Information Systems Project Failure essays

Information Systems Project Failure essays Why do information systems projects continue to fail? An information system is a set of people, data, and procedures that work together to provide useful information (Senn, 1990, p8) Given that information systems (IS) seem to be a useful item, which have the potential to ease peoples working lives, why do they create so many problems? That is the topic of discussion for this paper. At first glance the answer seems obvious, it must be due to a technical problem with the system itself. However, after researching this topic, and I hope after you have read this paper, the answer seems quite the opposite. Although technical competence is important it is suggested that social and political situations have more to do with IS projects failure than the presence of technical ability. The basis of my argument will come from an article found in Computer Weekly (February 2002). This article concerns itself with a recent piece of research on the topic of IS failure and its causes carried out by computer Weekly and The Coverdale Organisation, a process consultancy. An IS project is just what it says, a project that builds and implements an information system. Today, when talking about IS, most of us think of computerised systems. Although there are many different types of IS, I shall be concentrating on computerised information systems (CIS) for the purpose of this paper. A CIS may be more specifically defined as: A collection of interrelated hardware and software that responds to input from the environment, processes the input to meet certain criteria objectives, and produces output that acts on the environment. (Shore, 1988, p331) In other words, a CIS consists of an input, a process and an output (Figure 1). In order to understand why IS projects fail, it is important to understand how IS are created. It is also important to keep in mind that these systems are built for a period of days, weeks an...