Strategic IT Project Scoping: The Target State Specific Outcome (TSSO) Method
Authors: Richard W. Woolridge; J. Hale; D. Hale
Year: 2006

There is little direct evidence that management information systems (MIS) deliver measurable value at the organizational level. The lack of measurable value is a critical source of project risk since commitment is often dependent on the MIS’s perceived value. This manuscript builds on previous research frameworks to propose an assertion based Target State Specific Outcome (TSSO) model to drive project scoping. The TSSO model serves to: a) leverage stakeholder objectives to define an MIS project scope that will be aligned and integrated into an organization’s strategic initiatives, b) provide a means of developing MIS project measurement objectives that ensure recognizable business value to the strategic business initiative, and c) ensure that key risks are appropriately identified. KEYWORD project management, risk, scoping, strategic initiatives, methodology, balanced scorecard Motivation Though leveraging information technology to improve private and public sector productivity is often cited as the basis of the economic expansion of the late nineteen nineties, there has been an ongoing debate in the literature about how to measure MIS business value within the firm. Specifically there is conflicting evidence regarding whether IS projects can deliver measurable value at the organizational level (Brynjolfsson 1993, Due 1993, Due 1994, Brynjolfsson & Hitt 1998, Dewan & Kraemer 1998). In their third-generation balanced score card “strategy maps,” Kaplan and Norton (2004) contribute to this MIS productivity debate by stating that knowledge and technology assets seldom have a direct impact on financial outcomes such as increased revenues, lowered costs, and higher profits. However, Kaplan and Norton go on to state that these assets delivering indirect value are the ultimate source for creating sustainable value for the organization. This quandary over value places MIS project teams in an untenable situation when asked to provide measurable business value. Projects are the basic unit organizations use to manage their IS development efforts, but, historically, IS projects have been characterized by a notoriously high failure rate (Johnson 1995). For example, the Standish Group reported in 1994 that U.S. companies had spent more than $250 billion each year in the early 1990s on IS projects, with only 16.2% ultimately considered successful by their IS executives (Standish 1994). A Standish Group 2001 report (Standish 2001) found that, although U.S. companies invested four times more money in IS projects on an annual basis in 2000 than they did in the 1990s, only 28% were considered successful. These results further suggest that the success rate of IS projects, though improving, was and continues to be low. These results further suggest that an enormous amount of resources are expended by U.S. companies on failed IS projects. Thus, they have a strong economic incentive to improve their IS project performance (Xia & Lee 2004). One explanation for the high failure rate is that managers are not taking prudent measures to assess and manage project risks. Advocates of software project risk management claim that by countering these threats to success, the incidence of failure can be reduced (Keil, et al. 1998).