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The difficulties of implementing information systems and technology (IS/IT) and assessing their performance have been acknowledged by scholars (Lueg & Lu, 2012, 2013; Martinsons et al., 1999). Therefore, finding means to overcome these issues and to improve the performance in management of IS/IT systems has been a research focus of the last decades. Grounded by theory of competitive strategy, Brooke (1992) argued that IS/IT can contribute to more profits if it cannot be replicated easily or it can make product differentiation.
Worldwide surveys highlighted the significant global increasing of IS/IT expenditure and referred the large financial resources spent by organizations (Willcocks & Lester, 1999). Many IS/IT investments appear to go ahead without the use of formal investment appraisal techniques, which results in difficulties on understanding both the impact and implications of the IS/IT implementation due to a lack of organizational processes to evaluate the desired outcomes (Remenyi et al, 2000).
In recent times, IS/IT managers have found it increasingly difficult to justify rising IS/IT expenditures (Counihan, Finnegan & Sammon, 2002). Moreover, the evaluation of these IS/IT investments requires multi-dimensional measures and is a complex tangle of financial, organizational, social, procedural and technical threads, many of which are currently either avoided or dealt with ineffectively (Cronk and Fitzgerald, 2002).
Success is not easily defined or determined. Some researchers such as Dvir et al. (1998) believe that a project is successful when it meets budget, schedule and quality constraints even though it may not have met factors such as customer needs or achieved a quality of the final product.
Researchers have been made a distinction between project success and project management success. De Wit (1988), Munns & Bjeirmi (1996) and Cooke-Davies (2002) clarified that project success is measured against the overall objectives of the project while project management success is measured mostly against cost, time and quality. Baker, Murphy & Fisher (1983) advice to look for the satisfaction of the parties associated with, and affected by the project. Instead of using time, cost and performance as measures for project success, perceived satisfaction should be also measure. Clarke (1999) claimed that in order to ensure that a project is completed successfully, project plans need to be updated regularly and objectives clearly stated at the outset of the project. Meredith & Mantel (2006) suggested that, what appears to be a failure in one project might be a success factor in another one.