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.