Evolving team dynamics in IS implementation

The tremendous technological changes today have increased the sophistication of Information Systems (IS) functionality and complexity in IS implementation team dynamics. Many projects now frequently involve not only in-house IT professionals and business users but also consultants and/or vendors as key members in the implementation team. Thus, the traditional IT-business relationship is increasingly being expanded to include key external stakeholders – all of whom must collectively fulfil their respective roles and responsibilities in a coordinated manner in order to ensure a successful implementation. These complex and multi-faceted relationships could affect the success of IS projects such as the Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems which have seen particularly high failure rates. This study aims to shed light on such evolving IS implementation team dynamics. We focus our study on the various roles in the team during the implementation of a CRM project in a major bank in Singapore. Interestingly, our findings reveal the dynamic and fluid nature of these roles among the multiple work groups during the development process. In particular, we witnessed fluid “leadersupporter-follower” dynamics instead of the expected traditional static “leader-follower” hierarchy commonly seen in many past IS projects. The case study suggests that the key to successful IS implementation lies in a keen understanding of how specific knowledge flows can precipitate such “leader-supporter-follower” dynamics.