Case study research (CSR) has gained strong acceptance in information systems (IS) research in the recent decades. This article examines how CSR has been used in IS research practice. Contrasting the currently used CSR approaches to methodological prescriptions can lead to recommendations for researchers applying this research strategy as well as to advances in the methodological literature. Our study design comprises two steps. First, we identified case studies published in six major IS journals from 2001 to 2010. Second, we critically examined CSR practices in the identified studies. We observed a dualism, as CSR currently consists of a positivist and an equally strong interpretive research stream. Case studies with other philosophical underpinnings were rarely found. We describe the CSR practice and contrast it to the methodological prescriptions. Thereby, we clearly point out the shortcomings, aiming to initiate a debate on how our community should further develop its use of CSR to become more mindful. This study is the first broad examination of CSR in IS (focusing on more than just the positivist research stream) and thus contributes to the methodological literature by providing recommendations for improvements.

Information technology (IT) development often suffers from requirements uncertainty as in many cases only preliminary information is available. Wrong decisions may lead to rework that wastes resources and delays the project. Coping with preliminary information is thus an important aspect of project management. The authors apply a case study approach to analyze how IT professionals react to preliminary information and why they do so. The authors base their study on a concurrent engineering research study that provides guidelines how the downstream process (implementation) should react if the upstream process (analysis) is not able to provide all information. According to the authors' results, IT professionals predominantly apply these proposed reactions. Nevertheless, it is often unclear why they react the chosen way. They recommend IT professionals to invest effort to more systematically consider multiple reactions. Future research should focus on how the upstream process should react when the downstream process needs to make a decision.

Enterprise systems development projects (ESDPs) often face requirements uncertainty (RU). Thus, it is essential that their project managers can cope with it. In order to gain insights into managing different RU situations, we conducted a longitudinal interpretive case study. We investigated the requirements analysis phase as well as subsequent phases of an ESDP in an international insurance company for 17 months. Thereby, we identified 42 RU situations and elaborately observed how practitioners coped with them. Based on these in-depth observations, we derive recommendations for applying requirements engineering techniques in RU situations. Thus, for researchers, we contribute to enterprise system and requirements engineering literature by making a first step towards a framework for coping with RU in ESDPs at a situational level. For practitioners, we elaborate on how and why certain techniques succeed or fail to reduce RU, thus helping them identify techniques most suited for certain situations.

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