Feral systems: why users write them and how they add value
Shubhankar Thatte, Nicholas Grainger · Swinburne figshare (Swinburne University of Technology) · 2010
Feral Systems have been defined as an end user development phenomenon wherein end users covertly engage themselves in developing systems to assist them in their operational activities without the blessing or support from the top management and outside the purview of the organizational information systems. Users are motivated to develop feral systems through dissatisfaction with formal systems, perceptual and social factors and by power tensions within organisations. Although outside the purview of IT management, feral systems can bring a number of benefits to users and to organisations, but at the same time they have the potential to add to the risks the organisation faces and to reduce the value of formal systems. Recognising these contradictions IT managers are encouraged to create environments that bring feral systems into the open so that the risks can be reduced and the full benefits of these user driven initiatives derived. There is limited research on this phenomenon and possible future research is identified that would explore the environments that appear to particularly encourage the development of feral systems, and the nature of feral systems most commonly developed. This knowledge will be valuable in the future management of formal systems, particularly ES, which are in general fairly prescriptive in what they allow users to do and not do.