Exploiting Is/It Projects' Potential - Towards A Design Theory For Benefits Management

Despite organizations’ substantial investments in information systems and information technology (IS/IT), the successful realization of appropriate benefits is still often considered a major organizational challenge. Benefits management (BM) aims at resolving this issue and has become increasingly popular in recent years. Although several papers have been published in this domain, they mainly focus on descriptive research endeavors. Prescriptive research dealing with design science for holistic BM is still scarce. At the same time, BM approaches in practice are still immature and are often unsuccessfully implemented. These gaps motivate our research, which aims at developing a design theory that represents the core aspects of effective BM implementations. Based on an exploratory field study, we first analyze the issues that inhibit BM implementations in practice. We find that BM often suffers from unclear accountability for benefits realization and organizational resistance to change. Based on our findings, we inductively derive a set of meta-requirements that ultimately lead to eight design principles and testable propositions explaining how these principles tackle the challenges associated with BM. Finally, in two iterative design cycles, we conduct interviews with subject-matter experts to validate and refine our design principles. Our research helps organizations locate, understand, and correct flaws in their BM implementation. Moreover, our design theory extends the nascent body of knowledge on BM.