The Dark Side of Successful Data Intensive Projects: Function Creep And Stakeholder Creep

In this article, we investigate the unintended consequences of initiating a large data analytic (DA) initiative in healthcare. DA is promising in terms of aiding decision making both for healthcare decisions and administrative decisions. However, while the (re)use of large amounts of data has lots of potential, it also has a dark side in terms of privacy, ethics, and control. Through the analysis of a longitudinal case study (2003-2015) of the emergence, expansion, and collapse of a large-scale DA project in the Danish healthcare sector, we demonstrate how high expectations for DA caused a surge of stakeholders and features that ultimately resulted in the project’s demise. We call these surges stakeholder creep and function creep and theorize their emergence and consequences for DA in organizations.