Learning in IT projects- The Importance of Situated Practice as well as Formal Project Methodologies

INTRODUCTION Enterprise Systems (ES) are being widely adopted by all types of organizations and there is now considerable research on the impact of such systems The promoted strategic advantage of an ES is that it can integrate business functions into a single system with a shared database (Lee and Lee, 2000), allowing organizations to develop a homogenous enterprise-wide information systems infrastructure. At the same time as providing integration, the organization can 2 simultaneously rid itself of legacy systems, many of which will have operated independently and will have been customized to reflect ingrained and localized practice (Gupta, 2000). Large organizations will often have several hundred, often duplicated legacy systems, which are costly to maintain and support. Many multinational enterprises have, thus, adopted ES with the intention of leveraging productivity and efficiency gains in order to improve organizational These potential benefits are certainly attractive and explain why so many organizations have chosen to adopt an ES. However, the reality of implementing an ES can be problematic as many such projects often involve significant implementation delays and budget over-spends, as well as sometimes outright failure (Parr and Shanks, 2000; Robey et al., 2002; Wagner and Newell, 2004). Given the organizational stakes involved in the implementation of an ES, a great deal of research has been done to identify the critical success factors (CSF) for IS generally or for ES success specifically (Bajwa et al. While these general recommendations provide a helpful starting point, existing research does not consider why so many companies fail to achieve these CSF. In other words, while the CSF provide a roadmap to success, organizations never the less " get lost " when trying to follow the directions. This paper addresses the question: why are so many of the factors that research has identified as critical to ES implementation success problematic to maintain in practice, even when those involved are well-aware of their importance? We use an exploratory case to examine whether and why CSF are difficult to sustain. Based on our analysis, we argue that adopting a complimentary practice-based orientation to ES implementation (that pays attention to what people actually do rather than what they are 3 supposed to do) can help to keep a project on-track even when some of the CSF have deteriorated. The foundations of our practice-based orientation come from theoretical perspectives that emphasize the situated nature and social embeddedness of work, including the …