IT Project Management assignment help

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CKIT 554 Successful Management of IT Projects

Week 8: Evaluation models for IS/IT project success and user adoption

Week 8 introduction

In this final week of the module, you will explore the methods used to define and evaluate success in IS/IT projects. In particular, you will examine the scorecard method of estimating the success of an IS/IT project, as well as early user adoption as a measure of success.

Measuring success

At the beginning of a project, a project manager’s task is to determine what is needed to deliver a successful project. At the end, the task is to determine whether those goals were achieved (Lientz, 2011). However simple it may sound, this kind of evaluation is not always a straightforward task.

To evaluate any project, particularly an IS/IT project, two questions must be answered: What is the definition of success for this specific project? How do you measure the success for this specific project? A typical IS/IT project has a plethora of stakeholders, each with a different perception of success. In order to answer these two questions, each group of stakeholders must first answer this critical question: How can all stakeholders work together toward success? Table 1 illustrates typical perspectives of success in different groups of stakeholders in an IS/IT project.

Stakeholder groups Perspectives of success

Project team Clear project objectives, good communication, monitoring and feedback; adherence to budget, time and scope requirements; project functionality, project efficiency and team competence.

Project sponsors and clients Project deliverables on time, budget as planned and quality as desired; acceptance, endorsement and satisfaction of project.

Senior management and shareholders Good business and financial sense; technical competence of the team adding to overall competence of the organisation; new products/processes for market; readiness for the future; organisation mission and reputation enhancement.

Other stakeholders: customers, local and national governments, local communities

User involvement; utility; safety; impact on customer; customer service; increased value to community or government.

Table 1 Stakeholders’ success perspectives

Evaluating IS/IT project success requires the use of systematic frameworks to judge the outcomes of a project. Many project managers create scorecards to identify indicators of

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success for their projects and create metrics that show the areas of success and failure in a project. User adoption is undoubtedly a key measure of success in an IS/IT project.

Process-based measurements of IS/IT project success

Various models have emerged for the evaluation of IS/IT projects. Each of these models is appropriate for different project deliverables, types, sectors and end users. IS/IT project managers often use systematic frameworks to present various alternative models and identify the most important factors that will determine the success of a project.

Process-based measurements typically address a number of constraints aimed at meeting specific project requirements, such as time, cost and quality. At different phases of each project, emphasis may be placed on one constraint over the others in order to meet the overall project deliverables. For example, during the development stage, project managers judge ‘on-time’ delivery as the critical factor of success (to maintain the overall schedule), while during testing phases, ‘on-quality’ is the critical factor (to maintain the overall product quality). IS/IT project managers need to measure and manage this varied and staged emphasis on project elements to ensure the project’s overall success. A simple evaluation model as shown in the Figure 2 can be used to map the process-based factors of quality, cost and time attributes for an IS/IT project to the outcome-based factors of value, success and usefulness, which stakeholders can more easily understand.

Quality Strategic value

Maps to

Cost Time Success Usefulness

Process-based Outcome-based

Figure 1 Evaluation model for IS/IT projects

Importance of user adoption as early enabler to successful IS/IT projects

IT/IS development project teams typically include users. Users should represent employees from all the functional areas and levels of an organisation who will interact directly or indirectly with the final system. Users must be from a wide variety of areas (not just from one specific group or a single department) to ensure interoperability and wide acceptance. Project teams should also include novice and experienced users, as many of the fundamental issues identified in IS/IT projects often involve basic intuitive functionality. Steve Jobs used such approaches in the development of the iPod, and he insisted on intuitive and simple functionality to ensure user adoption (Arthur, 2012).

According to Schwalbe (2010), the lack of user adoption ‘leads to problems managing scope creep

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and controlling change’. Schwalbe suggests several steps to deliver successful IS/IT projects, including:

• Have a sponsor from the user organisation • Make project information easily accessible and visible to the project group and users • Have users on the project team • Collocate users with developers • Deliver something to users and developers on regular basis

Successful early user adoption is also important in driving continuous improvements and future systems upgrade programmes, which ultimately ensure longevity of the IS/IT system. Successful user adoption also drives internal and external process improvements which, when coupled with systems optimisation initiatives, create gains in efficiency and facilitate benchmarking.

It is prudent for project managers to adopt techniques such as prototyping and use case modelling as methods of understanding the deployment environment and its unique requirements. These methods ensure enough emphasis is placed on usability and user adoption from the early stages of development. Prototyping and use case modelling align the IS/IT development process with user expectations.

Using scorecards for determining IS/IT project success and adoption

Scorecards, or balanced scorecards, are a simple and effective way of gauging the level of user adoption and success of the IS/IT project. Project managers use scorecards to examine several indicators of success and present the results of the analysis as metrics. Scorecards are particularly useful in gauging user adoption through stakeholder involvement.

Defining and evaluating project success includes both qualitative and quantitative indicators. These indicators need to be appropriate for different types of IS/IT projects to ensure that they are correctly comparing and evaluating relevant elements. In addition, they should be unbiased (and not favour a positive outcome for the project team).

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Balanced scorecards focus on the use of the most appropriate information available during the project and measure both financial and non-financial indicators in the following key areas: financial, customer, internal business processes and learning and growth (Kaplan and Norton, 1996). Figure 2 shows the four organisational perspectives.

Figure 2 The four perspectives of balanced scorecard (Kaplan and Norton, 1996)

Project managers use balanced scorecards to gauge whether or not the project was successful by looking at each of the four key areas. For a specific project, the relevant items from the four key areas can be displayed in a cause-and-effect chain. For example, the map in Figure 3 (Kaplan & Norton, 2000) shows the picture of drivers that enable an organization to visually illustrate its objectives, initiatives and targets—the measures used to assess the IS/IT project’s performance.

Financial Perspective

Are we meeting the expectations of

our shareholders?

Customer Perspective

Are we satisfying our customers?

Internal Process Perspective

Are we doing things right and

doing the right things?

Learning and Growth

Perspective

Are we sustaining our ability to

change and improve for the future?

Organisational

Vision and

Strategy

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Financial perspective

Customer perspective

Internal perspective

Learning and growth perspective

Figure 3 IS/IT project strategy map (Kaplan and Norton, 2000)

In conclusion, project managers use a variety of methods to define and evaluate success in IS/IT projects. Many project managers find balanced scorecards and early user adoption particularly

Innovate (Create

new processes and

products)

Improve (Improve

and leverage

quality)

Implement (Develop

solutions)

Improve

client/customer

satisfaction

Employee

competencies

Develop a climate

of action

Put technology to

work

Improve

client/customer

value

Maximise

business value

value

Project operational

excellence

IT project team

leadership

Value from new

processes and

products

Improve IT asset

utilisation across

the organisation

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accurate tools of measuring success in IS/IT projects.

References

Arthur, C. (2012) Digital wars: Apple, Google, Microsoft and the battle for the Internet. London: Kogan Press

Kaplan, R. & Norton, D. (2000) ‘Having trouble with your strategy? Then map it’, Harvard Business Review, September–October, pp. 1-12

Kaplan, R. & Norton, D. (1996) ‘Using the balanced scorecard as a strategic management system’, Harvard Business Review, January–February, pp. 75-85

Lientz, B.P. (2011) Information technology project management. New York: Palgrave Macmillan

Schwalbe, K. (2010) Managing information technology projects. 6th ed. Boston: Cengage Learning