  Contemporary business innovation relies increasingly on information and
communications technology (ICT) solutions. As ICT initiatives are generally
implemented via projects the management of ICT projects has come under
increasing scrutiny. ICT projects continue to fail; as a result, while research
in ICT project management has indeed increased, many challenges for research
and practice remain. Many studies have addressed the execution and management
of ICT projects and the many factors that might relate to project outcomes.
Very few, however, have considered ICT project initiation and the crucial
decisions made at that very early, pre-life cycle stage. The primary intent of
this research is therefore to investigate ICT projects with a particular focus
on their initiation. In doing so we wished to understand why ICT projects are
started, and how they are moved from idea or proposal to supported reality. A
combination of semi-structured interviews and the repertory grid data
collection and analysis method was employed to investigate and validate the
motivating factors that influence individual IT Managers' project initiation
decisions and the methods they use to transition from idea to enacted project.
Our results showed that there are indeed multiple underlying reasons for the
decisions made at this early stage and that there are some especially common
decision drivers. Some were expected, in the sense that they mapped to
recommended best practice. For instance, most projects are motivated by a
desire to achieve efficiencies or cost savings, and their potential tends to be
assessed using cost benefit analysis. Other results were more surprising -
competitor pressure was not a common driver for ICT project initiation in our
analysis. Unsurprisingly, formal evaluation methods are more frequently used to
assess project proposals when those projects are larger and higher profile.
(Abridged)
