would 
email the informal leader or alternatively he called her using Skype. Brief notes were taken 
from the Skype meetings focusing on any requested changes.  

4.3 Phase 3 – Conceptual design of the game 

The first stage of development was to reach agreement on what the game would be and its 
look and feel. One developer researched relevant aspects of climate change, another looked at 
different approaches to and types of Facebook games and the third investigated appropriate 
technologies, tools and development approaches. As the development of the ideas for the 
game progressed the sponsor was an intermediary sharing these ideas with a range of people 
from the funding organisation, climate change experts and UNICEF staff to receive input 
concerning the direction of the game. Further information on climate change was also 
provided on a regular basis by the relevant experts to the sponsor. The sponsor handed the 
feedback and the ideas of the involved Pacific Islander youth provided through the Facebook 
page and facilitated by the four adolescents from Fiji to the developers. The requirements of 
the sponsor and ideas of the key stakeholders, Pacific Islander youth, and UNICEF staff, 
guided the developers. The team used the following process to decide on their final game: At 
the very beginning the sponsor asked the developers to think about some ideas. They gave 
themselves a week to brainstorm and then collected their ideas to see which of them could be 
combined. This led to three major ideas; each with a particular focus from one developer which 
reflected what they individually thought what the youth and UNICEF (P) should concentrate 
on. This resulted in a game which consisted of three games in one (see figure 2). Each game 
was quite different in the way the players would interact; the CO2 Reducer challenge requires 
players to identify potential CO2 emitters; the Evacuate Life challenge requires players to 
understand the climate change threats and initiate action, e.g. to evacuate or rebuild before 
there are serious consequences; the Flood Tales challenge highlights the causes of floods and 
the need for flood mitigation. An important design principle was to ensure that each game 
was not too complicated. The developers found the fan page postings very helpful; the 
responses from the Pacific Islander youth had suggested that the game needed to be very 
interactive, interesting and colourful; it should have graphics, be fun and focused on action, 
something which promoted to be positive and to make change.  

4.4 Phase 4 - Development of the consolidated games 

After the developers and the sponsor had agreed on the consolidated game’s design, 
development proper, including detailed design, coding, testing and evaluation could begin. 
Concerning the management and coordination of the process, one developer commented: 
“[The development process proper] was very challenging because we would not face each other and sit 
together, this was a challenging part.” The team took an active role in ensuring input in the form 
of further information and feedback was managed effectively and encouraged further 
participation by the sponsor and UNICEF (P) staff. As there was no opportunity to discuss, 
elaborate and clarify ideas and concerns face to face all information and communication had 
to be, and eventually was, very concise. As the team members were working independently 



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and each component of the game was developed separately, several issues concerning the 
build and layout of the consolidated game arose during this phase as one developer 
highlighted: “The game came in three different formats, totally different interfaces. The developing 
process of the three people was quite different. It came as three totally different styles of game, different 
user interface, different colour, a lot of things were different. There was no standard look to the three 
different games. Fortunately, finally we got this sorted out - the three games now look quite similar.”  

 

 
Figure 2: An Illustration of the Games (adopted from Fisher 2012) 

The sponsor and UNICEF (P) staff reviewed the first version of the consolidated game and 
provided feedback; this included the colours, fonts and graphics, the text and help function 
provided with the game. The sponsor highlighted that further work was needed on 
standardisation and how the three components linked together to be one game. The sponsor 
also reinforced the need for links to further information be embedded in each game. Technical 
testing and evaluation were iterative. The developers each first conducted technical unit and 
system testing to uncover programming errors and for this purpose identified a set of criteria 
in particular to test the features of the game, to ensure the various games linked internally, 
that the colour schemes, text size and files et cetera were correct and consistent. Each developer 
tested the work of the other two and provided feedback through their regular phone and 
Skype meetings and email. While the developers tested for programming errors the game was 
functionally tested by UNICEF (P) staff who played the game and provided feedback to the 
sponsor. A technical person within UNICEF also tested the consolidated game and provided 
technical feedback once the team had incorporated the earlier feedback. The developers were 
also asked to find a platform to run the game and after investigation identified Google which 
had a free service. Further user evaluation similar to user acceptance testing was undertaken 
by three friends of the developers in China who were young and used Facebook. They played 
the game and provided advice suggesting that the graphics and artwork needed to be still 
more attractive. They thought players would be encouraged to play longer if the game was 
even more interesting. The social media facilitators also provided feedback along these lines, 
suggesting the game be more colourful and easier to play. All feedback was considered, 
further changes made, and the final version of the game was ultimately accepted by the 
sponsor.  



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4.5 Phase 5 - Launch of the consolidated game 

An email to various international UNICEF groups announced the launch of the game in July 
2011. The game had a favourable reception as many positive comments on what had been 
achieved were made by UNICEF worldwide, Pacific Islander youth and Facebook fans. A 
press release issued shortly after the launch showed UNICEF’s positive assessment of the 
initiative. Postings on the UNICEF (P) fan page highlighted how successful the game was with 
requests for the game to be translated into Pacific Islands’ languages and to include it on the 
Madagascar UNICEF page. Voices of Youth, a UNICEF organisation designed to support 
young people and to give them the opportunity to learn about their world requested that they 
embed the game on their website which the developers then did. Lastly, the launch event 
marked the end of the project for the development team and sparked the developers’ pride 
about their achievement. The consolidated game is now in use and distributed through three 
Facebook sites: UNICEF (P), Voices of Youth and Unite for Climate. 

5 Analysis and Discussion: The Game Development Project as a 
Complex Adaptive System 

The DPD in the game development project can be analysed and discussed from many 
theoretical perspectives. Such perspectives could be the low degree of IT use, notably of social 
media, by intergovernmental, non-governmental or not-for-profit organisations (Chang and 
Chang 2011; Cokerill 2013), their challenges of engagement with youth (Henderson and 
Bowley 2010) and of the empowerment of this specific user group (Clement 1994), markedly 
through gamification (Hamari et al. 2014); another focus could be to examine the project as a 
particular instance of open source software development (Titlestad et al. 2009) or to take the 
general discourse on crowdsourcing (Lukyanenko et al. 2016) or on crowdsourcing in ISD for 
value co-creation (Kazman and Chen 2009) into account as we have done elsewhere (Kautz et 
al. 2019). Our focus here however is on DPD as an approach to ISD and how DPD projects in 
crowdsourced ISD unfold and are managed and performed in their entirety. As contemporary 
ISD is generally acknowledged as a complex activity we apply complex adaptive systems 
(CAS) theory to better understand and make recommendations for ISD practice. Benbya and 
McKelvey (2006) based on conceptual work, Meso and Jain (2006) with support from examples 
from the literature, and Vidgen and Wang (2009) backed up through an empirical case, all 
focus on certain CAS concepts for the organisation of ISD projects, mostly agile development, 
without any consideration of distributed activities. The same is valid for Kautz (2012) whose 
research went beyond agile development but stayed within the boundaries of a non-
distributed project organisation. Our work is based on these predecessors but centred around 
the idea of emergence we chose for our analysis of a distributed development endeavour a set 
of interrelated concepts that characterize CAS: interaction, interconnected autonomous agents, 
self-organisation, poise at the edge of chaos, co-evolution, time pacing, and poise at the edge 
of time. 

5.1 Interactions  

Interactions are a significant characteristic of a complex adaptive system. Based on the initial 
project organisation which had been established by the sponsor with support from the 
academic consultant and which consisted of a first project plan and vision, an early 
requirements specification, and a formal contract for the developers and continuing with the 
enrolment of various other participant groups and emerging organisational structures, 



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interactions in the DPD and crowdsourced game development project took mainly place 
through various digital technologies and involved the different participant groups throughout 
the whole project in multiple forms, formal and informal, and at numerous occasions - 
organised and spontaneous. They could among others be found during the scheduled 
meetings and feedback sessions between the sponsor and the developers and between the 
developers themselves. The narrative of the case which describes the project participants and 
their roles and relationships provides ample evidence of the rich, intense, dynamic, and non-
linear interactions which were fed back into the project and determined its performance and 
its emerging innovative properties resulting in the consolidated game. It indicates that 
project’s progression could not be predicted. The difference between the planned three months 
for developing the game and the actual seven months illustrates this and the concept of 
emergence describes this characteristic of CAS. In the following, we revisit the game 
development project and accentuate the different facets of emergence and of the other key 
concepts of CAS theory to provide a better understanding of DPD in crowdsourced ISD and 
to derive some insights for the organisation of such ISD projects. Our analysis shows how all 
these core concepts of CAS are strongly entwined and reciprocally reinforce each other. Table 
2 contains, as a summary of our findings, the CAS concepts, their characteristics and the 
emerging effects in the game development project.  

 
CAS Concept CAS Characteristics in the project Emerging Effect 

Interaction Multiple forms of interaction: formal & 
informal, organised & spontaneous, at 
numerous occasions, among others during the 
scheduled meetings & feedback sessions 
between the various participant groups, 
through mainly digital technologies 

Unpredictable, rich, intense, dynamic, 
non-linear interactions fed back into the 
project & determined its performance & 
emerging innovative properties of the 
resulting consolidated game 

Inter- 
connected,  
Autonomous 
Agents 

Interconnected, autonomous agents in 
distributed groups of participants organised in 
a kernel, periphery & as masses; 
sponsor and facilitators as social mechanisms 
coordinated by simple rules, digital 
technologies as technical mechanisms; 
developer autonomy when distributing & 
selecting tasks & manifested in their individual, 
autonomous design decisions contributions;  
social media facilitator autonomy when 
filtering requirements;   
autonomy at the periphery & in the masses 
when participants joined & left as they saw fit  

Sharing of project-relevant knowledge 
in feedback sessions & meetings; 
all kernel members’ involvement in 
project management & design 
decisions;  
developers’ task self-assignment; 
involvement of other participants in 
design and evaluation activities; 
emergence of collective learning among 
these participants   

Emergent  
Self-Organisation 

Emergent self-organisation: through egalitarian 
management with short communication paths;  
sponsor & facilitators acted like peers;  
developer self-organisation through shared 
responsibility for governance/decision making, 
task self-assignment, self-appointed team 
manager;  
social media facilitator self-organisation 
through the way requirements & feedback were 
solicited & filtered 

Emergence of self-organisation of 
autonomous project members, in 
particular developers & social media 
facilitators; 
emergence of order with individual & 
team discipline as vital elements of self-
organisation 



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CAS Concept CAS Characteristics in the project Emerging Effect 
Poise at the  
Edge of Chaos 

State of bounded instability: stability through 
initial project plan & vision, overall 
requirements specification, formal contract, 
organisation of participants in kernel;  
instability through different participant groups 
spread over continents/time zones & 
continuous flow of ideas, requirements, change 
requests, feedback;  
balanced by emergent organisation in stable 
kernel, dispersed periphery & independent 
masses    

Appearance of a region of emergent 
complexity with steady, swift handling 
of frequently incoming input through 
short iterations of manageable size & 
regular planning/feedback sessions in 
the kernel  

Emergent  
Co-evolution 

Co-evolution of people, processes, products 
through multiple forms of interactions, 
knowledge sharing & mutual learning about 
ideas, requests, early game versions & feedback 
 

Reinforcement of emergent structures 
of interaction & collaboration & 
unpredictable emerging structures & 
behaviours through unplanned 
inclusion/departure of participants 
resulting in changes of the game  

Time Pacing Time pacing: internally set through short 
iterations, early test versions, as well formal 
weekly & regular within a week planning 
meetings/feedback sessions, based on rules for 
coordination & engagement; 
mechanisms for selecting ideas, requests, 
requirements; manageable requirements size  

Emergence of a working rhythm with 
appropriate intervals to handle changes 
resulting in changes in the game not 
occurring too frequently & too fast 
 

Poise at the Edge 
of Time 

Poise at the edge of time: focus on present 
through attention on current iteration, 
requirements & design proposals taking into 
account existing version & design of future 
extensions;  
focus on past & future through overall project 
plan, project vision, frequent planning/feedback 
sessions;  
focus on present & future by sponsor & 
developers reflecting on development process  

Emergent balance of exploitation & 
exploration manifested in current 
versions of the game, the consolidated 
game with standardised interface, 
developed formats for management & 
communication, inclusion of further 
projects participants in testing & 
evaluations activities 

Table 2: CAS Characteristics of the game development project 

5.2 Interconnected, Autonomous Agents and the Emergence of Team 
Learning 

In the game development project, all participants acted as autonomous, interconnected agents. 
The different distributed groups of participants were interconnected through various social 
and technical mechanisms. Technologies, mostly digital ones, such as telephone, email, Skype, 
instant messaging and chat were mainly used to connect in what Kazman and Chen (2009) call 
the kernel of a crowdsourced project, while email and primarily Facebook were used in the 
periphery and by the masses in the crowd (Kazman and Chen 2009). The sponsor and the 
social media facilitators acted as social mechanisms and implemented simple rules of 
engagement to coordinate design proposals and other input from the periphery and the 
masses. The sponsor and the developers had developed another simple set of rules for the 
communication between them and within the development team. The participants’ autonomy 
was expressed in numerous ways. At the periphery the Pacific Islander youth requirements 
contributors, the various UNICEF staff as well as the testers voluntarily joined the project, 
provided their input, and left the project as they saw fit. The social media facilitators 



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autonomously communicated with the requirements contributors and filtered their input for 
the sponsor and the developers. The autonomy of the developers showed when they 
contributed to the functional design where the sponsor then made the final decisions. Their 
autonomy became even more apparent in the liberty that the developers had when 
distributing and picking tasks. Further, when implementing the games, the developers acted 
as self-governing with regard to the technical design decisions they made. Despite that 
autonomy, the project participants were highly interlinked and maintained their relationships 
through the above described structures and measures, which supported the various described 
forms of interactions to achieve interconnectivity. A result of autonomy, the different 
capabilities of autonomous, interconnected agents and their interactions is the emergence of 
team learning (Mitleton-Kelly 2003). The sharing of project-relevant knowledge in the 
scheduled feedback sessions and frequent meetings, combined with all the kernel team 
members’ involvement in project management and design decisions, in addition to the 
developers’ self-assignment of tasks based on competence and interest, led to the emergence 
of collective learning among the participants in the kernel of the project. They also learned 
about the crowdsourced development and utilization of digital games and the issue at hand, 
climate change. Through the involvement of other participants in design and evaluation 
activities the emergent learning spread to, and in, these other involved groups of participants 
as well. 

5.3 Emergent Self-Organisation and the Emergence of Order 

The concept of self-organisation departs from the command and control philosophy of 
traditional organisations. It places emphasis on increased autonomy, delegated decision 
making, more interactions with other individuals and the environment. Individuals and teams 
must still define and follow local rules and allow these rules to evolve over time in the course 
of self-organisation. Self-organisation is closely related to the concept of interconnected, 
autonomous agents (Volberda and Levin 2003). The game development project showed all 
these characteristics. The project was not led and controlled top-down but managed in a rather 
egalitarian manner. The sponsor acted primarily as a facilitator and co-ordinator. After having 
negotiated the communication protocol with the developers and the social media facilitators 
he created an environment with short communication paths that fostered self-organisation of 
the developers which was characterised by task self-assignment and largely autonomous 
decision making and joint responsibility. One of them, self-appointed and accepted by the 
other two, co-ordinated their work internally in their team. In fact, all those in facilitator roles 
appeared more like peers and were part of a very flat organisational structure as they 
contributed to the environment that nurtured self-organisation. Self-organisation was further 
evidenced by the way the social media facilitators solicited and filtered the requirements 
which were provided by the other youth, and the way these youth offered their ideas. The 
implementation of the communication protocols and the introduction of the role of the social 
media facilitators illustrate the emergence of self-organisation of autonomous participants and 
the subsequent emergence of order in the design and development process of the project. It 
also shows that individual and team discipline are not in conflict with, but a vital element of, 
self-organisation. In this context, the way feedback - beyond the self-organised regular 
feedback sessions - was provided and gathered from the other participants and subsequently 
handled in orderly form, as part of planning activities, also reflects the emergence of order. 



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5.4 Poise at the Edge of Chaos and the Region of Emergent Complexity 

The game development project poised at the edge of chaos as it was constantly in a state of 
bounded instability which means that it, paradoxically, was simultaneously stable and 
unstable (Stacey 2003). The sponsor’s initial project plan and vision as well as his specification 
of the overall requirements, the developers’ formal contract, and the organisation of a kernel 
consisting of the sponsor and the developers, acted as super-ordinate structuring mechanisms 
that created a relative stable space within which the development process and the various 
versions of the game could unfold. However, it also had to deal with the instability brought 
about by the continuous flow of ideas, requirements, change requests, and feedback caused 
by the involvement of the different participant groups which were spread over several 
continents and time zones. These made up the edge of chaos where complexity emerged. The 
project balanced this complexity and coped with the ‘chaos’ (Benbya and McKelvey 2006) by 
emergent organisation of the participants in (1) the before mentioned separate stable kernel 
which had a decision mandate and performed the functional and technical design as well as 
the technical development tasks, (2) a dispersed periphery which provided, facilitated and 
filtered requirements and feedback and (3) independent and even less stable masses who 
provided ideas and requirements. This organisational form allowed for the steady and flexible 
handling of, and swift reaction on the frequently incoming input through short iterations of 
manageable task size, as well as through the regular planning and feedback sessions of the 
participants in the kernel of the project. It illustrates how the project manoeuvred in a region 
of emergent complexity, and balanced at the edge of chaos as these measures at the same time 
supported the necessary flexibility and provided a frame for stability, as they structured the 
project participants’ activities and helped those in the kernel to know what to do, when to do 
it, and what to expect from others.  

5.5 Emergent Co-evolution and the Emergence of Behaviour and Structure 

Co-evolution emerged in the game development project through the above described multiple 
forms of interactions in which the distributed participants shared knowledge and learned from 
each other. The mutual learning had the reciprocal effect of reinforcing the emerging 
structures of collaboration and interaction, as well as the behaviour of the individual project 
participants. In particular, the continuous provision, filtering, and handling of ideas, requests, 
requirements, and other feedback, along with the frequent availability of early versions of the 
game fuelled this process. It kept the participants informed about the current status of the 
game and provided opportunities to explore, evaluate, and learn how to use it, as well as to 
create new ideas that were then fed back to the development team to become part of the next 
version. Thus, the game co-evolved with the distributed participants. Together, this 
demonstrates the co-evolution of people, processes and products (Meso and Jain 2006). The 
project also exhibited the unpredictable emergent behaviour and structure of the different 
entities of a CAS based on the described co-evolution during the distributed design and 
development process. The organisational structure of the dispersed participants was not 
planned on beforehand nor was the inclusion of certain participants. The youth requirement 
contributors, the UNICEF staff and the climate experts joined the project voluntarily when 
being called upon and left it when they had decided to do so without any notice; they were 
largely unknown to each other and the other participants. Further, the idea of involving other 
young people such as the testers or the requirements contributors in further feedback cycles 
on the design and early versions of the game emerged during the developers’ interactions. 
When implemented, the feedback changed the game and its behaviour accordingly. 



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5.6 Time Pacing and the Emergence of Rhythm  

In the game development project, the overall project plan and the developers’ contract set the 
time frame for the DPD and development process. The short iterations made early versions of 
the games available. The emergence of a lasting working rhythm and the setting of the pace 
for the project were supported by the virtual planning meetings and feedback sessions, held 
weekly or more often, that handled the continuously incoming input from the participants at 
the periphery and the masses. This was achieved through the agreed rules for coordination, 
communication, and engagement, as well as mechanisms for selecting the ideas, requests, and 
requirements from the different dispersed participants. As a result, the versions of the game 
did not change too frequently or too fast. Together with the manageable size of the 
requirements, it provided the appropriate intervals to match and handle the changes. In this 
way, time pacing, as reported by Vidgen and Wang (2009) and the emerging internal rhythm 
drove change in the project in accordance with the passage of time and, at the same time, 
allowed for stability and flexibility. 

5.7 Poise at the Edge of Time and the Emergent Balance of Exploitation and 
Exploration 

In CAS theory a focus on the present while keeping the past in mind and preparing for the 
future is regarded as poising at the edge of time (Brown and Eisenhardt 1998). In the game 
development project, the centre of attention was always the current iteration and the current 
requirements and design proposals while also taking into account the existing version of the 
game and the design for future extensions. The developers built the game through several 
iterations where they at any point took the available knowledge and requirements concerning 
the development process, the game development, and the issue at hand, climate change into 
consideration, while investigating further options, receiving new ideas, requirements and 
feedback. The developers exploited existing knowledge by including links to other 
information resources, by using accessible code from other games, and not least by sharing 
code between themselves. They used ideas, requirements and proposals with their roots in the 
presence and simultaneous awareness of the past and the future approved by the sponsor to 
produce a current version of the game whilst investigating prospective options with 
information and feedback from, and in consultation with, the sponsor, but also the social 
media facilitators, the youth requirements contributors, local and headquarter UNICEF staff, 
international climate change experts, and the three testers. In doing so the project concurrently 
balanced the exploitation of existing knowledge and the exploration of new knowledge at the 
edge of time (Bocanet and Ponsiglione 2012). This emerging balance was supported through 
the frequent virtual meetings and feedback sessions between the developers themselves and 
between them and the sponsor as well as the other coordination and filtering mechanisms. The 
overall project plan and vision, as well as the frequent planning sessions structured around 
‘releases’ and iterations of current versions of the game, supported a focus on, and constituted 
a manifestation of, both the past and the future. The frequent feedback sessions with the 
sponsor were also used by the developers to think about their own behaviour and to review 
and improve the development process. This is reflected in the developed formats for 
management and communication in the core team, the consolidated game with a standardised 
interface as well as the inclusions of further youth into the distributed testing and evaluations 
activities. 



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6 Conclusion 

Prior research into PD centred to a large extent on industrial environments with a focal 
organisation with some exceptions notably in open source software development in the not-
for-profit arena (Kazman and Chen 2009; Lukyanenko et al. 2016). Most of the work on DPD 
is based on action research projects with significant intervention by researchers and only to a 
lesser extent on actual empirical practice studies without or only marginal direct influence by 
a research team on the course of the DPD project; DPD research also focusses heavily on 
individual methods, techniques, and practices (Gumm et al. 2006; Obendorf et al. 2009; 
Titlestad et al. 2009; Näkki and Koskela-Huotari 2012; Lukyanenko et al. 2016). In contrast, 
ours is a case study of genuine DPD through an intergovernmental, not-for-profit organisation 
– an organisation that is neither a part of a government nor a conventional for-profit business 
– and mainly youth in an ISD project of a digital game. Our analysis provides an in-depth 
understanding of how the project was managed and performed in its entirety in a not-for-
profit environment. It reveals a complex network of geographically dispersed actors in a 
transient project organisation. 

We demonstrate that the game development project can be understood as an example of DPD 
in contemporary, crowdsourced ISD. Furthermore, by applying CAS theory we show that the 
project can be understood as a CAS and that CAS theory provides explanations for how and 
why DPD as an approach to contemporary ISD worked in the investigated case. The validation 
of our empirical results through the application of CAS theory contributes to the growing 
literature that acknowledges CAS theory as a relevant theoretical foundation for 
understanding contemporary DPD and ISD. Researchers can use CAS theory to perform, 
analyse, present and compare longitudinal case studies of how DPD, and more general ISD 
unfolds in practice over time. This is crucial as social science and IS researchers (see e.g. 
Eisenhardt 1989; Walsham 1995; Van de Ven 2007) highlight that the complexity of practice is 
such that a theory and an explicit framework of ideas are necessary as a guide for data 
collection and identification of important research findings. Detailed studies of practice and 
subsequent formulation of empirically grounded theories serve to enhance researchers and 
practitioners’ knowledge and to introduce new concepts that both groups can bring to their 
respective practice (Madsen et al. 2006).  

Our work has practical bearings, too. It shows how actual DPD can be organised in a project 
to result in a process and outcome that all stakeholder groups appreciate. In practice, while 
recognising that the actual course of an ISD project will evolve with the situation, CAS can be 
used for: (1) managing and performing DPD during the development process by providing an 
understanding of DPD as an approach to ISD, and (2) after-the-fact reflection and collection of 
lessons learnt.  

In conclusion, we acknowledge that our study is an exploratory, single case study and that the 
game development project belongs to a special class of development project which may limit 
the generality of our findings. But, like Walsham (1995) and Klein and Myers (1999), we 
contend that this does not mean that it does not contribute to - in our case a sound empirical 
practice study and rich insight about DPD as a vital approach to ISD - the collective body of 
knowledge, both academic and practical, of a discipline. While our research provides a link 
between the otherwise often disconnected research areas and research communities of DPD, 
ISD and CAS, still more studies are necessary to allow for more theorising and for a viable 
theory of DPD in ISD. To accomplish a more exhaustive explanatory theory, to answer why 



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DPD in ISD played out the way it did in the presented case and to draw more general lessons 
learnt, further research is needed. 

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doi: https://doi.org/10.3127/ajis.v24i0.2225 

 


	1 Introduction
	2 Theoretical Background: CAS Theory
	3 Research Approach and Method
	4 A Case Narrative
	4.1 Phase 1 – Initiation of the idea and funding
	4.2 Phase 2 – Establishment of the team
	4.3 Phase 3 – Conceptual design of the game
	4.4 Phase 4 - Development of the consolidated games
	4.5 Phase 5 - Launch of the consolidated game

	5 Analysis and Discussion: The Game Development Project as a Complex Adaptive System
	5.1 Interactions
	5.2 Interconnected, Autonomous Agents and the Emergence of Team Learning
	5.3 Emergent Self-Organisation and the Emergence of Order
	5.4 Poise at the Edge of Chaos and the Region of Emergent Complexity
	5.5 Emergent Co-evolution and the Emergence of Behaviour and Structure
	5.6 Time Pacing and the Emergence of Rhythm
	5.7 Poise at the Edge of Time and the Emergent Balance of Exploitation and Exploration

	6 Conclusion