Over-Requirement in software development: An empirical investigation of the IKEA effect

Ofira Shmueli, Lior Fink, Nava Pliskin

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contributionpeer-review

4 Scopus citations

Abstract

One of the major risks in software development projects is the phenomenon of Over-Requirement, also known as over-specification and gold-plating, where a product or a service is specified beyond the actual requirements of the customer or the market. We argue that Over-Requirement is partially due to the emotional involvement of developers with specified features, an involvement associated with the IKEA or the I-designed-it-myself effect, which implies that people come to overvalue their creations when successfully designed or constructed by them. To investigate this argument, we conducted an experiment in the context of software development in which over 200 undergraduate students participated. The experiment required participants to complete a specification task and measured the change in perceived valuation of a specified nice-to-have feature, by measuring it before and after its specification was completed. The experiment results confirmed the existence of the IKEA effect and its influence on Over-Requirement. The results also imply that the IKEA effect in software development is multifaceted with the level of specification difficulty affecting the magnitude of the IKEA effect, whether the specification difficulty is objective (in terms of constrained specification duration or unconstrained specification freedom) or subjective (as reported by participants).

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationECIS 2012 - Proceedings of the 20th European Conference on Information Systems
PublisherAssociation for Information Systems
ISBN (Print)9788488971548
StatePublished - 1 Jan 2012
Event20th European Conference on Information Systems, ECIS 2012 - Barcelona, Spain
Duration: 10 Jun 201213 Jun 2012

Publication series

NameECIS 2012 - Proceedings of the 20th European Conference on Information Systems

Conference

Conference20th European Conference on Information Systems, ECIS 2012
Country/TerritorySpain
CityBarcelona
Period10/06/1213/06/12

Keywords

  • Gold-plating
  • I-designed-it-myself effect
  • IKEA effect
  • Over-requirement
  • Over-specification
  • Software development

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Information Systems

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