Approaching information system evaluation methodology and techniques: a comprehensive review

Abstract

This paper advances our knowledge of information systems (IS) by drawing ideas and insights from IT/IS evaluation. The emergence and increasing pressure to invest in new IS architecture and infrastructures has become a high priority issue within organisations, and largely influenced by the need to deliver better value products and service through robust and responsive supply chains. With this in mind, business managers are seeking to use appropriate methods and techniques to appraise and justify the financial contribution of IS at strategic, operational and tactical levels. Thus, comprehensive but understandable methodologies are needed to solve the complicated project justification problems arising from the complexity of new technologies. Notwithstanding, a wide body of literature has emerged that sheds light on various methods for evaluating the cost and benefits of IT/IS investment, ranging from simple to very complex techniques. This paper sets out to provide a review of this literature in order to lend insights into our understanding of the plethora of reported research in the literature that has propagated investment justification and benefits management models and frameworks. We show that the IT/IS evaluation literature contributes significantly to scholarship on the IS.