Reducing I.T. Project Management Failures: A Research Proposal

Failures rates of Information Technology (I.T.) projects remain high, even after decades of efforts to reduce them. However, most efforts to improve project success have focused on variations within the traditional project management paradigm. We argue that a root cause of high I.T. project failure rates is the traditional paradigm itself, as promulgated by, e.g., PMBOK. Discussions with an expert panel resulted in the formulation of a new paradigm described in this paper: Value-Driven Change Leadership (VDCL). This paper proposes empirical research to ascertain the role of the new paradigm in reducing I.T. project failure rates. The initial phase of our research, reported in this paper, resulted in a survey questionnaire and pilot data from several I.T. projects. The paper describes the research methodology for an empirical study to investigate the role of VDCL in reducing I.T. project failure rates.