Abstract
Background: Most large information technology (IT) projects fail, costing businesses billions of rand while delivering limited benefits. This has stimulated considerable, yet inconclusive, research into the reasons for project success and failure. Objectives: The study explores a massive IT system implementation project, throughout Africa, that cost the organisation almost four times its annual profits and taken more than 10 years. The majority of South African and other African companies in the financial services sector still run on old legacy IT systems and will have to undergo similar exercises. The conceptual model of critical success factors presented here could be used as a high-level blueprint for these future large information system implementations. Method: The research questions required in-depth exploration of circumstances and incidents during the project life cycle and the case study method was the most appropriate design. Thirteen stakeholders were interviewed in a semi-structured interview format. Results: This exploratory case study delivers a comprehensive conceptual model that covers the high-level phases of successful large IT project delivery. It shows that project success only occurs when all critical tasks across the effectiveness and efficiency dimensions of a project are planned, performed and measured accurately. Conclusion: The differences in perspectives between stakeholder groups in the project ecosystem are highlighted, as well as their consequences. The study also contributes to the existing literature by providing a comprehensive formula for the accurate identification of overall project risk.
Highlights
Over the last decade, many major transformational information system projects have failed
Schedule is King is a trade-off methodology between three project variables, namely project time, project scope and project budget. It refers to a right-to-left project management style where the time of implementation is fixed. This means that the budget or scope can be changed as long as the time of delivery is met, ‘information technology (IT)’s mandate was the quickest way to get this thing delivered’ (Respondent 2, Female, 46 years old, Senior Executive Business Sponsor [head of retail banking]) During most of the interviews, the IT teams and executives highlighted that the right-to-left methodology explained above was one of the core success factors
Previous research suggested two main schools of thought regarding the success of major information system implementations (Hidding & Nicholas 2014), namely effectiveness and efficiency schools of thought (Drucker 1967), this case study revealed that the two schools of thought were not mutually exclusive opposing views, but rather phases in the overall delivery of the project
Summary
The study explores a massive IT system implementation project, throughout Africa, that cost the organisation almost four times its annual profits and taken more than 10 years. The majority of South African and other African companies in the financial services sector still run on old legacy IT systems and will have to undergo similar exercises. The conceptual model of critical success factors presented here could be used as a high-level blueprint for these future large information system implementations. Method: The research questions required in-depth exploration of circumstances and incidents during the project life cycle and the case study method was the most appropriate design. Thirteen stakeholders were interviewed in a semi-structured interview format
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