Factors influencing information systems development project success

Abstract

This study strives to explore the critical success factors in Information Systems Development(ISD) projects. To provide considerable insights to project success framework, two research questions are brought up in this thesis. Firstly, one of the main research questions is that which critical success factors determine ISD project success in the context of project team. Secondly, the other research question is that there is a heterogeneity of project success framework between public sectors and private sectors. Thus, the two essays are researched in this thesis to find out convincing answers to those research questions. The first essay aims to assess the success of ISD projects using a team effectiveness model and to determine the factors that influence the ISD project success. We adopt Command Effectiveness(CTEF) Model derived from Essens et al.(2005) to demonstrate our hypotheses. We also analyze the differences in project success between the public and private sectors to derive some practical and theoretical implications. We survey proficient project management professionals and use structural equation modeling to demonstrate our hypotheses. The research results indicate that task, organization, team leader, team, and communication have sufficient evidence to improve project behaviors, and project behaviors strengthen the possibility of ISD project success as a mediator. Lastly, we substantiate that the most distinctive heterogeneous factor between public and private sectors is communication, which is composed of communication structure, relevance, and diversity.

The second essay examines to analyze how the quality of leadership and teamwork influences project success in information systems development (ISD). The proposed research model endeavors to substantiate the heterogeneity of project success in the public and private sectors to assist project managers. We surveyed experienced Korean project managers in both the public and private sectors and applied a partial leaser squares (PLS) method to the data to empirically prove out hypotheses. According to our derived results, the network governance leadership, entrepreneur leadership, and transactional leadership styles have a significant and positive influence on teamwork quality, while teamwork works as a mediator that determines an ISD project’s success. The comparative analysis of the public and private sectors showed that transactional leadership and entrepreneurial leadership styles are efficient in ISD project in the public sector, while transformational leadership and network governance leadership styles are appropriate in the private sector. Accordingly, these implications and findings in this thesis furnish experienced researchers and practitioners with momentous insights such as the importance of teamwork and leadership, the impact on the project success, and so forth.