Runaway information systems projects and escalating commitment

Abstract

The failure rate of information systems development projects is alarmingly high. Because this problem has endured for three decades, many IS professionals have accepted failure as inevitable. The magnitude of some of the failures is particularly unsettling. In fact, many projects -called runaway projectscontinue long after any hope of successful completion has vanished. This research in progress will attempt to answer two questions. First, "Why do IS development projects fail?" The research will investigate the project manager's roles of planning, organizing, controlling, and leading to determine their impact on project failure. Also, agency theory will be used to investigate methods for motivating and compensating developers.The second question is, "Why are runaway IS projects allowed to continue?" This research will examine why funding continues for runaway projects long after successful completion is unlikely. Researchers have suggested that the escalation of commitment by the project manager may be a cause. This research will use agency theory to investigate that suggestion.A survey of IS project managers will collect data to test hypotheses about the questions. Results should help researchers and practitioners better understand and reduce failure rates.

Quantifying Success Factors for IT Projects—An Expert-Based Bayesian Model

“…The studies discussed in this section are also used in the literature review and clustering of IT project success factors in Section 3. Mahaney and Lederer (1999), Neimat (2005), and Reel (1999) use previous literature to investigate success and failure factors of IT projects. In Mahaney and Lederer (1999), the authors formulate a number of hypotheses about escalating IT projects that are to be tested in future research.…”

“…Mahaney and Lederer (1999), Neimat (2005), and Reel (1999) use previous literature to investigate success and failure factors of IT projects. In Mahaney and Lederer (1999), the authors formulate a number of hypotheses about escalating IT projects that are to be tested in future research. Both Neimat (2005) and Reel (1999) discuss how critical success factors found in previous research can be used proactively to prevent IT project failures.…”

“…Based on this list, Reel (1999) Within a paper introducing ongoing research about failure rates of IT development projects, Mahaney and Lederer (1999) present 14 hypotheses about why IT development projects fail. These hypotheses will be evaluated in a survey on IT project managers conducted by the researchers.…”

“…As a consequence of this, the factor project planning (Mahaney & Lederer, 1999) was excluded, since the meaning of the success factor as defined by Mahaney & Lederer was covered by other factors, such as risk analysis and good estimations, both of which are part of the planning process.…”

“…The result of the clustering can be found in Table 1. Coworker influence (Reel, 1999;Yeo, 2003) Goals and objectives (The Standish Group, 2009;Reel, 1999;Yeo, 2003;Xia & Lee, 2004;Neimat, 2005;Brocke et al, 2009) Good estimations (Wateridge, 1997;Mahaney & Lederer, 1999;Yeo, 2003;Xia & Lee, 2004;Neimat, 2005) Handling of size and complexity (The Standish Group, 2009;Mahaney & Lederer, 1999;Yeo, 2003;Xia & Lee, 2004) Internal communication (Wateridge, 1997;Reel, 1999;Mahaney & Lederer, 1999;Yeo, 2003;Neimat, 2005;Brocke et al, 2009) Less commercial pressure (Xia & Lee, 2004) Less customized solution (Yeo, 2003;Xia & Lee, 2004) Lessons learned (Reel, 1999) No immature technology (Reel, 1999;Mahaney & Lederer, 1999;Xia & Lee, 2004) No late changes (Yeo, 2003;Xia & Lee, 2004;Neimat, 2005) No superfluous activities (The Standish Group, 2009) Project monitoring (The Standish Group, 2009;Reel, 1999;Mahaney & Lederer, 1999;Yeo, 2003;Keil, 1995 Friedman, Linial, and Nachman (2000) describes a Bayesian network, B = (G, P), as a representation of a joint probability distribution. The first compone...…”