This document summarizes challenges with IT projects and proposes new paradigms for managing them more effectively. It notes that 30-40% of IT projects run over budget, over schedule, or fail to meet specifications. Common types of system failures include failing to capture business requirements or provide organizational benefits. The document then discusses traditional project management approaches and their limitations. It proposes new paradigms like real options pricing models, prioritizing high reliability through collective mindfulness, and considering the sociomateriality of information systems. Overall, it argues for a more critical perspective on projects that focuses on values, ethics, meaning, and trust in addition to traditional efficiency and control measures.

1. Skills for Design, Analysis and
Implementation of IT projects
Prof. Dr. ir Jan Devos
Universiteit Gent, Campus Kortrijk
Graaf Karel De Goedelaan 5
BE-8500 KORTRIJK - BELGIUM
T: +32 56 24 12 72
e-mail: jang.devos@ugent.be
linkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/jangdevos
Blog: jangdevos.wordpress.org
twitter: @jangdevos
© Jan Devos
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4. IT/IS projects
• Runaway projects and system failure
• Runaway projects: 30%–40% IT projects
– Exceed schedule, budget
– Fail to perform as specified
• Types of system failure
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–
–
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Fail to capture essential business requirements
Fail to provide organizational benefits
Complicated, poorly organized user interface
Inaccurate or inconsistent data
© Jan Devos
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5. Traditional approach
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Cybernetic system
Control theory
© Jan Devos
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7. IT projects (New paradigms?)
“(Computer-based) Information
Systems defeat their own purpose
because they create complexity.”
(Weick 1985)
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11. IT projects - new paradigms?
Real Options Pricing Models (ROPMs)
• Suitable for large IT infrastructure investments
• Future revenue streams are unclear (unsuccessful ?)
• Invest now – harvest later
• An initial expenditure on IT creates the right, but not the
obligation to obtain the benefits associated with further
development
• Management has the freedom to cancel, defer, restart, or
expand the project
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12. IT projects - new paradigms?
Organizing for High Reliability: Processes of Collective
Mindfulness (Weick, 1999)
• Preoccupation with failure (“Failure is not an option”)
• Reluctance to simplify interpretation
(beware of ‘frameworks’, ‘models’, ‘mindsets’, …)
• Sensitivity to operations (“situational awareness”)
• Commitment to resilience (“continuous management of
fluctuations”)
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13. IT projects - new paradigms?
Lessons from HROs
• The expectation of surprise is an organizational resource because it
promotes attentiveness and discovery
• Anomalous events should be treated as outcomes rather than as
accidents, to encourage search for sources and causes
• Errors should be made as conspicuous as possible to undermine selfdeception and concealment
• Reliability requires diversity, duplication, overlap, and a varied response
repertoire, whereas efficiency requires homogeneity, specialization, nonredundancy and standardization (bricolage?)
• Interpersonal skills are just as important in HROs as are technical skills
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14. IT projects - new paradigms?
The sociomateriality of IS (Orlikowski, 2007/8)
• A relational view of organizations and IS as sociomaterial
arrangements of human and non-human actors
• Assumes inherently inseparable sociality and materiality of
IS
• IS enactments can create different kind of realities in
practice
• E.g. Why is one ERP implementation successful and why is
another one considered as a failure?
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15. Conclusions
• PM does not guaranteed success nor eliminates failures
(IS success models)
• PM too much focused on ‘how-to-do’
• Management of meaning iso management of control ?
• Critical perspective on projects: focus on values (technology
is not neutral), ethics and morality equally important than
efficiency & effectiveness
• Trust vs Control (Devos, 2009)
2003, The chimpanzees’ tea party: a new metaphor for project manager (Drummond & Hodgson)
2006, New Possibilities for Project Management Theory: A Critical Engagement (Cicmil & Hodgson)
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16. Thanks
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