Designing for Adoption Management: Opening the Black Box of Mandatory Software Use

The Industrial PhD Project known as Designing for Adoption Management: Opening the Black Box of Mandatory Software Use is an Action Design Research study of the complex and uncertain landscape of managing mandatory software adoption.
Although user adoption remains one of the most extensively researched topics in Information Systems literature, reports continue to show that software products return only a small percentage of their anticipated value. Organisations continue to invest in digital solutions to enhance employees’ daily tasks, yet when use is mandated, understanding the nature of this usage—and evaluating whether it generates intended benefits—becomes opaque and challenging for managers and product owners. Through an Action Design Research approach, this dissertation presents two papers dedicated to exploring the problem space and two papers that address the identified challenges in a dual solution space. As a result, the study proposes two adoption management artefacts: the Adoption Diagnostic Assessment (ADA) and the Adoption Metrics Trail (AMT). ADA is a diagnostic survey artefact that supports recurring feedback cycles and operationalises the concept of intellectual control, enabling managers to identify and interpret behavioural, organisational, and system-related adoption inhibitors. AMT is a method artefact that supports the development of contextualised, outcome-oriented adoption metrics by prioritising traceability between user actions and value.
The evaluation of both artefacts demonstrated their practical viability in enterprise settings. ADA enhanced transparency and prompted critical reflection among managers, while AMT supported the creation of meaningful adoption metrics and challenged assumptions about adoption as a one-off deliverable. Both
artefacts contributed to a shift from passive monitoring to proactive adoption management, offering concrete tools for managing the complex interdependencies between system, user, and organisation. The contribution of this dissertation lies in bridging academic research and practical challenges by offering actionable, instantiated artefacts evaluated in situ. Beyond the artefacts themselves, the dissertation contributes practical guidance for managers navigating adoption challenges. These reflections offer direction for more adaptive and diagnostic practices, while also laying the foundation for future research into value-based, context-sensitive approaches to long-term adoption management.