Assessment of Risk on Information Technology Projects Through Moments of Translation

Many of the IT solutions in an organisation are employed through IT projects. Based on the reliance on IT solutions, organisations’ investment on IT projects has increased tremendously in the last two decades. This is informed and triggered by the premises that IT will help them to yield solutions that will fulfill or exceed their expectations, thereby make the organisation realise the required return on investment. Projects are a means to yield solutions through technological artefacts such as infrastructure (networks included), applications, databases or a combination of these. The technological artefacts do carries or are associated with foreseen or unforeseen risks. Hence proper risk identification and management on IT projects is necessitated to ensure that the organisation reaches its desire state. Unfortunately, risks are never easy to identify or manage. Using one case, the study employed actor-network theory in the analysis of the data to understand the factors which manifest themselves into risks during the deployment of IT projects in the organisation. DOI: 10.4018/jantti.2012070101 2 International Journal of Actor-Network Theory and Technological Innovation, 4(3), 1-12, July-September 2012 Copyright © 2012, IGI Global. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of IGI Global is prohibited. schedule, with expected performance functionality and they must add value to the business. Such IT projects have inherent risk like any other projects (PMBOK, 2004). What makes them different from other projects is that they deliver intangible products and solutions. IT projects have an element of uncertainty and therefore carry inherent risk. According to Ferguson (2004), risk is defined as an uncertain event that could cause an uncertain impact on project schedule, cost, or quality. Many IT projects are prone to fail (Labuschagne et al., 2008) and this suggests that these are high-risk projects that need project risk management that can effectively improve the project outcome. Risk management is a crucial practice in attaining the successful delivery of IT projects (Tuman & Remenyi, 1999). Risk management is a systematic process to identify, evaluate and address risks on a continuous basis to prevent such risks from having a negative impact on the institution’s service-delivery capacity (Baccarini et al., 2004). Risk management can be applied to an entire organisation at any time to specific functions, projects and activities.