Philosophiae Doctor - PhD / Higher education institutions in South Africa have invested heavily in information technology and information systems, with variable outcomes. Organisations in other sectors, such as engineering, the defence industry, public administration and business, have developed and adopted standards and guides to good practice for the development and operation of software-based systems. In the history of standards-making there was an early vision of the need to extend standardisation beyond software engineering into the world that acquires and uses systems, and yet the overall scope of available standards is still limited. Seeing slow progress in the international committees that develop nationally-endorsed standards (such as ISO-IEC/JTC1/SC7) practitioner communities moved to develop good practice guides such as COBIT and ITIL, that have found considerable interest in progressive organisations. Hence a range of potential guidance is available. In order to assess the extent to which standards and good practice guides might assist higher education, the four tertiary institutions in the Western Cape were approached and a representative range of academic, administrative and managerial individuals agreed to contribute to the study as respondents. Interviews were organised in two parts: the first an open conversation about their involvement with systems, and the second a structured examination of systems-related events that they considered significant. By inspection of those events, bipolar scales were developed by which respondents were able to characterise events (for example as ‘challenging’ or ‘easy’, or as ‘functional’ or ‘dysfunctional’). Respondents rated events on those scales. Repertory Grid analysis was applied so as to investigate which scales correlated with event success. 30 scales (out of 170) proved to be adequately correlated with success, and by principal component analysis they were combined to form nine ‘success scale’ groups, indicating nine areas where the deployment of standards or good practice guides might be expected to lead to more effective use of improved information systems. The study adopted an abductive approach to the work, keeping open the question of what might be the contribution to knowledge. In the event, a new Reference Model emerged from the data analysis that contributes to the effective choice and management of standards and good practice guides .A review of available standards and good practice guides using the new Reference Model concludes that the good practice guides are more applicable than the internationally developed standards, and in some areas management models and frameworks have a contribution to make. The utility of standards, good practice guides and management models will depend on the circumstances and context of use, which are extremely variable. A portfolio approach to the management of information systems provides a means to deal with that variability. It is further found that the IMBOK1 can be used to assess the linkages between information technology, information systems, business processes, business benefits and business strategy. The new Reference Model has a role to play in resolving the need for standards in the four junctions between those five IMBOK domains. Selected standards are assessed in that way, and an illustrative commentary is provided showing how projects and other systems-related initiatives can be assessed using the new Reference Model and the IMBOK. / Carnegie Corporation of New York

<p>No organisation has an endless and unlimited supply of money, especially in a recessive economy, and therefore decisions have to be made as to which areas an organisation will invest in. As organisations, such as YZ1 financial services organisation, are focused on seeing returns on investment (ROI), implementing software that is not being used&nbsp / will not render any benefits to the organisation. Research problem: Project Managers (PMs) in YZ organisation&rsquo / s IT department need to perform mandated processes, as&nbsp / defined in their centralised repository. PMs need to use Financial and Planning Software (FPS)2 software to perform certain project management activities, as required by their&nbsp / job function. However, it was found that MPP3 software, another tool, was used for more detailed project schedules, as well as activities that were not strictly enforced by&nbsp / management, the Project Office or the Quality Assurance team. Therefore, from this discovery, it was not clear whether the intended benefit of implementing this mandatory&nbsp / software (FPS) was being realised &ndash / since implementing software that is not being utilised fully would not deliver the intended benefits to the IT department (Devaraj &amp / Kohli&nbsp / 2003), even if the software is termed &lsquo / mandatory&rsquo / . Objective: The primary objective of this research was to explore and optimise the key success factors for an effective&nbsp / implementation of mandatory software in a department, in order to derive the intended business benefits. Literature Review: Literature was reviewed in the search for models or&nbsp / theories that explore the relationship between the use of mandatory software and the achievement of business benefits. The Information Management Body of Knowledge&nbsp / (IMBOK) was selected as this framework defines the relationship between IT and the realisation of business benefits, and ultimately the achievement of any business strategy. The literature review focused predominantly on the level of user involvement, change management, as well as factors that influence the usage of mandatory software by&nbsp / individuals. 1. The name of the organisation utilised has been changed. Refer to Ethical Consideration 2. The name of the tools utilised has been changed. Refer to Ethical&nbsp / Consideration and list of acronyms 3. The name of the tools utilised has been changed. Refer to Ethical Consideration and list of acronyms. Focus was given to organisational factors affecting usage, such as top management support and organisational processes. A model was compiled using unique constructs in the Technology Acceptance Model&nbsp / (and TAM2), the Motivational Model (MM) and the Model of PC Utilisation (MPCU) &ndash / in order to test user acceptance of mandatory software. The literature study concludes with a&nbsp / review of an approach to benefits management including five stages, namely: identifying and structuring benefits, planning for the realisation of benefits, executing the plan, in&nbsp / addition to the evaluation and the review. Research design and methodology: A case study was used in this research, as it examined the phenomenon in its natural setting,&nbsp / &nbsp / &nbsp / employing multiple methods of data collection to gather information from a few entities (groups and data sources). In this way, it was not limited to only qualitative or quantitative&nbsp / approaches, but utilised mixed methods instead. A mixed methods approach was used in order to elaborate, enhance and clarify the results from the qualitative research&nbsp / through the results of the quantitative analysis. Findings: The main finding, based on the compilation of three models of user acceptance, proved that FPS was not being utilised&nbsp / as intended. There was also no evidence of an improvement in business operations. Therefore, benefits management was negatively impacted. Organisational processes were&nbsp / dentified as the most important organisational factor, influencing the usage of FPS software. Own technological capability was considered to be the least important factor,&nbsp / as respondents believed that they had sufficient IT skills in order to learn how to use FPS software. Change management was rated negatively / and as a result, it impacted the&nbsp / usage of FPS, as users were not involved in the decision to implement, and had limited interaction in the implementation process. In addition, there was no evidence found that&nbsp / benefits management was conducted in the IT department / and therefore, the impact of using alternative software could not be quantitatively assessed. Recommendations: In concluding this research, it is recommended that the &ldquo / best practice&rdquo / , derived from the pertinent literate should be followed more diligently if YZ organisation is to benefit from the&nbsp / implementation of mandatory software. For example, in this research, it was found that top management&rsquo / s support of FPS (second most important organisational factor influencing use) was lacking, despite the literature suggestion that senior management involvement in changing technology is crucial for organisational commitment. It is&nbsp / suggested that a more formal approach to benefits management should be implemented. It is also recommended that further study should be conducted &ndash / in order to explore&nbsp / the applicability of the Japanese framing (achieving benefits from IT software through the concept of strategic instinct, rather than strategic alignment) in the context of a&nbsp / developing country (such as South Africa).</p>

<p>No organisation has an endless and unlimited supply of money, especially in a recessive economy, and therefore decisions have to be made as to which areas an organisation will invest in. As organisations, such as YZ1 financial services organisation, are focused on seeing returns on investment (ROI), implementing software that is not being used&nbsp / will not render any benefits to the organisation. Research problem: Project Managers (PMs) in YZ organisation&rsquo / s IT department need to perform mandated processes, as&nbsp / defined in their centralised repository. PMs need to use Financial and Planning Software (FPS)2 software to perform certain project management activities, as required by their&nbsp / job function. However, it was found that MPP3 software, another tool, was used for more detailed project schedules, as well as activities that were not strictly enforced by&nbsp / management, the Project Office or the Quality Assurance team. Therefore, from this discovery, it was not clear whether the intended benefit of implementing this mandatory&nbsp / software (FPS) was being realised &ndash / since implementing software that is not being utilised fully would not deliver the intended benefits to the IT department (Devaraj &amp / Kohli&nbsp / 2003), even if the software is termed &lsquo / mandatory&rsquo / . Objective: The primary objective of this research was to explore and optimise the key success factors for an effective&nbsp / implementation of mandatory software in a department, in order to derive the intended business benefits. Literature Review: Literature was reviewed in the search for models or&nbsp / theories that explore the relationship between the use of mandatory software and the achievement of business benefits. The Information Management Body of Knowledge&nbsp / (IMBOK) was selected as this framework defines the relationship between IT and the realisation of business benefits, and ultimately the achievement of any business strategy. The literature review focused predominantly on the level of user involvement, change management, as well as factors that influence the usage of mandatory software by&nbsp / individuals. 1. The name of the organisation utilised has been changed. Refer to Ethical Consideration 2. The name of the tools utilised has been changed. Refer to Ethical&nbsp / Consideration and list of acronyms 3. The name of the tools utilised has been changed. Refer to Ethical Consideration and list of acronyms. Focus was given to organisational factors affecting usage, such as top management support and organisational processes. A model was compiled using unique constructs in the Technology Acceptance Model&nbsp / (and TAM2), the Motivational Model (MM) and the Model of PC Utilisation (MPCU) &ndash / in order to test user acceptance of mandatory software. The literature study concludes with a&nbsp / review of an approach to benefits management including five stages, namely: identifying and structuring benefits, planning for the realisation of benefits, executing the plan, in&nbsp / addition to the evaluation and the review. Research design and methodology: A case study was used in this research, as it examined the phenomenon in its natural setting,&nbsp / &nbsp / &nbsp / employing multiple methods of data collection to gather information from a few entities (groups and data sources). In this way, it was not limited to only qualitative or quantitative&nbsp / approaches, but utilised mixed methods instead. A mixed methods approach was used in order to elaborate, enhance and clarify the results from the qualitative research&nbsp / through the results of the quantitative analysis. Findings: The main finding, based on the compilation of three models of user acceptance, proved that FPS was not being utilised&nbsp / as intended. There was also no evidence of an improvement in business operations. Therefore, benefits management was negatively impacted. Organisational processes were&nbsp / dentified as the most important organisational factor, influencing the usage of FPS software. Own technological capability was considered to be the least important factor,&nbsp / as respondents believed that they had sufficient IT skills in order to learn how to use FPS software. Change management was rated negatively / and as a result, it impacted the&nbsp / usage of FPS, as users were not involved in the decision to implement, and had limited interaction in the implementation process. In addition, there was no evidence found that&nbsp / benefits management was conducted in the IT department / and therefore, the impact of using alternative software could not be quantitatively assessed. Recommendations: In concluding this research, it is recommended that the &ldquo / best practice&rdquo / , derived from the pertinent literate should be followed more diligently if YZ organisation is to benefit from the&nbsp / implementation of mandatory software. For example, in this research, it was found that top management&rsquo / s support of FPS (second most important organisational factor influencing use) was lacking, despite the literature suggestion that senior management involvement in changing technology is crucial for organisational commitment. It is&nbsp / suggested that a more formal approach to benefits management should be implemented. It is also recommended that further study should be conducted &ndash / in order to explore&nbsp / the applicability of the Japanese framing (achieving benefits from IT software through the concept of strategic instinct, rather than strategic alignment) in the context of a&nbsp / developing country (such as South Africa).</p>

Magister Commercii (Information Management) - MCom(IM) / No organisation has an endless and unlimited supply of money, especially in a recessive economy, and therefore decisions have to be made as to which areas an organisation will invest in. As organisations, such as YZ1 financial services organisation, are focused on seeing returns on investment (ROI), implementing software that is not being used will not render any benefits to the organisation. Research problem: Project Managers (PMs) in YZ organisation’s IT department need to perform mandated processes, as defined in their centralised repository. PMs need to use Financial and Planning Software (FPS)2 software to perform certain project management activities, as required by their job function. However, it was found that MPP3 software, another tool, was used for more detailed project schedules, as well as activities that were not strictly enforced by management, the Project Office or the Quality Assurance team. Therefore, from this discovery, it was not clear whether the intended benefit of implementing this mandatory software (FPS) was being realised – since implementing software that is not being utilised fully would not deliver the intended benefits to the IT department (Devaraj & Kohli 2003), even if the software is termed ‘mandatory’. Objective: The primary objective of this research was to explore and optimise the key success factors for an effective implementation of mandatory software in a department, in order to derive the intended business benefits. Literature Review: Literature was reviewed in the search for models or theories that explore the relationship between the use of mandatory software and the achievement of business benefits. The Information Management Body of Knowledge (IMBOK) was selected as this framework defines the relationship between IT and the realisation of business benefits, and ultimately the achievement of any business strategy. The literature review focused predominantly on the level of user involvement, change management, as well as factors that influence the usage of mandatory software by individuals. 1. The name of the organisation utilised has been changed. Refer to Ethical Consideration 2. The name of the tools utilised has been changed. Refer to Ethical Consideration and list of acronyms 3. The name of the tools utilised has been changed. Refer to Ethical Consideration and list of acronyms. Focus was given to organisational factors affecting usage, such as top management support and organisational processes. A model was compiled using unique constructs in the Technology Acceptance Model (and TAM2), the Motivational Model (MM) and the Model of PC Utilisation (MPCU) – in order to test user acceptance of mandatory software. The literature study concludes with a review of an approach to benefits management including five stages, namely: identifying and structuring benefits, planning for the realisation of benefits, executing the plan, in addition to the evaluation and the review. Research design and methodology: A case study was used in this research, as it examined the phenomenon in its natural setting, employing multiple methods of data collection to gather information from a few entities (groups and data sources). In this way, it was not limited to only qualitative or quantitative approaches, but utilised mixed methods instead. A mixed methods approach was used in order to elaborate, enhance and clarify the results from the qualitative research through the results of the quantitative analysis. Findings: The main finding, based on the compilation of three models of user acceptance, proved that FPS was not being utilised as intended. There was also no evidence of an improvement in business operations. Therefore, benefits management was negatively impacted. Organisational processes were dentified as the most important organisational factor, influencing the usage of FPS software. Own technological capability was considered to be the least important factor, as respondents believed that they had sufficient IT skills in order to learn how to use FPS software. Change management was rated negatively; and as a result, it impacted the usage of FPS, as users were not involved in the decision to implement, and had limited interaction in the implementation process. In addition, there was no evidence found that benefits management was conducted in the IT department; and therefore, the impact of using alternative software could not be quantitatively assessed. Recommendations: In concluding this research, it is recommended that the “best practice”, derived from the pertinent literate should be followed more diligently if YZ organisation is to benefit from the implementation of mandatory software. For example, in this research, it was found that top management’s support of FPS (second most important organisational factor influencing use) was lacking, despite the literature suggestion that senior management involvement in changing technology is crucial for organisational commitment. It is suggested that a more formal approach to benefits management should be implemented. It is also recommended that further study should be conducted – in order to explore the applicability of the Japanese framing (achieving benefits from IT software through the concept of strategic instinct, rather than strategic alignment) in the context of a developing country (such as South Africa). / South Africa

Magister Commercii (Information Management) - MCom(IM) / No organisation has an endless and unlimited supply of money, especially in a recessive economy, and therefore decisions have to be made as to which areas an organisation will invest in. As organisations, such as YZ1 financial services organisation, are focused on seeing returns on investment (ROI), implementing software that is not being used will not render any benefits to the organisation.Research problem: Project Managers (PMs) in YZ organisation’s IT department need to perform mandated processes, as defined in their centralised repository. PMs need to use Financial and Planning Software (FPS)2 software to perform certain project management activities, as required by their job function. However, it was found that MPP3 software, another tool, was used for more detailed project schedules, as well as activities that were not strictly enforced by management, the Project Office or the Quality Assurance team.Therefore, from this discovery, it was not clear whether the intended benefit of implementing this mandatory software (FPS) was being realised – since implementing software that is not being utilised fully would not deliver the intended benefits to the IT department (Devaraj & Kohli 2003), even if the software is termed ‘mandatory’.Objective: The primary objective of this research was to explore and optimise the key success factors for an effective implementation of mandatory software in a department, in order to derive the intended business benefits.Literature Review: Literature was reviewed in the search for models or theories that explore the relationship between the use of mandatory software and the achievement of business benefits. The Information Management Body of Knowledge (IMBOK) was selected as this framework defines the relationship between IT and the realisation of business benefits, and ultimately the achievement of any business strategy.The literature review focused predominantly on the level of user involvement, change management, as well as factors that influence the usage of mandatory software by individuals.1 The name of the organisation utilised has been changed. Refer to Ethical Consideration 2 The name of the tools utilised has been changed. Refer to Ethical Consideration and list of acronyms 3 The name of the tools utilised has been changed. Refer to Ethical Consideration and list of acronyms Focus was given to organisational factors affecting usage, such as top management support and organisational processes. A model was compiled using unique constructs in the Technology Acceptance Model (and TAM2), the Motivational Model (MM) and the Model of PC Utilisation (MPCU) – in order to test user acceptance of mandatory software.The literature study concludes with a review of an approach to benefits management including five stages, namely: identifying and structuring benefits, planning for the realisation of benefits, executing the plan, in addition to the evaluation and the review.Research design and methodology: A case study was used in this research, as it examined the phenomenon in its natural setting, employing multiple methods of data collection to gather information from a few entities (groups and data sources). In this way, it was not limited to only qualitative or quantitative approaches, but utilised mixed methods instead. A mixed methods approach was used in order to elaborate, enhance and clarify the results from the qualitative research through the results of the quantitative analysis.Findings: The main finding, based on the compilation of three models of user acceptance, proved that FPS was not being utilised as intended. There was also no evidence of an improvement in business operations. Therefore, benefits management was negatively impacted. Organisational processes were identified as the most important organisational factor, influencing the usage of FPS software. Own technological capability was considered to be the least important factor, as respondents believed that they had sufficient IT skills in order to learn how to use FPS software.Change management was rated negatively; and as a result, it impacted the usage of FPS, as users were not involved in the decision to implement, and had limited interaction in the implementation process. In addition, there was no evidence found that benefits management was conducted in the IT department; and therefore, the impact of using alternative software could not be quantitatively assessed.Recommendations: In concluding this research, it is recommended that the “best practice”,derived from the pertinent literate should be followed more diligently if YZ organisation is to benefit from the implementation of mandatory software. For example, in this research, it was found that top management’s support of FPS (second most important organisational factor influencing use) was lacking, despite the literature suggestion that senior management involvement in changing technology is crucial for organisational commitment.It is suggested that a more formal approach to benefits management should be implemented. It is also recommended that further study should be conducted – in order to explore the applicability of the Japanese framing (achieving benefits from IT software through the concept of strategic instinct, rather than strategic alignment) in the context of a developing country (such as South Africa).