Start Date
12-13-2015
Description
The increasing number of sophisticated IT projects and the scarcity of skilled human resources increasingly challenge IT project portfolio managers with the need to do ‘more with less’. Consequently, resource sharing among projects provides a widely applied instrument to reduce project costs. However, resource sharing may not only result in cost synergies but also in risk effects. In contrast to cost synergies, these risk effects are rarely considered in business practice and quantification efforts of these risk effects are missing in the literature. Our research is the first to provide a systematic quantitative empirical analysis of the relationships between resource sharing and project risk. We find evidence that projects sharing their human resources are more likely to fall short in their planned scope while being more likely to comply with their planned timeline.
Recommended Citation
Meier, Christian; Zimmermann, Steffen; and Nicolau, Vlad, "The Impact of Human Resource Sharing on IT Project Risk" (2015). ICIS 2015 Proceedings. 3.
https://aisel.aisnet.org/icis2015/proceedings/ManagingIS/3
The Impact of Human Resource Sharing on IT Project Risk
The increasing number of sophisticated IT projects and the scarcity of skilled human resources increasingly challenge IT project portfolio managers with the need to do ‘more with less’. Consequently, resource sharing among projects provides a widely applied instrument to reduce project costs. However, resource sharing may not only result in cost synergies but also in risk effects. In contrast to cost synergies, these risk effects are rarely considered in business practice and quantification efforts of these risk effects are missing in the literature. Our research is the first to provide a systematic quantitative empirical analysis of the relationships between resource sharing and project risk. We find evidence that projects sharing their human resources are more likely to fall short in their planned scope while being more likely to comply with their planned timeline.