A Performance Management Model for Agile Information Systems Development Teams
The prevailing trend in ISD is one of poor project performances, with budget overruns commonly in excess of 300 % and many failing altogether. To address this trend ISD research always focuses on the ISD process, user involvement and the people involved.
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Abstract The prevailing trend in ISD is one of poor project performances, with budget overruns commonly in excess of 300 % and many failing altogether. To address this trend ISD research always focuses on the ISD process, user involvement and the people involved. Rarely, if ever are wider organisational processes questioned. This paper argues for a cohesive and ongoing inclusion of wider organisational factors in efforts to address and improve ISD project performance. Given the poor budgetary performance of ISD projects, budgeting is one that we feel requires particular attention. Contemporary research in budgeting (e.g. Beyond Budgeting) and in ISD (e.g. agile methods) attempts to address similar issues albeit from a different angles. This paper draws on two case studies of seven ISD teams to apply the Beyond Budgeting model to an ISD environment. We demonstrate the value of using the Beyond Budgeting model to develop a cohesive research agenda within ISD used to identify gaps and suggest improvements to agile methods, probably the most well-known and accepted contemporary ISD approach.
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Introduction
Despite over 40 years of ISD research, the statistics on project failure in information systems development (ISD) projects are still of significant concern. ISD projects often spiral out of control and far exceed original budget and schedule projections [24]. The Standish Group’s 2003 CHAOS Report which incorporates data from
G. Lohan (*) • M. Lang National University of Ireland, Galway, Ireland e-mail: [email protected]; [email protected] K. Conboy The University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia e-mail: [email protected] H. Linger et al. (eds.), Building Sustainable Information Systems: Proceedings of the 2012 International Conference on Information Systems Development, DOI 10.1007/978-1-4614-7540-8_23, © Springer Science+Business Media New York 2013
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Fig. 1 The evolution of budgeting and ISD
several thousand projects suggests that 43 % of projects were over budget [36]. The 2006 CHAOS study update reveals that only 35 % of IT projects started in 2006 were categorised as successful, 19 % were judged to be outright failures and the remaining 46 % were completed over-budget, behind schedule or failed in some way to meet user requirements [38]. When we examine budgeting theory and literature, it is perhaps not surprising that ISD projects are continuously running over budget. Indeed it is clear that effective budgeting is something that has not really been mastered in any discipline. In its own literature, the budgeting process has attracted much criticism in recent years [19]. The traditional budgeting process has been labelled as “broken” [22], an “unnecessary evil” [40], a “thing of the past” [18], “ineffective and inefficient” [20], and many have questioned the value of budgeting as a management control mechanism in contemporary environments at all [6,13,35]. Contemporary budgeting research is attempting to fix these issues, and in recent years an innovation f
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