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Achieving Success in Large Projects: Implications from a Study of ERP Implementations

Department of Management Information Systems, Operations Management, and Decision Sciences, School of Business Administration, University of Dayton, Dayton, Ohio 45469-2130
Moore School of Business, University of South Carolina, Columbia, South Carolina 29208
Krannert Graduate School of Management, Purdue University, West Lafayette, Indiana 47907-2056
ferratt{at}udayton.edu
ahire{at}moore.sc.edu
pde{at}purdue.edu

Executives in charge of large projects must decide how to spend their energies, even though typically they are not trained to manage such projects. We have derived two implications for managers based on prior research: adhere to the fundamentals of project management and unearth the best practices for large-project success. Through a study of more than 70 enterprise-resource-planning (ERP) projects, we have investigated our hypothesis that greater success in implementation is related to greater adoption of the best practices. For most of the participants in our study, our hypothesized model holds. For some, however, careful deviation from this model also proved successful. Additional implications we have derived include recommendations to specify a model of the project outcomes, understand the factors that make a project large and risky, and include a focus on managing large projects in executive education and development.

Key Words: information systems; management; project management