Literature Rev

LITERATURE REVIEW – MANAGING PROJECT RISK AND WORK STRESS IN INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY

Abstract

The abstract nature of Information Technology (IT) creates unique issues for IT practitioners and non-practitioners. While they involve in projects one of the main aim should be managing project uncertainties and its associated risks. The real risk arises only when the organisation is driven by the latest technology without knowing its potential risks. On the other side IT practitioners should also try to overcome work stress which arises due to techniques followed by IT project managers in order to manage risks caused by project uncertainties. So this paper deals with the type of strategies that the organisations have adopted or should adopt in order to remove or reduce the risks caused by project uncertainties and the work related stress due to these strategies.

Rapid advances in Information and communication technology (ICT) have increased the number and size of information system (IS) projects as organisations seek to exploit new technology (Irani et al., 2002). These projects consume significant amounts of organisations’ time, resources and energy and failures are extremely costly (Barki et al., 1993, Whittaker, 1999). The Standish Group found that 31.1% of ICT projects are cancelled prior to completion, and a further 52.7% of projects exceeded the original costs estimate by an average of 189%. As the complexity of IS projects increases the risk of failure from a variety of causes increases moreover the work stress also increases.

DEFINITIONS

Project Failure

The definition for project failure was proposed in many books, but we are going to discuss about two proposals. Larson and Gobeli (1987) imply that project failure is related to poor planning and lack of organisational support specifically; lack of top management support, a weak business case, poor definition of user requirements, lack of user participation, unrealistic time...