Document Type
Article
Publication Date
5-1-2003
Abstract
That so many large-scale or enterprise – level Information Technology (IT) projects are said to fail is a puzzle. According to the Standish Group and individual practitioners, as many as four out of five of them do. They don’t deliver the planned functionality, cost much more than budgeted, take longer than expected, or are cancelled before they are completed. (Chaos, 1995) Yet, businesses and governments continue to invest heavily in IT, expecting significant improvements in productivity and level of service. (Stiglitz, Orszag, & Orszag, 2000). As much as half of annual capital spending in certain sectors of the economy is even now in Information Technology. (New York Times, April 2003). Further, IT practitioners advise that some IT projects reported to be failures produce application systems that become “legacy” and others become a “gold-standard” against which new systems are measured. Much work has been done to understand why large-scale information projects fail. Among reported causes are: misunderstood requirements, too optimistic schedules and budgets, inadequate risk assessment and management, and lack of alignment with current goals and objectives of the overall organization. Other causes include: major stakeholders do not have a clear vision of what success is or, if they have a clear vision, they have not communicated it in such a way that the project team understands it; project successes criteria and key result areas are not linked to business strategy leading to lack of support by executive management; and the stakeholders and project team are not in agreement as to what performance and control metrics should be beyond time and cost (Hartman & Ashrafi, 2002). Less work has been done to understand why large information technology projects succeed. That they do is the bigger puzzle that this ethnography starts to examine. The purpose of this paper is to describe the role played by social networks in successful large scale IT projects. From this research, improved project management and application design, development, and deployment practices may be later derived and a better understanding of what success really is obtained. In the next section, I outline my own experience in developing and deploying enterprise level applications for business and governmental organizations. It is my observation that how people work together is a key factor in successful projects and that some organizations are much better than others at fostering large – scale innovation. Following, I summarize the social networking ideas of Granovetter, Wenger, Foucault, and Fox. Their ideas help to explain my observation. Next, I use these ideas to analyze what appears will be a successful IT initiative by the judicial branch of government of a large mid-western state. Finally, I suggest a future line of research, the results of which might point to improved practice in the areas of IT development and deployment and a better understanding of what success in this really is.
Keywords
social networks
Rights
© The Author(s). Kelvin Smith Library provides access for non-commercial, personal, or research use only. All other use, including but not limited to commercial or scholarly reproductions, redistribution, publication or transmission, whether by electronic means or otherwise, without prior written permission is strictly prohibited.
Department/Center
Design & Innovation
Recommended Citation
Hill, James L., "Social Networks and Information Technology" (2003). Student Scholarship. 392.
https://commons.case.edu/studentworks/392