Information Technology Project Failure Research Articles

Mitigating risk of failure in information technology projects: Causes and mechanisms

This paper shows how causes and mechanisms behind past information technology (IT) project failures can be used for systematic risk mitigation in new IT projects. This is significant because successful IT projects are needed to realise the benefit potential of digitalisation, whereas failed IT projects overspend resources and underdeliver benefits. In this paper we a) identify factors and causes that lead to IT project failure, b) analyse the consistency over time of the identified factors and causes, c) expose mechanisms of failure by analysing failure factors, causes, and common features of IT projects, and d) show how this knowledge can be used in IT project risk evaluations. The paper uses hermeneutic literature review, statistical analysis of failure factors in the literature, content analysis of the reviewed literature, and process tracing.

Causes of IT Project Failure: A Systematic Review

The current study dealt with one of the most important problems that information technology projects suffer from, which is a failure, as failure has become a critical issue facing this type of project, especially because of the increase in failure rates and the projects exceeding the planned costs and the timetable set for their completion. Accordingly, the basic research problem has been represented by an important question: What are the main causes of the failure of IT projects according to what has been presented in the literature in the past thirty years? In this context, the main objective of the study was to conduct a systematic review of the literature in the field of failure of information technology projects, according to the scientific contexts recognized in the field of systematic review, through reviewing the literature that dealt with the subject for 30 years, which is between 1990 and 2020. The study concluded that there are eleven causes of failure: planning, organizational factors, lack of resources, lack of administrative expertise for the project, lack of organizational support, lack of accurate identification of project requirements, project complexity, poor project communication, inaccurate definition of project scope, flawed project management methodology and finally miscalculation of risk and its management.

Improvising information technology projects through the duality of structure

Background: There is always emphasis on information technology (IT) projects because of their significance in organisations. Thus, efforts and resources are reciprocally committed to ensure the successes. Still, failure of IT projects in many organisations remains high and affects competitiveness. As recourse for remedy, different techniques and approaches have been employed. However, little or no progress has been made in increasing the success rate of IT projects in many organisations.Objectives: The objective of this study was to examine the factors that influence and impact IT projects, improvisation and how improvisation manifests.Method: The study was carried out using a single case study approach. Qualitative data were collected and duality of structure from the perspective of structuration theory was used as lens to guide the analysis.Results: Findings from this study reveal how reproduction of actions manifests from non-technical factors, such as cultural value, organisational structure, power relationship, human capacity, know-how and change management. These factors help to gain a more constructive and better understanding of how IT projects improvisation is influenced or impacted by non-technical factors in organisations.Conclusion: The study is intended to benefit both practitioners and academics. Some of the benefits will be gained from fresh perspectives on the complexities of IT projects improvisation, which are often caused by various seen and unforeseen non-technical factors. This includes how actions from relationship, know-how about facilities and communicative scheme are produced and reproduced.

An Investigation in IT Projects Failure within Kurdistan Regional Government of Iraq

The importance of information technology (IT) system has extremely become crucial for governments to reduce routines, improve transparency, systemize governmental processes, easy internal communications and enhance productivity. For these reasons, most developed countries are extremely relying on increasing IT projects to provide better services for their citizens and to enhance collaboration between their directories. The aim of this paper is to identify primarily causes of several IT projects failures with Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) and comparative with several other IT projects success and failure within developed countries such as Turkey, UAE and Estonia. Although, we are aiming to introduce and draws the gaps between IS design in KRG-IT projects factors in terms of culture, social, political and lack of experts were they have had a vital impacts on the KRG-IT projects failure. In This paper we have proposed a qualitative research approach to analysis the results and discover the reasons behind the failures. Furthermore, this study attempts to provide better solutions and recommendations to emphasis high-risk prototypes that affected IS in developed countries. General Terms Your Information Systems, Management of Information Systems, Information Technology, IT project Failure.

IMPACT ASSESSMENT OF FACTORS AFFECTING INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY PROJECTS IN RIVERS STATE, NIGERIA

The work studies the impact assessment of factors affecting Information Technology (IT) projects in River State. In order to stop the failure of IT projects in River State, three IT projects were examined using some critical success factors to create a check list for a successful IT project. A sample of 85 respondents was drawn from a study population of 100. The respondent draws were carried out using the stratified random sampling technique in the analysis of variances (ANOVA) as used to analyze the data collected by use of a research administered questionnaire.The finding from the analysis indicated that the three main Information and Communication Technology (ICT) projects used in this research which includes ICT Agriculture, ICT for all (Primary and Secondary School) and Closed-Circuit Television (CCTV) Camera show that many of the respondents strongly agreed to ICT for all (Primary and Secondary School) while in ICT Agriculture and Closed-Circuit Television (CCTV) Camera, very few respondents agreed to the ICT project in River state.This study recommends that the authorities should encourage the use, upgrade of existing and introduction of more ICT projects which must comply with the necessary quality assurance tests; such as, if the project meets time, if the project meets Cost, if the project meets scope goals, if the project satisfied the user’s needs and if the result of the project meet its objectives. This study has provided an empirical basis for problem solving on the Impact Assessment of Factors Affecting Information Technology Projects in Rivers State.

An Adaptive and Preemptive Theory for Improving Systemic IT Project Failure Trends (“AdaPIT” Theory)

Information Technology (IT) systems have become an important competitive element across the great majority of industries, and technology projects are entrenched within all domains becoming larger and encompassing cross functional components. This increased technological dependency and transformation also increases the risk to organizations as a whole if something goes wrong. Pragmatically things often do go wrong and despite the evolution and sophistication of project management frameworks and methodologies a great percentage of IT projects are still failing. Although multiple actions have attempted to address this costly and prevailing trend, they have yet to positively and/or consistently impact it, even though it has caused additional management burdens and costly compliance requirements along the way. As the projections for IT investment increase by a magnitude of 3.5% (annual average) and IT project failures report losses in the billions (Gartner, 2011), this trend has become ever steeper over time. It is likely that the rates are even higher than the industry reports because individuals and organizations fear back lash when identifying and communicating perceived failures. The alarming (and increasing) rates of IT Project Failure 4 are strong indicators that this systemic trend has not yet been addressed from a causal perspective. The authors hence conducted extensive research in order to enable the assessment of this pervasive and costly issue through a unique approach and leveraged the social “lens” (one of the three fundamental research methodology pillars). Hypothesizing that the underlining key factors associated with this costly and pervasive trend could be traced to “soft factors” an extensive (multi-method) research effort based on three fundamental pillars (Grounded Theory, System Dynamics an Social Theory) has been conducted and has unveiled a new theoretical model promising greater understanding of IT (and potentially other) programs and projects. The IT project construct is looked upon by the researchers as “mini organizations” characterized by multiple changes and natural disruptions to the Social Order over time. The philosophical research framework was then operationalized by means of a four phased multi-method approach promoting a root cause identification of key factors driving IT project success and/or failures as well as their interdependencies and impacts. This paper presents the outcomes of this research (emerging theory), its key challenges and how they were overcome and discusses the Adaptive and Preemptive IT Theory (“AdaPIT”). In essence the “AdaPIT” Theory does not replace any existing IT project Management framework: it simply incorporates the identified Intangible Soft Factor (“ISF's”) into the applicable project construct. The main theory unveiled has been modeled and presented through multiple views that will be discussed in this paper. A summary analysis of the research findings will also be provided. It encompasses the author's representation from all data points collected throughout this investigation inclusive of their own experiences (“all is data”) as well as the review and feedback from industry practitioners, Grounded Theory subject matter experts and other technical and/or managerial personnel. The summary outcome (AdaPIT Theory) encompasses the data collection, analysis and hypotheses support process within the multi-method research framework.

Involve Users or Fail

Repeated surveys, and most notably those by the Standish Group, suggest that a substantial proportion of Information Technology (IT) projects fail. The literature suggests that this is in part due to a lack of user involvement in the project. The authors’ research describes the case study of a major IT system implementation project in East Africa. The paper reports on the results of both an online questionnaire and interviews with key participants. The authors’ findings suggest that the subsequent failure of this project was in large part attributable to a lack of user involvement in the definition of requirements and implementation of the system. There did not appear to be an organisational culture that recognised the significance of such participation in the project. Although there are issues of definition raised, such as the definition of success and failure, this work supports previous findings that user involvement is a key factor in IT project success and failure.

IT Project Failure: A Proposed Four-Phased Adaptive Multi-Method Approach

In the field of Information Technology (IT) there is an observable trend toward project failure. Although multiple actions have attempted to address this failure trend, they have not impacted the extent of the trend. As the projections for IT investment increase by a magnitude of 3.5% (annual average) and IT project failures report losses in the billions [1], it is anticipated that this trend will become ever steeper in the coming years. This problem and the magnitude of its reported impact demand researchers and practitioners alike take a hard look at the way that projects have been conducted historically in order to seek effective and holistic approaches to assess and ultimately rectify this systemic issue. Much of the research on IT projects to date addresses “success” factors with no accounting of or focus on “failures” and their respective potential root causes. This paper focuses on “Adaptive Experimentation,” a proposed four-phased research methodology incorporating a multi-method approach which integrates Grounded Theory principles to expose potential theoretical “blind spots” unexplored to date (validation and classification of reported IT “failure” categories) and explores this systemic matter from a social lens framework by incorporating IT Intangible Social Factors (IFSs).

InnoDiff: A project-based model for successful IT innovation diffusion

In spite of the importance of information technology (IT) for many organizations to help manage the enterprise daily transactions, IT project failure rates still remain high and are of great concern. This obliges continued exploration of new process models and organization structures to nurture strong project performance. This paper presents a new generic model for successful implementation of IT projects referred to as InnoDiff. The model uses Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) as a test bed. Furthermore, the paper also presents a case study that demonstrates the detailed application of InnoDiff during the course of executing the Human Resource Management System (HRMS) within the Wide Access Network (WAN) at the National Guard Health Affairs (NGHA) in Saudi Arabia.

Management Principles Associated With IT Project Success

Success in information technology (IT) projects remains elusive, even after decades of efforts to improve it. Most of these efforts have focused on variations of the traditional project management paradigm as promulgated by PMBOK. We suspected that a potential cause of high IT project failure is with the paradigm, which focuses on the project itself and on meeting time and cost targets. A new paradigm called Value-Driven Change Leadership (VDCL) originated from discussions of a panel of project management experts. This paper describes the principles of that paradigm. It also reports the results from a survey of four project managers on the association between project success and management principles from VDCL and PMBOK.

A Holistic Approach for Understanding Project Management

Companies invest significant sums of money in major Information Technology (IT) projects, yet success remains limited. Despite an abundance of IT Project Management (ITPM) resources available to project teams, such as the Project Management Institute (PMI) Body of Knowledge, IT standards and IT governance, a large percentage of IT projects continue to fail and ultimately get scrapped. Recent studies have shown an average of 66% IT project failure rate, with 52% of the projects being cancelled, and 82% being delivered late. The purpose of this research was to provide a way for uncovering potential causes of IT project failures by utilizing a systemic and holistic approach to identify critical success factors for project management. The holistic approach has enabled the development of an ITPM conceptual model, which provides a method to evaluate the critical success factors of a given project, and their alignment with each other. The adoption of the systemic methodology and its implementation increase the potential for IT project success, and alert project leaders of potential problems throughout the life of the project.

Healthcare IT Project Failure

This case describes the experiences of a healthcare organization in the North of England that introduced a multi-lingual electronic patient information system, the first of its kind in this part of the country. This information technology (IT) based project, commissioned as a pilot for the establishment of an information system to cater to the needs of ethnic minority languages, failed to make progress in-spite of its great potential, and the user satisfaction that it offered. The case presents a number of issues related to how the design and deployment of the project resulted in its lack of satisfactory progress. The findings from this case suggest why the project failed: the failure being a direct result of the approach taken to the project.

Information technology project failures

PurposeThis paper seeks to apply results from the study of bandit processes to cases of information technology (IT) project failures.Design/methodology/approachThis paper examines three published case studies, and discusses whether managerial actions are in accordance with the predictions of bandit process studies.FindingsBandits are a class of decision‐making problems that involve choosing one action from a set. In terms of project management, the firm selects from several alternative IT projects, each with its own distribution of risks and rewards. The firm investigates technologies one by one, and keeps only the best‐performing technology. The bandit perspective implies that managers choosing a risky IT project with high potential reward before safer ones are behaving optimally. It is in the firm's interest to resolve the uncertainty about the innovative project first. In case of failure, the firm can later choose safer technology. A high proportion of risky projects adopted leads to a high number of project failures.Practical implicationsThe bandit approach supports studies that advocate evaluating decision makers on the optimality of their decision process, rather than specific outcomes.Originality/valueThis paper demonstrates how insights from the bandit problem are relevant to studies of IT project failures. Whilst choosing high‐risk, high‐reward projects may be in a firm's interest, some observed project failures are optimal choices that do not work out.

Guidelines for managing change: A study of their effects on the implementation of new information technology projects in organisations

The implementation of information technology (IT) projects constitutes a major change for any organisation. The actual implementation appears to be very heavily biased toward the technological aspects, while paying little attention to managing the ensuing changes in process, structure and culture. This study employs statistical tests to show that nine established change management guidelines were particularly significant where the successful implementation of IT projects was concerned. Of the nine, however, two were primarily responsible for the success or failure of IT projects.

What went wrong? Unsuccessful information technology projects

Information technology (IT) project management is a crucial issue for organizations today. A 1995 study in the USA found that 31 per cent of software projects will be canceled before completion, and more than half the projects will cost an average of 189 per cent of the original estimates. This article examines the results of a survey questionnaire that was sent to Canada’s 1,450 leading public and private institutions to find the causes of IT project failure. It found that the three most common reasons for project failure are poor project planning, a weak business case, and a lack of top management involvement and support. It then outlines the reasons behind these failures, thus providing the first steps towards minimizing the risk of future failures.