Understanding IT project risks as disturbances to digital ecosystems

Authors:
Jonathan Becker;Renee Wei Dai;Sandeep Purao
Affiliations:
Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA;Pennsylvania State University, State College, PA;Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA
Venue:
Proceedings of the International Conference on Management of Emergent Digital EcoSystems
Year:
2011

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Abstract

Traditionally, IT projects have been conceptualized as efforts that must be managed and tracked to ensure that requirements are met and resource constraints are respected. We contend that for large IT projects, this conceptualization may be flawed because they occasion broad changes to the IT and work practice environment and can endanger the very stakeholder networks that provide the backdrop for the work practice. We suggest viewing such large projects as interventions in a digital ecosystem. This paper investigates a specific concern following this perspective: the incidence of risks in such large projects. We perform a meta-analysis to identify categories of risks in IT projects and compare these against disturbances to an ecosystem. Our analysis shows that proactive preservation or controlled evolution of the ecosystem is likely to provide a more useful conceptualization of IT project risks.