Feral Government?

Using workflow technologies as a metaphor for Critical Success Factors (CSFs), this chapter considers their use to improve the performance of major government IT projects, asking whether context can be ignored without repercussion or whether it is highly significant. Focusing on the UK, this exploration begins by defining “context,” then considering what it means in terms of government. A case study demonstrates that context limits the value of CSFs to a major government IT project. Whilst claiming to submit to the imposed workflow technology, the project team developed feral behaviour, manipulating the CSFs to match previous ways of working with no action being taken to ensure compliance. However, increased governance is not the answer. It would simply force these generic solutions on to unique problems; more contingent solutions should be sought to the problem of IT project failure in order to take these highly specific contexts into account.

Feral Government?

Using workflow technologies as a metaphor for Critical Success Factors (CSFs), this chapter considers their use to improve the performance of major government IT projects, asking whether context can be ignored without repercussion or whether it is highly significant. Focusing on the UK, this exploration begins by defining “context,” then considering what it means in terms of government. A case study demonstrates that context limits the value of CSFs to a major government IT project. Whilst claiming to submit to the imposed workflow technology, the project team developed feral behaviour, manipulating the CSFs to match previous ways of working with no action being taken to ensure compliance. However, increased governance is not the answer. It would simply force these generic solutions on to unique problems; more contingent solutions should be sought to the problem of IT project failure in order to take these highly specific contexts into account.

Agile Information Management Governance

Research has shown that IT project failure rates increase in line with project size, and by the time you reach projects over $10M, the failure rate hits 100% (The Standish Group International, Inc., 1999). Hughes and Stodder (2012) go on to show that at an average cost of $12.8M, large data warehousing projects were failing 65% of the time for internally built apps and 86% of the time for purchased packages. The outtake here is that small projects are by far more successful. “We have long been convinced that shorter time frames, with delivery of software components early and often, increase the success rate” (The Standish Group International, Inc., 1999, p. 3). How can this be achieved on large projects? It is possible to be successful at the enterprise level, but it requires a fresh approach to project execution, an ability to deliver projects in small, incremental chunks while maintaining business involvement and support, and setting clear, achievable objectives throughout the program.