Challenges of inter-organizational information and middleware system projects: Agility, complexity, success, and failure

Abstract

There are two main ways to manage projects in business: The traditional and the agile. While the first has been historically the main Project Management methodology for businesses, the latter is gaining more support for projects involving Information Systems (IS) due to its fitting with the unpredictable nature of IS changes. To assess outcomes of projects, businesses have been using rational, narrative, organizational, and/or performative approaches. While each approach has its strengths and weaknesses, the jury is still out on which is more suitable for IS projects. More specifically, there is a lack of targeted research on which type of project management and which approach for project outcome evaluation are most relevant for Inter-Organizational Information Systems (IOIS) and Inter-Organizational Middleware System (IOMS). IOISs are automated ISs spanning across partnering organizations and aiming at synergizing their forces to increase competitiveness and cost efficiency. An Inter-Organizational Middleware System (IOMS) is the component inside IOIS that is responsible for bridging various partners' systems while holding part of the business intelligence. First, this paper collects and reviews existing project management methodologies; it then evaluates present approaches for assessing outcomes of IS projects, before it focuses on IOIS and IOMS projects, highlighting their unique characteristics and challenges. The paper concludes with a highlight of the research gap into IOIS and IOMS project management.