Theorizing IT Project Success: Direct and Indirect Effects in a Hierarchical Framework

This study theorizes IT project success by integrating the project level drivers to the IT, business, and environment level enablers. An attempt is made to delve into underlying structures below the project level in order to understand the systemic reasons behind a particular success or failure. In this journey we rely on the general systems theory and the key concepts like elements, state, properties, process, hierarchy, and environment. It is shown that IT projects can be straightly abstracted by the general system principles. Within the systemic framework, potential factors behind the success of the IT projects are identified, the relationships between the factors are hypothesized and then the hypotheses are integrated into a hierarchical research model. Finally, the hypotheses and the research model are empirically evaluated. According to the results it was confirmed that all levels considered in the research model have significant impacts on the success of an IT project. Similarly, a significant improvement in IT project management in terms of project success can be obtained by improving the quality of involved factors. A favorable financial situation, highly-perceived importance of IT, sound business – IT alignment, and good IT and IT project competencies have remarkably significant positive impacts on the success of IT projects.