Benefits from Investments in IT Development

Abstract

Our findings can enable organizations to be evidence-based when selecting management practices to achieve a higher return on investments in IT. We found a positive association with the realization of benefits when (i) organizations adopted the practices of re-estimating benefits, quantifying benefits realization, and identifying benefits beyond what is included in the initial business case; (ii) benefits had high quality descriptions, i.e., they: (a) had a clear description of what is to be achieved, (b) were measurable, (c) had people responsible for their realization, and (d) had well-founded benefits estimates; (iii) the business cases included certain types of benefits, as we found that (a) benefits planned to be realized by the project owner’s organizations were realized to a larger extent than benefits to be realized by others, (b) smaller benefits were realized to a larger extent than the larger ones, (c) non-monetized benefits were realized more than monetized ones; (iv) benefits owners had the ability to persuade and sell, had an understanding of user needs, and had a clear and powerful mandate. We also provide evidence of how activities to improve functionality to the end-user positively relate to the adoption of benefits management practices and the realization of benefits.