Critical Issues in Abandoned Information Systems Development Projects Essay

Critical Issues in Abandoned Information Systems Development Projects - Essay Example   Delegating these projects to lower-level managers or generic staff members would likely allow for IS projects to be mismanaged or certain issues to be overlooked. If the senior manager is unaware of what the project team is doing at all critical stages in the information systems project, there is likely to be poor communication between project team members and lack of focus on meeting specific deadlines for project stage completion. Lack of technical understanding about complex projects, also, can involve creating a project team with members who really are not capable of performing the necessary tasks to achieve the project goal. In many ways, this would seem to go hand-in-hand with lack of senior management oversight as when developing a project team there should be a well-coordinated effort to ensure that all members have the expertise necessary to understand project goals and also ensure they are implemented successfully. Again, as pointed out by Ewusi-Mensah, often failures in these projects are not recognized until they come to the crisis stage and the project costs have already escalated out of control. The conceptual nature of IS projects, additionally, poses problems for companies such as those described in the case study. For an organization such as Intrico Consortium, which was looking to create a rather unparalleled reservation system IS project, failure to create a solid outline of project stage expectations prior to selecting project team members and role responsibilities is likely what led to years of cost overruns and the other disputes involving senior-level management.