Measuring and managing the benefits from IT projects: A review and research agenda

Abstract

There is growing agreement that organisations must explicitly plan for and proactively manage the realisation of benefits, if a new technology is to deliver real value to its host organisation. In particular, benefits need to be leveraged through carefully planned and co-ordinated programmes of organisational change and ongoing organisational adaptation. Inevitably these insights have encouraged academics, consultants and practitioners to develop tools and techniques that explicitly support the benefits realisation process. Unfortunately, even when organisations have adopted such prescriptions, tools or panaceas, the outcome from software projects still often disappoints users and managers alike. Based upon a thorough review of the existing literature, we begin by critically evaluating the benefits management literature and argue that before organisations can meaningfully manage benefits, they must be able to effectively measure benefits. We then critique the existing benefits measurement literature to assess whether the current measurement tools are sufficiently robust and effective, to facilitate benefits management approaches. The chapter concludes by proposing an agenda that identifies the many areas in which future research projects could be fruitfully conducted.