Value-based Management of IT projects

根据IT治理研究所（ITGI 2011）最近的一项研究，大约五分之一的信息技术（IT）投资在实施之前就终止了。这些高终止率的主要原因是项目运行期间出现的风险，并导致预算和时间超支。这些风险导致较晚的结论——与先前的预期相反——预期的结果无法实现（ITGI 2011）。2009年德国Schiesser公司的破产是it项目失败可能造成的经济损失的众多突出例子之一：破产的一个主要原因是新的企业资源规划（ERP）系统的Go-Live导致错误的货物订单（Kessler 2009）。为了应对这一挑战，科学文献主要关注于开发用于it项目前评估的方法。然而，实证研究表明，在项目运行过程中会出现大量的风险因素。因此，对it项目进行事前评估是不够的。为了能够尽早识别新出现的风险并合理地抵消，持续的it项目指导的方法是必要的。据我们所知，这些在今天的科学文献中是缺失的。因此，在本研究资助提案的范围内，我们追求的目标是开发方法，允许基于有能力的事前评估的it项目的持续的基于价值的指导。先前批准的研究项目的结果，如：“it -投资组合管理”为这项工作提供了理想的基础：这个特定项目的目标是开发评估it项目和it -投资组合的方法，同时考虑风险和回报。申请人撰写的大量文章能够发表，这一事实既证明了这项工作的良好基础，也证明了这一主题的科学相关性。通过应用持续项目指导的方法，公司可以避免it项目失败造成的经济损失。同时，对it项目的持续指导提供了不断调整it项目的可能性，以便在给定的潜在环境下实现最高可能的产出。

According to a recent study of the IT Governance Institute (ITGI 2011), about one out of five investments into information technology (IT) is terminated before implementation. Major reasons for those high termination rates are risks that emerge during the runtime of projects and cause budget and time overruns. Those risks lead to the late conclusion that - in contrast to prior expectations - anticipated results cannot be achieved (ITGI 2011). The insolvency of the German company Schiesser in 2009 is one of many prominent examples for the economic damages that failing IT-projects can cause: A major reason for the insolvency was the Go-Live of a new enterprise resource planning (ERP)-system leading to erroneous orders for goods (Kessler 2009). To cope with this challenge, scientific literature primarily focused on the development of methods for the ex-ante-valuation of IT-projects. However, empirical studies reveal that a lot of risk factors emerge during the runtime of projects. Therefore, conducting ex-ante-valuations of IT-projects is insufficient. In order to be able to identify emerging risks early and to counteract reasonably, methods for a continuous IT-project-steering are necessary. Those are - to the best of our knowledge - missing in today's scientific literature. Thus, within the scope of this proposal for a research grant, we pursue the objective to develop methods that allow for a continuous value-based steering of IT-projects based on a capable ex ante valuation. The results of prior granted research projects like e.g. 'IT-Portfolio Management' provide the ideal basis for this undertaking: The objective of this specific project was the development of methods for the valuation of IT-projects and IT-portfolios considering both risk and return. The fact that a large number of articles written by the applicants could be published proves both the sound basis for this undertaking as well as the scientific relevance of this subject. By applying methods for continuous project-steering companies can avoid economic damages caused by failing IT-projects. At the same time, a continuous steering of IT-projects offers the possibility to continuously readjust IT-projects in order to - given underlying circumstances - achieve the highest possible yield.