Inter-Organizational Information and Middleware System Projects: Success, Failure, Complexity, and Challenges

Managing projects is firmly driven by its business goals. Simplistically, considering a project as success, or failure, depends on it meeting its objectives and requirements within its resources. While traditional projects are well constructed, Information Systems projects tend to be complex and ill-defined. These problems are exacerbated in contexts of Inter-Organizational Information (IOIS) and Middleware Systems (IOMS). Such Inter-Enterprise System projects are likely to face challenges related to the non-homogeneity of project goals across partners, complexity of relationships within and across organizations, geographical dispersion, legal differences across boundaries, etc. In this paper we explore various approaches identifying outcomes of IS projects: Rational, Narrative, Organizational, and Performative. Furthermore, we identify the complexity and particular challenges of IOIS and IOMS projects and how such approaches towards identifying project success and/or failure are applicable or inapplicable. We conclude with a call for more research to be conducted in this nascent but vital area