An Investigation of Business-to-Business Relationships within Large Multi-Vendor Software Implementations based on Commitment-Trust Theory

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

The implementation and management of large software projects often becomes the preserve of external service providers. Some of the larger projects consist of hundreds of customer and third-party team members, who may be located across multiple geographies, and time zones. It has recently been argued that the increasing size and complexity of these software implementation projects, leads them to exhibit the behaviours and traits of complex systems. This emergent behaviour may, to a large degree, be due to the complexity stemming from the large number of team members, and the growing trend, especially in the public sector, of using multiple vendors with back-to-back fixed price contracts to implement the projects. As a consequence it is sometimes difficult to understand exactly who is accountable for resolving emerging risks and issues that may span multiple projects, who is responsible for end-to-end delivery of individual projects, and who is ultimately accountable for successful delivery of the entire programme of work. Without a clear understanding of the emergent behaviour of projects involving multiple vendors and virtual teams (which may be culturally diverse and geographically dispersed), it is difficult to definitively predict the likelihood of programme success.We intend to investigate whether the generation of trust within software project teams (both customer and vendor) is a prerequisite for successful implementation of projects. Data will be collected through semi-structured qualitative interviews with IT consulting project managers, focusing on their experiences of developing working relationships with personnel from customers and other vendors. Interviewees will also be asked to recall critical incidents in the breakdown, and re-establishment of relations with the customer and other business partners on projects. The resulting data will be analysed using a range of statistical and computational modelling approaches, including multivariate statistical techniques and agent-based computational modelling. The use of agent-based simulation experimentation is expected to provide insight into the propagation of trust and commitment within business social networks. We believe that this experimentation may provide insight into the robustness and fragility of project management of large software implementations. These findings may then lead to the design and development of new approaches for project lifecycles, methodologies, and a conceptual framework for managing projects that is based on the propagation of commitment and trust along the network of team members.