The Individual Narrative of IS Project Success

Project success continues to be a concern for information systems practitioners and academics alike. Previous research has studied organizational attributes such as governance, knowledge, and individual attributes mainly focused on project leadership that can affect performance. This study makes an effort to shift the focus to IS professionals who are at the core of IS projects and explores how IS professional's individual narrative of IS project success develops. Using the attribution theoretical lens, the study proposes that the development of the narrative of IS project success is a process of casual attribution involving perception of justice, engagement and perception of project performance. Seventy-nine IS professionals from various organizations participated in a survey which measured the project performance for projects they completed in the recent past, their level engagement in those projects, and their perception of justice during those projects. Respondents represented a wide variety of industries such as retail, telecommunications, and food from both US and non-US project locations. Besides explaining the narrative of IS success, the study also reveals that this narrative has potential downstream effect on the well-being of the IS professional. The study is expected to enrich the IS project management literature by providing deeper understanding of the perception of professionals working in IS projects.