Better than you think? Exploring cost and schedule overruns in government IT projects

Research output: Conference Article in Proceeding or Book/Report chapterArticle in proceedingsResearchpeer-review

Abstract

Information Technology (IT) projects experience cost and schedule overruns, and some fail altogether. We investigated 54 completed government IT projects, completed from 2011 – 2020. We present a mixed-method inquiry into Danish government IT projects. We used archival data to examine cost and schedule overruns in these projects, using measures established by Flyvbjerg. To further inform our understanding of the various drivers that influence these projects cost and schedule overrun, we conducted a qualitative study using interviews and documents analysis. Our findings show that projects in our sample experience much lower cost and schedule overruns than those reported in previous studies. Our qualitative analysis show that projects are more likely to be completed within time and schedule when project managers actively adopt a set of practices that help these projects to perform positively. These practices are: Building one team, accommodating uncertainty, rigorous project management and capitalizing previous domain knowledge.
Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationThe 29th International Conference on Information Systems Development (ISD2021)
PublisherAssociation for Information Systems
Publication date8 Sept 2021
Publication statusPublished - 8 Sept 2021

Keywords

  • Government IT projects
  • Schedule overrun
  • Cost overrun
  • Project Management
  • Project success

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