Abstract
Although government information technology (IT) projects are often claimed to suffer from cost and schedule overrun, current valid evidence of the magnitude of the problem and its antecedents is difficult to find. To address this gap, we present a mixed-methods study based on 54 Danish government IT projects completed between 2011 and 2020. Using archival data and measures established by Flyvbjerg and colleagues, we find that cost and schedule overrun is substantially lower than reported in previous studies. Qualitative analysis based on interviews and documents in a purposefully selected sub-sample shows that projects are more likely to be completed within budget and schedule if managers actively adopt four key practices: building one team, accommodating uncertainty, rigorous project management and capitalizing on previous domain knowledge. Our findings also suggest that scope reductions may help projects complete within budget and schedule. We discuss theoretical and practical implications for IT project management.
A prior version of this paper has been published in the ISD2021 Proceedings (http://aisel.aisnet.org/isd2014/proceedings2021).
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Acknowledgements
The authors would like to thank the interviewees and their respective organizations for participating in this study. Further, the authors would like to thank the anonymous reviewers for their valuable feedback. Adam Alami and Christian Ø. Madsen are employed by the Research Centre for Government IT, which is a co-funded collaboration between the IT University of Copenhagen and the Danish Ministry for Finance. The ministry has provided the documentation on IT projects, but had no part in defining, guiding or performing the research. The ministry made no textual, editorial, or other contributions to the paper but has received an earlier draft version to correct possible factual errors concerning the ministry and Danish council for ICT.
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Alami, A., Østergaard Madsen, C., Krancher, O. (2022). Government IT Projects: Current Evidence of Cost and Schedule Overrun and Their Antecedents. In: Insfran, E., et al. Advances in Information Systems Development. Lecture Notes in Information Systems and Organisation, vol 55. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-95354-6_7
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