Success factors in information technology projects

Abstract

The failure of IT projects has been a major problem over the decades. The previous study has found that big IT projects overran 45% of the cost, 7% of schedule and produced 56% less profit than expected (Mckinsey 2012). Today, the situation has not been changed significantly. It is crucial to explore critical success factors to enable software companies to avoid risks in project development across various industries. These factors should cover more organizational aspects among different customer businesses as IT projects are more challenging and diverse with a high level of novelty. The main aim of this thesis is to research organizational aspects in different software firms which can moderately im-pact IT project success and how these factors influence total project performance as IT projects have failed with many reasons over years. The study was analyzed on empirical data from the IT barometer 2014 data set of Finnish Data Processing Association. All senior managers were asked whether they agree or disagree that specified critical factors can impact on IT project success by selecting the respective scale. The study results found three of the most important factors which moderately impact the IT project success. IT architecture, enterprise architecture, and selection of IT solutions can enable software firms to gain business objectives and expected IT project outcomes during the implementation phase to meet market demands and customer satisfaction. In addition, only IT architecture and enterprise architecture can help the project team run a development project on time to gain product leadership and competitive advantages. There are other critical factors can enable IT projects to gain success in expected project outcomes during the implementation phase. In total project performance aspect, the study findings show that IT architecture can improve project timeliness better than the achievement of business objectives to gain good market share. Further, enterprise architecture has a moderate correlation with project time-to-market and achievement of business objectives to enhance project success against fierce rivalry among competitors within the software industry. The study found that the selection of IT solutions can only enable a project team to increase project competency in order to gain business objectives during development time. Hence, senior managers should consider the importance of these success factors during development phases to gain project success as expectations and improve total project performance for surpassing competitors on the market for profits and competitive advantages.