Research Questions
Discuss about the Future of Academic MIS Research.
Warren McFarlan started a list of risk factors in projects influencing various risk profiles for project portfolios. It has been apparent from the list, that there have been various kinds of risks. These risks has been originating from strategic alignment problems, risks that are management or organizational in nature and risks with climate or cultural.
The risks can be from strategic alignment problems, risks of management or organizational nature or risks with climate or culture. The strategic alignment risks has been dealing with relations of IS groups and business strategy. This has been evaluating things whether IS has been critical in delivering present corporate services. Further, IS has been vital decision-support aid and vital for further decision-support aid. The management and organizational risks has been capturing various qualities and traits of people in IS development departments. This includes stability of groups, experience of groups and experience of the management team. The climate and cultural risks has been dealing with various perceptions related challenges in the scenario where the development happens. This includes perceived quality of OS group includes fiascos of past couple of years and the organization is seen as the background. Most of the Information System implementation has been failing. McFarlan determined various risk factors related to organizational IT projects and developed a model for predicting the risks in projects. He suggested a helpful method for diagnosing and mitigating IT project risks. This can be developed by the predictive ability.
The culture of the country might not have been vital for influencing the projects of. However, McFarlan saw that in a global scenario, the culture of country has been rousingly present and very must vital. The purpose of the project lies in the facts that McFarlan Risk Model or MRM can be developed though culture as an extra dimension. The explanatory advantage including cultural dimension is to also needed to be included. Next the various attributes of cultural dimensions required to observes for better understanding the success and failure of the project.
The following report has analyzed various research questions and a conceptual framework. Then some prior articles are reviewed to understand the Risk Model for IS Implementation Success. Then the research methods and its significances are demonstrated. Next the limitations and delimitations are investigated. Lastly the ethical problems for the current research are discussed in this study.
Conceptual Framework
Here the risks in practical cases have been independent with each others. Instead they have been closely related to others. While analyzing risks, it is assumed that managers have brought suitable approaches and methods for bearing the projects. The risks, sis what has been the remaining as the application of those tools (Peltier 2016). However the research questions must not imply the correlation between the risks and poor outcomes. To understand the ultimate outcomes three vital dimensions has been influencing the risks that are inherent to project. They are project size experience with technology and project structure.
The feasibility of projects has been covering exhaustively over the topic like economic benefits, implementation costs, competition dates, qualitative benefits and needed levels of staffing. The developers of those estimations have been providing huge supporting documentations (Greenberg 2017). Very rarely they have been dealing frankly with risks of slippage with time, technical shortfall, outright failures and cost overrun. Instead they have been denying the existence of those possibilities through ignoring the, Moreover, they have been assuming that proper human skills, has been ensuring success.
The primary research questions include the following.
- Is the Risk Model has been helpful for IS implementation success?
- Next, the cultural factors are to be determined that has effects of risks model?
Apart from these there are also additional queries that are needed to be evaluated.
- What are the various factors of failures and anticipated benefits are to be obtained?
- What is the cost of implementations that highly exceeding various levels of plans?
- Next, what is the technical performance of the resulting systems turning to be below estimate is to be determined?
- To what extent the system has been incompatible with the chosen software and hardware?
Further there are various queries to be answered from individual point of view.
- How the formal project risks management methods has been positively related to various project portfolio successes?
- How much project risk management has been need for the success of project portfolio?
- How much important has been the formal project risk management procedure has been vital for the dominated portfolios?
- How much crucial has been the integration of risk information at portfolio level for changing the portfolios rapidly operating at largely turbulent scenarios?
- Next, what the claims of project risk management are to be verified that has been related to project portfolio success and confirming the necessity to adopt the constant view of risk management research?
McFarlan provided a beginning of the list of risk factors that has been influencing risk profiles of various project portfolios. As the lists are reviewed, it has been apparent that there have been three kinds of risks present (Chang 2016). There are the risks from strategic alignment issues, risks of management and organizational nature, and risks with various climate and cultures. Various strategic alignment risks have been dealing with the relations of IS groups to the rest part of the organization. This has been particularly between business strategy and Information System. This has been evaluating those things as the IS has been vital delivery the present corporate services. The IS has been a vital decision-support aid and critical to provide the future corporate services. The management and organizational risks has been capturing various traits and qualities of people in IS development departments like group’s stability, group’s experiences and management team’s experiences. The climate and cultural risks has been dealing with the view of related challenged to the scenario where the developments have been occurring (Fang et al. 2014).
This includes the perceived quality of IS groups and primary fiascos for the past years and the company is seen to be backward. Here, there are three kinds of risks determined so are all the systematic risks are concerned. They have affecting the overall portfolio. Besides, there have been risks in relation between the projects. These kinds of risks has been affecting a single project and not affecting portfolio as a whole. They have been including various issues of dependencies, additional project challenges and problems regarding knowledge sharing (Greenberg 2017). Further relation risk is the kind of risk. Next there has been risk stretching around every wide area of risks. They have been extending from individual projects and towards relationships between projects including the overall portfolio.
Literature Review
Further, the most common financial measures of project management have been ignoring relations between projects and the overall of portfolio. The strategic alignment risks are the systematic processes assuring the accuracy and relevance. Under the context of portfolio management, the process has been used for prioritizing and selecting projects for future strategic goals (Kavanagh and Johnson 2017). The risks reiterated in portfolio management have been including new products. Instead of alignments, the portfolio has been the risk of pursuing projects that the companies have been well equipped to handle. This has needed scrutiny at the portfolio-level for identifying technologies and capabilities that are vital for the strategic success. The alignment has been crucial since it has been helpful to decline the risk of the portfolio as a whole. The following diagram illustrates the conceptual framework regarding how every vital constructs in the studies has been interrelated (Neumeier, Radszuwill and Garizy 2018). However, the following system is just an initial draft. It can be further modified later on.
The managing of risk of projects indicates that they have been becoming involved in the success. The projects are complex as per its natures. This also includes unique, unusual interdisciplinary, innovative, temporary and complex. This is the reason which the risks ate been exposed to much more than the running of repetitive activities of the businesses. Ghobadi and Mathiassen (2017) mentions that In order to manage the risks, the business must be able to hold and predict the various risk events. This should include the time of interactions, their type and keeping the project objectives from being achieved. This has been needed to design and put into practice the plans of safety and enabling to intervene properly with various actions to repent, monitor and combat the distinct elements of risks. Then evaluation must be made to the background and the current area along with the efficient of action plans adopted form making proper changes to different systems of risk managements.
This has been costing time, money and efforts. However this has been the only path to be considered as one intends to decrease the losses expected for every particular project effort according to Neumeier, Radszuwill and Garizy (2018). Moreover, reacting to specific events as they have been occurring is the obvious meth to proceed with that immediate offer. However, unfortunately it is the only apparent savings. Hence, there has been the necessity to adopt various methodical approaches for works that are suitable and suitable for treating every kind of projects. This is because much time cannot be spent to manage risks and the business can lose through not managing that. Moreover, the ideal approach has been adapting the importance of projects including small management investments for small projects and huge management investments for huge projects.
McFarlan has pioneered the mitigation and analysis of various risks of software projects. The view consists of effects on practicing and researching having various researches who are employed to that in advanced knowledge of developing software. Further, McFarlan has been identifying various dimensions of risks. To discuss the risks, McFarlan has been assuming that managers can adopt proper approaches and methods while the execution of project goes on. The instrument used has been measuring various dimensions of risk that is based on various risk questioners. Clemons and Wilson (2018) highlighted that they have been originally utilized by the “Dallas Tire Corporation”. The model extracted has been including various salient items from the actual questionnaire that has subsumed within three risk dimensions. The project size has been defined according to costs, various level and numbers of extra staffs needed. Here, the time needed in the project and number of various department processes has been impacted by implementations of projects. Here various huge numbers has been implying higher risks. Further, the project structure has been defined through procedural and structural changes needed within user departments and attitude of users for fitting changes. This can be explained by the instance shown by Öbrand et al. (2018).
As the user departments require to change lots of procedures for meeting project necessities, it is classified as the low structure of project. Moreover, there has been a larger risk in project. Hammer (2015) has calculated the experience with technology through the familiarity of projects. They have been dealing with various unexpected technical problems and require larger size of system of the development groups. Here, the risks has been lower that the team lacking the proper experiences. In the same as the team includes the qualified external experts. Thus the risks have been arising from the technology dimension to be lowered. However, as the experts have been not working in partnership with the company, the risk has been still remaining.
McFarlan’s Risk Model has already included cost-effective access towards specialized computing powers and skills of developments. It has included avoiding of developing in-house IT sets of skills. It has also included access to particular functional capabilities. Here, the various factors impacting continuous growth of the culture has include accepting strategic alliances between customers and outsourcers. There has been change in IR scenarios that has been increasing the bar over capabilities and skills (Stair and Reynolds 2017).
The qualitative risk analysis like rating the probability and effect is always performed. It has helpful to allow that one can prioritize and rank the risks quickly. Here, one cannot to every risk and moreover, one can prioritize ways to deal with various competing demands. This has been aiding to find out whether the business must spend their limited effort and time (Cherry and Jacob 2016).
For the current project qualitative risk analysis must be done where the risks are examined in the following order. The first risk to be referred is the one having highest effect. Most of effects originate from least number of risks. The business must determine various things that are must be done to have highest effect over minimizing threats with maximizing the scopes. Then risk analysis must react appropriately and wisely. Here, the aim has been analyzing risks for discriminating between risks and others (Stark 2015). It has been aiding to determine the quantity of efforts in investing the development of response plans. Then the resources are to be assigned suitably. Here the most skilled and knowledgeable resources are to be assigned for the projects having larger risks.
Then here sampling technique must be followed. The business required to decide what units like data, business and individuals must be included to the sample including the ones to be excluded. Here, the sampling methods must act as the guide to help in selecting the units. Besides, the ways in which the units are to selected has been varying notably between non-probability techniques and probability-techniques (Ghobadi and Mathiassen 2017). Further, there has been various variations among different techniques of non-probability samplings specifically. The probability sampling tools needs various populations from which one selects units for the sample. It has been raising potential data protection and confidentiality issues. This is because of various units within the list. This has been not necessarily have been providing permission to access the list the details. Thus one needs to check that one have the proper access to the list at first.
In this study, surveying through online questionnaires are to be followed. Since, they are the minimal costly method of reaching the highest number of people throughout the world. They are easy to design and must be done in a “responsive way” to whatever kind of device the respondents has been using to take the survey adjusting various graphics and text sizes. This makes them readable. As the designing is complete, those online questionnaires are to be stored and revised every year as needed.
For this qualitative analysis, thematic analysis of data reductions and strategy of analysis must be done where the qualitative data is to be segmented, summarized, reconstructed and categorized in way that it can capture the vital ideas under the data set. The thematic analysis is a primary descriptive strategy (Neumeier, Radszuwill and Garizy 2018). It is a form is qualitative analysis including recording and identification of passage of images or texts that are linked through a common them or idea helpful to perform indexes and texts to categorize and thus establish the system of thematic concepts about that.
The current discussion helps in identifying various concerns regarding culture while the Risk Model of McFarlan is implemented to achieve success. The culture has been including the national level, regional linguistic, ethnic level. Moreover, gender level is also considered here with the generation gap level. Lastly the organizational level is also included here for the people who have socialized their activities or various other organizations. The research is helpful to find various risks that must be taken into considerations while measuring the cultural risk (Clemons and Wilson 2018). The culture is one of the risks that are to needed to be investigated. The risks are identified though thematic coding. Verification of the risks and the relationships are largely exploratory. This must be done though multiple cases. The study is helpful to develop various designing efforts and relationships at that point. This is largely exploratory. The development efforts are to be constructed for refining dimensions of portfolio risks and suggest means of measuring risks and analyzing effects over portfolio health (Alexandrova 2015). Here, more calculating the risks various risks, measures must be suggested. The conventional measures like Cost-Benefit Method, ROI and NPV has been focusing highly over the economic aspects. However, they have ignoring the different intangibles. This includes cultural based and strategic objectives.
Moreover, to overcome the limitations, various multi-criteria decision making processes are found using of measuring risks. Here, the processes included various analytical hierarchal processes, risk management matrixes, different balanced scorecards and various advanced programmatic risk assessment methods (Hwang et al., 2016). However the study has shown that the processes have been still in their nascent stage and the applications towards IT portfolios are needed to be researched in more details. As the risk factors and the relations within one portfolio management is understood better, the most effective method to measure the risk and applying that the project prioritization and selection has been hopefully emerging.
The model of McFarlan has been logically consistent with various operational risk approaches towards risk drivers and the effects. However, the model has been providing any warranty of completeness and any explanation of calibration of various output risk levels and input uncertainties. Moreover, it is also pointed out that no analytic system has been lying beyond further questions. Instead of any analytical framework, there has been no warranty that the model can capture important relevant dimensions to the relative effects properly. Here, one of the limitations has been that the risks have been external to that corporation like geopolitical challenges that has been highly ignored (Fang et al., 2014). As the risks have been relevant to portfolio managers, there have been little activities to be done to manage those risks. Moreover, the risks has been internal to the business has been providing the least potential for control.
Besides, McFarlan has used additive model for computing the overall risks index that has been implied that the high risk levels are present in a single dimension. This can be compared by any low risks within a dimension. However, this has not been true. Particularly there has been a culture dimension that has not been including non-compensatory (Greenberg 2017). This has meant that there has been high cultural risk that cannot be mitigated through various low risks. As the system has been contradicting corporate culture, the implementations have been complicated irrespective of the factors. In this way one develops equally huge overall risk. There have been various future researches that is needed to analyzed at some of the dimensions as a non-compensatory matter. This also includes success conditions or the factors of critical success.
The organizations must provide consistent, sustained, visible and coherent leadership as per how they expect their people to respond and behave while dealing with those risks. Next, the ethical issue arises from establishing enough clear boundaries to manage the risks and then holds those accountabilities. Then the dilemmas regarding the risks of present corporate culture has been created for organizations. Further, what risks culture is required to develop the achievement of those corporate goals is to be found out. Next, the ethical issues about acknowledging the stated corporate values while addressing and solving dilemmas of risks are to be pointed out. Then the risk from organizational structure, reward systems and processes supporting and detracting from developing the intended risk culture has been originating. Besides, the ways to satisfy the new joiners to absorb the intended cultural values consistent to the expectations is another ethical dilemma. Lastly, the ways to support developments and learning related with rise in awareness and competence to manage the risks at every level is a serious ethical concern.
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