Knowledge sharing as a determinant of success in information systems project teams

PurposeThe purpose of the paper is to better understand how global boundaries affect global information system (IS) project success and which mediating process variables increase the chance of success.Design/methodology/approachBased on the literature on IS success and global teams, an input‐process‐output framework is adopted to develop the research model for the study. This research is based on semi‐structured interviews with 22 global IS project managers. An attribution analysis is used to identify common themes and patterns of the interview results.FindingsGlobal IS project managers identified time separation and cultural differences as the most significant barriers to project success. Our findings suggest that effective teams were able to overcome these barriers to achieve success, but this success was achieved through the implementation of special coordination, communication and cognitive processes tailored to help teams overcome global barriers and through considerable additional cost and effort.Practical implicationsThis study furthers understanding of the global boundaries affecting global IS project success and the most effective processes that teams use to overcome global barriers.Originality/valueDespite the increasing attention to global IS work, there is limited understanding of why and how global IS projects succeed or fail. The present study, investigates not only how multiple global boundary variables (e.g. geographic dispersion, time separation, language differences, cultural differences, etc.) affect IS project success, but also which processes teams use to cope with the challenges presented by these global boundaries.

Discriminative effect of user influence and user responsibility on information system development processes and project management

Team members play a key role in the success of information systems (IS) projects. The literature on motivation tends to focus on IS professionals irrespective of their career stage. However, motivators seem to depend on the latter. Many young IS graduates leave universities to join IS project teams as external consultants (e.g., running a project from an IS consulting company’s side) and function as key contributors to these teams. Therefore, it is imperative to understand the factors that motivate these young professionals. Using a qualitative approach, we surveyed master students involved in a project-based learning course on IS projects. The results suggest that ‘personality traits’ (e.g., empathy and enjoyment of interaction with others) can function as a primary motivator for young team members. ‘Role played’ also emerged as a new motivator. Our study provides a better understanding of what motivates young IS professionals, helping to improve project performance and IS education and training.

PurposeThe purpose of this research is twofold: identify and gain a better insight on factors that can influence high performance of Information Systems (IS) project teams from the perspective of IS professionals (i.e. team members and leaders), and thus contribute to the general discussion on high-performance project teams; and offer both IS project team members and their project managers some feedback on how to build and manage teams more constructively and to enhance team performance in today’s demanding business environment.Design/methodology/approachThe authors used an exploratory case study of a small-size holding company and a qualitative analysis of the data to address the research questions.FindingsResults show a set of perceived factors that can influence high team performance in IS projects. Participants’ perceptions barely coincide. For instance, mutual trust was the only factor suggested as facilitating high team performance by 5 participants (out of 13). Differences may be because of participants’ characteristics (e.g. time on the job). All perceived factors are classified in the literature as nontechnical (i.e. having to do with behavioral and/or socio-organizational matters of project management).Originality/valueThis paper is among the very few empirical studies consolidating knowledge on high-performance IS project teams (e.g. it is still unclear if there are IS project team-specific factors that influence high performance). For the highly technical IS industry, this study came across human-centric factors transversal to different project teams.

Information Systems (IS) professionals from the United States and Korea were surveyed to explore potential similarities and differences in their views on the importance of various IS objectives. The IS objectives investigated were classified according to the level of IS impact on organizations: system, user, strategic, and organizational. Overall the results indicated that the IS professionals viewed the system level objective as the most important and the organizational level objective as the least important. In addition, the results revealed that the IS professionals from the U.S. rated the system level objective as less important but rated the user and strategic level objectives as more important than did the IS professionals from Korea. The difference in the perceived relative importance of the organizational level objective was not significant. The results also demonstrated that individuals who perceived the system level objective as more important than the other objectives also perceived a higher success rate on IS projects. The results were discussed in terms of the effects of cultural influences on global IS development and potential inaccurate perceptions of IS success.

Despite enormous progress in the methodologies and technologies used in the development and implementation of Information Systems (IS), IS failure continues to plague the efforts of many companies. According to a recent report, up to 90 percent of all IS projects fail to achieve their goals, 80 percent are late and over-budget, and 40 percent are abandoned (Clegg et al., 1997). Since information systems are becoming increasing critical for the strategic operations of organizations, the high rate of failure for IS projects is of great concern to both organizational management and IS professionals. Developing and implementing successful international IS have proven to be even more difficult due to such factors as the diversity and disagreement among the participants (Mantelaers & Van Den Berg, 2000). However, with an increasing number of firms expanding into international markets, the need to develop and implement IS which cross national boundaries and span diverse cultures is rapidly growing (Palvia, 1998). Adding to the importance of developing successful international IS is the realization that they constitute an essential tool for assisting organizations in coping with the increased competition associated with global markets. Thus, there is an urgent need to acquire knowledge about whether the factors found to be critical for developing successful IS in one country are also applicable to developing international IS involving countries with different cultural norms.

The success of Information Systems (IS) projects is of great relevance in IS research and practice. However, scholars barely agree on a single definition and measure of success. In order to gain further insights on IS project success, we investigate how IS project success is defined in practice. We use multivariate data analysis techniques in order to arrive at characterization of IS project success from user's perspective in Indian context. The results based on 183 survey responses indicate a four dimensional representation of IS project success construct viz. Relationship management, project management, scope & schedule, and budget. The results have important theoretical and practical implications for designing project management strategies so that the project is able to achieve the desired outcome.

Information systems projects’ success in government units: the issue of information systems integration

Information systems (IS) project success has been a perennial bane of many researchers. Although there are short, medium and long-term dimensions to success, the reality is that they are inseparably linked. Time plays a significant role as a stakeholder, such as a project manager who has short-term interests. In contrast, a business executive has long-term interests for the organisation as a whole. Project success is arguably a continuum where each dimension plays a role in realising long-term benefits for the organisation. This research investigates IS projects specifically to understand the argued correlation between short, medium and long-term project success dimensions. A total of 612 valid responses were collected through an online questionnaire. Quantitative analysis through PLS-SEM was conducted to reveal the correlation between success dimensions. The overall implication is that short-term IS project success does not directly correlate with long-term IS project success. However, there is a clear correlation between the time phases of IS project success. This research shows medium-term success mediates the relationship and correlation of short and long-term success. While literature acknowledges the relationship literature, this research confirms this notion and proves a significant correlation between each IS project success dimension over time.

We integrate control theory and the information systems (IS) project management literature using a multilevel lens to theorize the cross-level effects of technical IS project risk on individual developer outcomes—performance and psychological stress—and the mechanisms by which IS project managers’ project-related knowledge attenuates this relationship. We argue that IS project managers with project-related knowledge mitigate technical IS project risk by facilitating the enactment of internal and external process controls in their IS projects. Our empirical study involves data collected from 1,230 individual developers embedded in 130 IS project teams that are managed by 20 IS project managers. Our results provide strong support for the three-level model and its set of (a) cross-level main effects of technical IS project risk on individual developer outcomes; (b) cross-level main effects of IS project manager project-related knowledge on enacted internal and external process controls; and (c) cross-level moderation of the relationship between technical IS project risk and individual developer outcomes by IS project manager project-related knowledge through internal and external process controls. Our study provides insights on how IS project management, IS project process controls, and technical IS project risk must be managed as a system of multilevel dependencies to achieve the desired developer outcomes. The online appendix is available at https://doi.org/10.1287/isre.2017.0723 .

A project is believed to be a success if implemented in accordance with the pre-defined time to completion, scope, and costs. Therefore, the research described herein sought to establish how project stakeholders view the success of information system (IS) projects. To attain this objective, the study addressed two basic issues: (1) the measures used to describe success for IS projects and (2) how project stakeholders evaluate success of IS projects. To explore these issues, a survey was administered to project managers, project team members, and end-users involved in an IS project, yielding 220 valid responses. The study identified ten IS-project success measures (SMs): project scope, project schedule, project costs, quality of project management, system quality, user satisfaction, information quality, service quality, system use, and net benefits. The study’s contribution is a five-step research methodology designed to obtain stakeholder perspectives of IS project success. The SMs identified within the study can be useful for practitioners undertaking empirical activities aimed at the successful management of IS projects. A practical implication of these results is to help project managers understand a project stakeholder’s perspective on IS project success. The study’s primary limitation was that the data were gathered only from government administration units in Poland and not from organizations engaged in business; therefore, further research is needed to confirm the generalizability of the study’s results.

Determining the contribution of information system (IS) projects is a difficult endeavour. This research presents a framework for evaluating and measuring IS project performance that seek to address this problem while moving away from the reliance on the traditional assessment method (time, cost, specifications). When IS projects fail or succeed is difficult to determine what conditions enabled the outcome. However, if we are to develop a higher level of IS project management competence we need frameworks that can help in assessing IS project outcomes while critically reflecting and learning from IS project management practices. The Project Performance Scorecard (PPS) recommended here is one framework that can help to advance our understanding IS project management and evaluation approaches. This framework integrates concepts from existing models of IS success, the Balanced Scorecard and project management practices. A case study approach is used to illustrate the use of the PPS, and offers insights into how it can be useful in assessing the performance of IS projects.

Organisations have high expectations that the Information Systems (IS) projects they undertake will be successful. IS projects typically involve a variety of stakeholders who may have inherently different definitions of project success. It is perhaps due to the perceived engineering aspects of IS projects that a heightened sense of inescapable IS project success is omnipresent. The study relies on a grounded theory approach to advance a theory of and provide an explanation for, the expectations of IS project success within organisations. This study found that more often than not high expectations for IS project success stem from intrinsic personal factors.

The Project Management Institute (PMI) plays an important role in the training, career development, and recognition of information systems (IS) project managers. Indeed, not only do IS professionals account for a large proportion of the PMI constituency, but PMI is also influential in the training of IS project managers. This study explores further the contribution of PMI to IS project management by means of its main publication outlet, the Project Management Journal (PMJ). To do so, the contents of the 39 IS project management articles published in PMJ during 1988-2005 were analyzed. The article focuses on the following dimensions: the relative importance of IS project management articles published by PMJ; the profile of the authors of IS project management articles in PMJ; the main issues, in terms of IS project management, covered by PMJ; and the major gaps, in terms of IS project management, in the coverage of this domain by PMJ.

It is well accepted that Information Systems (IS) are critical for the competitiveness of virtually any human organization. However, IS need constant attention to fulfill their role and to keep pace with the changes of organizations. Therefore, the success of IS projects is crucial for the success of IS and, consequently, for the success of the organizations themselves since they are closely related. Given the complex nature of the participating objects and related concepts (e.g., people, information, processes, and technology), the perspectives of success and its influencing factors can be of high complexity. This complexity comes from various aspects that need to be recognized, considered and evaluated, as well as from the multiple interactions that occur between them. This article aims to contribute with new insights and a new way of addressing the success of projects and IS, by identifying and describing various important facets of success.