Description
A large amount of information system (IS) projects continue to fail. While scholars have dedicated great effort to investigating success factors in projects in general, less attention has been paid to failure factors, in IS projects in particular. We identify a comprehensive set of factors that led to failure of real-life IS projects by using non-scientific search engines to include a high diversity of reports in our analysis. The results yield a consolidated list of 65 failure factors (grouped in 13 categories), responsible stakeholders, and affected failure dimensions. Practitioners can use this overview by identifying failure factors critical for specific stakeholders in concrete projects. Depending on the relevance of failure dimensions, specific factors can be emphasized or degraded. Researchers are provided with a broad set of factors and can base further inquiries on our overview, for instance, in-depth analyses of specific factors’ impact on project failure.
Recommended Citation
Goedeke, Jens; Mueller, Mario; and Pankratz, Oleg, "Uncovering the Causes of Information System Project Failure" (2017). AMCIS 2017 Proceedings. 5.
https://aisel.aisnet.org/amcis2017/ITProjMgmt/Presentations/5
Uncovering the Causes of Information System Project Failure
A large amount of information system (IS) projects continue to fail. While scholars have dedicated great effort to investigating success factors in projects in general, less attention has been paid to failure factors, in IS projects in particular. We identify a comprehensive set of factors that led to failure of real-life IS projects by using non-scientific search engines to include a high diversity of reports in our analysis. The results yield a consolidated list of 65 failure factors (grouped in 13 categories), responsible stakeholders, and affected failure dimensions. Practitioners can use this overview by identifying failure factors critical for specific stakeholders in concrete projects. Depending on the relevance of failure dimensions, specific factors can be emphasized or degraded. Researchers are provided with a broad set of factors and can base further inquiries on our overview, for instance, in-depth analyses of specific factors’ impact on project failure.