Learning Lessons from Software Implementation Projects: An Exploratory Study

• Author: Karen Macdonald Heaton,Serhiy Kovela,Walter Skok
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/kpm.1525
• Date: 01 October 2016
• Published date: 01 October 2016

■Research Article

Learning Lessons from Software

Implementation Projects: An Exploratory

Study

Karen Macdonald Heaton

1

, Walter Skok

2

*and Serhiy Kovela

2

1

Better Gameplan Consultancy, East Sheen, London, UK

2

Business School, Kingston University, London, UK

This study aims to establish whether software companies learn effectively from past implementation projects to en-

hance future project outcomes. Key themes of project success from existing literature, together with analysis from

our deductive and inductive survey, produce a thematic framework which is subsequently used to generate recom-

mendations for improvement of organisational learning in software projects. We conclude that inherenttechnological

and organisational complexity in these projects results in learning outcomes that fail to address core issues sufficiently.

This is mainly caused by a lack of commitment to organisational learning from projects, the difficulty in extracting

meaningful lessons from complex projects and the organisations’short-term business models focused on sales gener-

ation at the expense of improving project outcomes. Recommendations are made for reshaping organisational strat-

egy by introducing cross-functional responsibility for project outcomes, committing to project learning and

knowledge management across business units, and targeted competency development for project managers. Copy-

right © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

INTRODUCTION

Exponential advances in technology over the past

20 years have created a dynamic and complex new

world of software projects presenting companies

with an ever-growing array of management chal-

lenges. The ability of software companies to adapt

to these new challenges thus becomes crucial for

organisational competitive advantage and survival.

Yet, despite current common acknowledgment of

this notion software projects keep failing, which is

succinctly expressed in “Cobb’s paradox”—“we

know why projects fail; we know how to prevent

their failure—so why do they still fail?”(Skok and

Legge, 2002). This research explores the challenges

companies face in software implementation projects

to understand if learning from such projects can

improve their ability to deliver.

LITERATURE REVIEW

Despite multiple efforts from a wide community,

such as extensive publication of academic papers

and textbooks, establishment of training and

accrediting bodies, and ongoing mentorship and

advice, there continues to be a low success rate in

IT projects (Ghobadian, 2010; Winter et al., 2006;

Ambler, 2014). This notion is supported by research

from Sauer and Cuthbertson (2003), McManus and

Wood-Harper (2008), Standish Group (2005) and

the Project Management Institute (2015), who collec-

tively conclude that project success rates in the US,

UK and Europe have improved slightly in the past

decades, but continue to be in the region of 9 –

36%. The figures are extremely low considering the

level of investment in the IT industry. For instance,

in banking alone, IT-related spending already

accounted for around 15–20% of total costs at the

turn of the century (Davis, 2000) and considering

the ever-growing importance of IT infrastructure

and applications for business, the percentage is

likely to increase. In absolute values, Lodge et al.

(2014, 2015) report that there has been an upward

trend in IT spending in banking worldwide with

total figures across North America, Europe and

*Correspondence to: Walter Skok, Business School, Kingston

University, Kingston Hill, Kingston upon Thames, Surrey KT2

7LB, UK.

E-mail: wskok@kingston.ac.uk

Knowledge and Process Management

Volume 23 Number 4 pp 293–306 (2016)

Published online 4 November 2016 in Wiley Online Library

(www.wileyonlinelibrary.com) DOI: 10.1002/kpm.1525

Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.