Pilot Implementation: Organizational Alignment When Implementing an IT-System

Pilot implementation can be seen as a socio-technical design approach. This paper presents a design case that focused on the optimal implementation and organizational change process when a new IT system is to be implemented in an organization. The case was a pilot implementation of a new self-service-oriented IT system for both customers and employees in a Danish SME ‘proptech’ company. ‘Proptech’ denotes companies dealing with property and technology. The underlying epistemic view of the design case was that of functional pragmatism, and the collection and interpretation of data were aimed at analyzing how the case company managed to implement a new IT system from technical, organizational, and economical perspectives. The analysis revealed that though the case company management did not do what the current theory in the area prescribes, the company still thrived with the pilot implementation. Our position is thus that organizational alignment is an important aspect of pilot implementation, and that it can be analyzed by analyzing various management practices related to the pilot implementation.