Overcoming paralysis: Aspects of reliability in information systems projects

Over recent years, IS implementation programmes have become increasingly complex, dynamic, uncertain and prone to failure. For the client and provider the failure of IS programmes has the potential for significant disruption, data loss, damage to reputation and may even jeopardize long-term business survival. We argue that programme resilience, the capacity to take timely action and change before unforeseen incidents and events become too costly, is best achieved through proactive processes and practices rather than through reactive rule-based structures, barriers and defences. We draw on contributions from the fields of organisational resilience and crisis management to help explain how failures occur in complex systems and how some organisations have developed the ability to avoid and mitigate them. We apply this understanding to an in-depth case study of two troubled IS programmes. Our results are discussed with a framework drawn from previous research on high reliability organisations.