The Relationship between Information Systems Strategy and the Perception of Project Success

Abstract

This article reports an explorative study on the relationship between Information Systems Strategy and the Perception of Project Success. The authors built upon the theoretical foundations of prior research and constructed their conceptual research model from literature. The authors' study defines IS strategy as the degree to which the organization has a shared perspective to seek innovation through IS. The authors operationalize project success by grouping six project success criteria into process-orientation and outcome-orientation. The authors use a quantitative and conclusive descriptive design to study associations between these variables. The type of design they follow is cross-sectional where IS strategy and perceived project success are assayed in a sample of subjects once and the relationships between them are determined. The authors' data is collected using an online questionnaire by a combination of business and IT managers and executives, working at organizations with a certain level of IS maturity. The authors' research finds good support to posit that organizations with an innovative IS strategy are more focused on the outcome of a project than on the project process itself and that organizations with a conservative IS strategy do show some characteristics of a process-oriented view. Furthermore, their research indicates that a more innovative organization relates to a lower perceived importance of Cost and a higher perceived importance of Value and Learning. On the other hand, they find support that a more conservative organization relates to a higher perceived importance of Cost and a lower perceived importance of Use. Next to these findings the authors' study concludes with implications for practitioners and suggestions for further explorative research.

The Importance of Managing Strategic IT Project Contracts Using a Business Process Approach

“…Firms that successfully navigate the IT outsourcing process incorporate new knowledge into future formalized contracts, which leads to more efficient resource reallocation between IT projects and better strategic alignment between firms (Fitzgerald & Willcocks, 1994: Klingebiel & Rammer, 2014. Understanding this process is beneficial for IT managers as they attempt to integrate multiple stakeholders typically associated with project management (Jonkers, van Rossum & Gilbert Silvius, 2015). Thus, we suggest the following: Proposition 4: Improved exploration and learning between IT partners through formal contracts leads to more effective alignment between project performance and firm strategy.…”

Software Projects Success by Objectives

“…On the other hand, it has been criticized by several writers that it's too narrow and limited in scope (Baccarini,1999;Ika, 2009;Jonkers et al, 2015;Howsawi & Eager, 2014) to capture the complex, multi-stakeholders and multifaceted nature of SW projects (Nelson, 2005) as it is described in the previous section.Moreover operational success does not always mean strategic success, especially when operational success is not aligned with organizational strategy; instead, it's considered a failure. The importance of different measures is realized (Ika, 2009;Jonkers et al, 2015;Howsawi & Eager, 2014) and they also cause a great shift in literature to consider different criteria such as client satisfaction, strategic objective and business success. (Ika, 2009, Mcleod & Macdonell, 2012Ojiako et al, 2008;Erling, 2006) However, most of the authors agree upon considering project management process as one important dimension of the measure, but it isn't sufficient when it is handled alone.…”

“…However, Only minimum numbers of influencing papers are scattered among some journals during the last seven years. (Barclay and Osei-Bryson, 2009;Thomas and Fernández, 2008;Ika, 2009;Mcleod et al, 2012;Jonkers et al, 2015;Howsawi & Eager, 2014). One reason for this rareness is the fact that both project management (McLeod, 2012) and Information technology are new fields.…”

“…(Ruhe & Wohlin, 2014) Concluding from what have been discussed above that, although main SW projects deliverables are the same for other projects (business deliverables, the product (Software) and the project management process deliverables), the following factors must be considered thoroughly when managing a SW project to ensure its success; adopted process methodology, resources, constraints and risk, as discussed below. 3 Software Projects Success Measures: Many authors introduced several definitions for SW project success (Barclay and OseiBryson, 2009;Thomas and Fernández, 2008;Agarwal and Rathod, 2006), and some others used empirical studies (Sauer et al, 2007;Mitchell, 2006;Jonkers et al, 2015;Howsawi & Eager, 2014). However, Only minimum numbers of influencing papers are scattered among some journals during the last seven years.…”

“…On contrary, project management success represents an internal and only short-term perspective of a project, and not overall project success (Davis, 2013). Project success must include both internal and external, and short and long term perspectives as well (Joosten, Basten & Mellis, 2011;Jonkers et al, 2015;Howsawi & Eager, 2014) in order to be accurate to reflect the real picture of what's going on inside these operational entities, and what their effect on the long run is. On the first hand, the above mentioned objective definition is widely used due to the ease of its measurement (Mcleod, 2012) and because it is said that it measures projects operational efficiency success (Wang et al, 2006;Mitchell, 2006).…”