تاثیر قابلیت IT مدیران کسب و کار بر موفقیت پروژه های فناوری اطلاعات The influence of business managers’ IT competence on IT project success

1. Introduction The basis for any business to stay competitive is its capability to execute Business Processes efficiently and continuously, and its capability to handle new Business Processes using Information Technology (IT) (Anand et al., 2013; Huffman and Whitman, 2015). Research “has been concerned with how firms optimally use their core competencies and key assets and resources to extend their product and market reach” (Bharadwaj et al., 2013, p. 473). IT project success rates are still reported as low (Hidding and Nicholas, 2017). In an update of their 1994 Chaos study, the Standish group found that only 29% of IT projects were successful in terms of delivery on time, within budget and according to scope in 2015 (Chaos Report, 2015). This low success rate has been a persistent problem for companies over the years (Gu et al., 2014; Hidding and Nicholas, 2017), and is widely recognised as one of the most pressing problems facing the IT profession (Liu and Wang, 2014). It is particularly problematic as the costs and risks of managing IT projects are often underestimated, and remain a challenge for many organisations (Dalcher, 2016; Marchewka, 2010). This led to the question, as business managers are one of a firm’s key assets, and IT project success rates are low, should one of their competencies include IT projects? A number of studies have been conducted due to the reasons of low IT project success rates. One of the reasons frequently proffered is the inferior quality or lack of a business manager’s interest, alignment, understanding, integration, relationship, fusion (or similar words) in IT and IT projects (Luftman et al., 2013; Reich and Benbasat, 2014). Shared domain knowledge between IT and business executives has one of the strongest impacts on alignment (Elbashir et al., 2013; Reich and Benbasat, 2014). IT professionals tend to think that business people lack IT knowledge (Lu and Ju, 2014) and vice versa, plus poor communication between the business and IT is seen to contribute to the lack of success (Marchewka, 2010; Reich and Benbasat, 2014). Knowledge can only be shared between the two groups by enabling communication and empathy (Elbashir et al., 2013).