Beyond IT interoperability assessment: Complexity analysis of the project context

Document Type

Conference Proceeding

Source of Publication

Information Management in the Modern Organizations: Trends and Solutions - Proceedings of the 9th International Business Information Management Association Conference

Publication Date

1-1-2008

Abstract

IT people do best what they are trained to do: examine interoperability issues through a technical lens. It may be unfair to ask of them to systematically and comprehensively analyze non-IT concerns of an interoperability project such as business strategy, constraints and governance. Yet to fully understand the feasibility of an interoperability project, IT people need to examine non-IT factors that can make or break these complex, expensive and time consuming projects. This paper is about a model that emerged from a research project about understanding the nature of IT projects. The Complexity-Based Project Classification Framework can be used to assess the feasibility of a business interoperability project. A three-round international Delphi project with a sample of 23 acknowledged experts identified and prioritized the non-technical project attributes that need to be analyzed when assessing IT project feasibility. The Complexity-Based Project Classification Framework emerged. The Complexity-Based Project Classification Framework is composed of three parts: preconditions, contextual complexity attributes and project effort attributes. Once preconditions are in place (e.g. the organization needs to support using this model for assessing the feasibility of business interoperability) then the project team can assess the interoperability project by considering its project effort attributes (e.g. technology) and project contextual attributes (e.g. relative project size). It is suggested that practitioners who use this Framework will have an improved understanding of the IT interoperability project feasibility.

Publisher

International Business Information Management Association, IBIMA

Volume

1-2

First Page

109

Last Page

119

Disciplines

Education

Keywords

Information management, Business interoperability, Business strategy, Complexity analysis, IT project, Project classification, Project feasibility, Project size, Project team, Interoperability

Scopus ID

84896127378

Indexed in Scopus

yes

Open Access

no

Link to Full Text

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