AHWF: A Design Theory of Completion for Socially Useful Information Systems

Information Systems (IS) projects are saturated with status talk—“almost done,” “partner onboarded,” “ethics addressed”—yet what ultimately matters is recognized closure: acts and results that a competent audience accepts under explicit standards and that become facts in an institutional, not just technical, sense. We develop the Ad Hoc Weaving Framework (AHWF) as a design theory of completion that makes recognized closure the unit of success in cross‑boundary, ethically consequential IS work. AHWF interlocks four mechanisms. We formalize six axioms, advance a domain‑bounded ARC (adequacy–relevance–coverage) claim, and instantiate AHWF as a Minimal Working Set (MWS) of three one‑page instruments (Trope Worksheet, VLC Canvas, CI–CV Ladder) that complement agile, BPMN, work‑system canvases, and stage‑gates. We articulate testable propositions and a FEDS‑consistent evaluation program (Venable, Pries‑Heje, & Baskerville, 2016) with operational measures (closure latency, re‑openings, evidence coverage, decision reversals), and we demonstrate mechanism effects in care transitions, municipal benefits, education, and a privacy‑preserving KYC sandbox. We contribute a portable design theory that reframes “done” as a recognized fact, a runnable apparatus that teams can adopt in days, and a measurement vocabulary for cumulative evaluation of completion quality in IS.